Privacy Policy

Welcome to Akita Systems Limited’s privacy policy.

Akita Systems Limited (“Akita“) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website or application (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

This privacy policy is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below.

1. IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE
2. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
3. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
7. DATA SECURITY
8. DATA RETENTION
9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

 

1. IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how Akita collects and processes your personal data through your use of our websites (www.akita.co.uk and www.akitais.com) or our portal, including any data you may provide through this website or our portal when you submit an online enquiry, sign up to our marketing resources and/or submit any information in relation to any recruitment opportunities with us.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

Controller

Akita is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Akita Data“, “we“, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact us using the details set out below.

Contact details

Full company name: Akita Systems Limited

Email address: gdpr@akita.co.uk

Postal address:  Unit 15 Nepicar Park, London Road, Wrotham, Kent, TN15 7AF.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and may amend this from time to time, so please be sure to check back periodically.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

2. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data includes first name, [maiden name,] last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact Data includes billing address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
• Usage Data includes information about how you use our website and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
  • order our services;
  • create an account on our website;
  • subscribe to our services or publications;
  • request marketing to be sent to you;
  • apply for a job with us;
  • enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
  • give us feedback or contact us.
• Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our Cookie Policy for further details.
• Third parties or publicly available sources. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
• Technical Data from the following parties:
  • analytics providers such as Google Analytics/ Hubspot based outside the UK;
  • our marketing automation system; Click Dimenstions;
  • social media such as Meta or LinkedIn;
  • advertising networks; and
  • search information providers.
• Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services.
• Identity and Contact Data from data brokers or aggregators Dun & Bradstreet Limited based inside the UK and Demand Science Group LLC based in the USA.
• Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the UK.

4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

 

Purpose/Activity	Type of data	Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To register you as a new customer	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Performance of a contract with you
To process and deliver your order including: (a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial (d) Transaction (e)Marketing and Communications	(a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us)
To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d)Marketing and Communications	(a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our services)
To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e)Marketing and Communications	(a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services, to develop them and grow our business)
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical	(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise) (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e)Marketing and Communications (f) Technical	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences	(a) Technical (b) Usage	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile (f) Marketing and Communications	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our services and grow our business)

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. We have established the following personal data control mechanisms:

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing

Our carefully selected partners and service providers may process personal information about you on our behalf as described below:

“Digital Marketing Service Providers”

We periodically appoint digital marketing agents to conduct marketing activity on our behalf, such activity may result in the compliant processing of personal information.  Our appointed data processors include:

(i)ClickDimensions, LLC (“Click”). You can contact Click and view their privacy policy here: https://clickdimensions.com/

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time at marketing@akita.co.uk.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a service purchase, service experience or other transactions.

Cookies

Cookies are files with small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and stored on your computer’s hard drive. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please visit our Cookie Policy.

Disclosures of your personal data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table ‘Purposes for which we will use your personal data’ above.

• External Third Parties such as:
  • Service providers acting as processors, who provide IT and system administration services.
  • Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the UK who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

5. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

Many of our external third parties are based outside the UK, including service providers based in India, so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

6. DATA SECURITY

The security of your personal information is important to us. Although no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure, we have put in place appropriate security measures to limit the risk of your personal data being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

7. DATA RETENTION

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary, but typically no longer than twenty-four (24) months, to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six (6) years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

8. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under certain circumstances, you have the following rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data:

Request access to and/or correction of your personal data. You can request details of the personal data we hold on you, along with a copy of such data, and the correction of any errors.

Request erasure of your personal data. We may not be able to delete some types of personal data, in particular, where we have a legal obligation to keep it (e.g. for regulatory reporting purposes) or, for example, where you want us to continue to provide you with a service and the processing of your personal data is necessary for the provision of that service.

Object to processing of your personal data. The right to object (on grounds relating to your particular situation) to the processing of your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests, including for direct marketing purposes.

Request restriction or suspension of processing your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

• If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
• Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
• Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
• You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request transfer of your personal data. The right in some cases to receive your Information in a digital format or to have it transmitted directly to another controller (where technically feasible).

Right to withdraw consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time in respect of any processing of Information which is based upon a consent. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.