Personal information we collect and how it will be handled
At Aqua~Media International (“AMI”, “we”, “us” or “our”) we respect your right to privacy and understand that you want to keep control of your personal information. We are committed to protecting any information you share with us.
We will never sell, distribute or intentionally make your personal information public, without your permission, and have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect the data you share with us from loss and preserve its security and confidentiality. All your interactions with our website are protected by strong 256-bit encryption; and we aim to collect the minimum of personal information needed to provide an effective service.
We believe in being transparent about what data we are collecting and how it will be handled. The information below sets out our privacy policy in detail. We are committed to providing relevant information and control at the point of collection so that you can make informed decisions about what personal data you choose to share with us.
How we use your personal data
We collect and process information about you only where we have a legal basis for doing so. The legal basis depends on the individual services you use and how you use them. Additional information is provided below, but in general terms we will only collect and use your information where:
- It is necessary for us to provide you with a service, including for support or to protect the safety and security of the services itself.
- It satisfies a legitimate interest, which is not overridden by your data protection interests (such as for research and development).
- You have given us consent to do so for a specific purpose.
- We need to process your data to comply with a legal obligation.
This could include for:
- Communicating with journal readers, conference participants and others in our industry who have an interest in our activities;
- Providing benefits and services to journal readers, conference participants and others in our industry;
- Enabling us to achieve our strategic and operational goals.
- For the purpose of organising our conferences, besides basic contact information, we might need to collect passport numbers. We ask participants to submit a photograph (personal image) and tell us their nationality. Where appropriate, we collect CV-type information (career, education, employment history). Special categories of data are collected to enable us to provide an appropriate service (including, without limitation, specific dietary requirements).
In the case of the AMI Hydropower Foundation, the purpose of collecting and processing of personal data is to further its charitable mission, which includes providing sponsorships.
Please note that we may need to disclose your information to a third party if required by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies), for the purposes of investigating a complaint, or where we have your permission to do so.
We keep your personal data for as long as is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was collected, unless otherwise advised. Data will be destroyed when no longer required. We may also decide to archive some data.
In cases where you have consented to our use of your personal information for a specific purpose you have the right to change your mind at any time. Where we are using your information because we have a legitimate interest to do so, you have the right to object to that use; but in some cases, this might mean you are no longer able to access our services.
Third-Party data processors
Like most businesses we rely on a number of third-party providers to support our day-to-day operations, for example in areas such as online file storage and email delivery. We may also hire third parties to operate, maintain or improve our website and other digital services.
We may also authorise appropriate auditors to process personal data for specific purposes (for example, from time to time, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) to verify distribution statistics for our journal). Its privacy policy can be viewed at: https://www.abc.org.uk/privacy-policy
Some of these service providers will by necessity have access to or be directly involved in processing or storing a subset of the personal information you share with us.
All our third-party data processors have been carefully chosen as service suppliers who also practice responsible data handling. We believe that each has in place appropriate protections to ensure the security of the data we store or process with them and have clear policies for how they treat that data. But if in doubt you should review their individual Privacy Policies.
Amazon Web Services (File storage):
https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/
EmailBlaster UK (Email services):
https://www.emailblasteruk.com/privacy-policy
FileMaker Hosting UK (Hosting & email services):
www.filemaker-hosting.co.uk/privacy-policy
Google (Website analytics):
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
Heart Internet (Hosting & email services):
https://www.heartinternet.uk/terms/heart-internet-privacy-statement
The Pixel Parlour (Digital services development & support):
https://www.pixelparlour.co.uk/about/privacy-and-cookies/
Swiftpage (Email services):
https://www.act.com/en-uk/privacy-policy
Before using or sharing your information with third parties in ways not described here or previously authorised by you, we will provide you with notice and an opportunity to control the further use or disclosure of your personal information.
Transfers outside of the EEA
Under certain circumstances we will transfer your information outside of the European Economic Area. We will only do this with your informed consent, when it is necessary to perform a contract we have with you or where the receiving organisation has adequate safeguards in place – for example certification under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework.
General browsing
Our website is hosted in the UK in a data centre managed by Heart Internet. When you visit our website or access one of the files stored on our web server, information about this request will be automatically stored in our log files to provide usage statistics, enable security features and aid technical troubleshooting. This is on the legal basis of legitimate commercial interests. In these cases, your IP address at the time acts as a unique identifier and is stored along with information about your operating system, browser version and the pages/files you access. These logs are retained on the server for up to 30 days, after which they are automatically deleted. Heart Internet will also record a similar set of data for the purposes of data management and security. This data is retained by them for up to 3 months.
Like most businesses we use Google Analytics (GA) to help understand how our website is being discovered and interacted with and we use this information to help improve the experience for our visitors and make decisions about future development. Google Analytics presents us with aggregate information about the geographic location, device types and operating systems used by our website visitors, but not in a way that personally identifies you. In addition, Google will record your computer’s IP address and set a number of temporary cookies in your browser to help distinguish you as an individual visitor as you move around our site. In the interests of limiting the amount of data Google collects via our site we are using Google’s standard Analytics implementation and have not enabled any additional advertising features, such as remarketing tags, which would tie your usage of our site in with your broader browsing habits. Any user-level data that is associated with Analytics’ cookies are retained for up to 26 months from your last activity on our site, after which it is automatically deleted from Analytics’ servers.
Our website and emails contain a number of links to third party sites. It is important to be aware that these external sites are governed by their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. We cannot be held responsible for personal information that third parties may collect, store and use through their website. The inclusion of a link to an external source should not be understood to be an endorsement of that website, its owners or their products/services. Always check the individual privacy policies of these external sites before you submit any personal data through them.
Cookies
Cookies are temporary files stored in your web browser by a website to help track usage and enable services that rely on a persistent identity. You can control which cookies you accept and remove them at any time by adjusting your browser settings or using the controls built into this site; but it is important to be aware that some cookies are essential and our website may not function as expected without them.
Essential cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our websites and to use some of its features. But you can still block or delete them by changing your browser preferences.
Non-essential cookies
These cookies are used to enhance the performance and functionality of our websites. They are non-essential but without them certain functionality may become unavailable.
- YSC (YouTube) – used to support playback of embedded YouTube videos. Expires at the end of your session.
- VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE (YouTube) – used to support playback of embedded YouTube videos. Expires after 8 months.
- PREF (YouTube) – used to support playback of embedded YouTube videos. Expires after 8 months.
Analytics and customisation cookies
These cookies collect information to help us understand how our website is being used or customise it in order to enhance your experience.
- _ga (Google Analytics) – used to distinguish between users. Expires after 2 years.
- _gat (Google Analytics) – used to distinguish between users. Expires after 24 hours.
- _gid – (Google Analytics) – used to throttle the request rate. Expires after 1 minute.
Advertising cookies
These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests.
Contacting us by email
When you send us an email, either to one of the addresses displayed on our website or an individual member of staff, we will collect your email address and any other information you provide within your email.
Kerio Email is our email service provider, so any emails you send us might be stored on its servers.
The information you provide will only be processed in relation to the purpose of your correspondence with us. We have no fixed retention period for email correspondence, but we are committed to only storing your data for no longer than is necessary to serve our legitimate interests of record keeping or to perform a contract we have entered into with you.
Webinars
When you use our website to register to attend or watch on-demand one of our online webinars the information we collect is used to setup your access and send any supporting information. We will collect your:
- Full name
- Email address
- Company name (if relevant)
- Country
This information will also be shared with the webinar host to allow them to contact you with follow-up information about the session, including details of any products/services featured. Details of these third parties will be included in the FAQs section of the webinar registration page.
Where a webinar is being hosted by one of our partners and registration is through a their website or another third party, your access will be governed by their privacy policy and any terms and conditions they set out.
Industry Guide enquiries
When you submit an Industry Guide listing request through our website the information you provide is sent to us via email and a temporary copy stored by the website. We only collect the information needed to respond to your listing request and it will only be used for this purpose. This inlcudes your organisation/company name, email address, phone number and contact name. We have no fixed retention period for email correspondence, but we are committed to holding your data for no longer than is necessary to serve our legitimate interests of record keeping or to perform a contract we have entered into with you.
Additionally our website will log your IP address and the time of your submission to fullfill our obligations under data protection legislation to maintain appropriate records and to help identify and filter potential spam submissions. This web-based information will only be held for up to 3 months at which point it is permanently deleted.
Children under 16
Our website and services are not for use by children under 16 years and we will not knowingly collect or use the personal data of children. (The only exception is if a child will attend a conference as an accompanying person of a registered participant.) If you are under the age of 16 please do not provide any personal data even if prompted to do so.
Personal Data breaches
A breach is considered any loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data. We are committed to disclosing any personal data breaches that might adversely affect your rights and freedoms without undue delay so that you can take appropriate action. Any notifiable breaches will also be reported to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hrs. This includes breaches affecting the third-party services identified in this privacy policy, where personal data is being held on our behalf.
Questions & access requests
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives you the right to know what personal data we hold, to have it updated if it is inaccurate or removed entirely if you no longer consent to our use of it. We will endeavour to respond to any such requests within one month confirming receipt and outlining what follow-up actions will be taken and when.
We also welcome questions about our Privacy Policy and these or any access requests should be sent to: data@hydropower-dams.com
Aqua-Media International Ltd
Attn. Data Protection Representative
PO Box 285
Wallington
Surrey
SM6 6AN
United Kingdom
If we are unable to resolve a complaint to your satisfaction, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, United Kingdom (on 030 31231113 or via email).
Policy changes
Any updates we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be published on this page on our website, and significant changes noted below.
If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose not covered by this Privacy Policy, then we will provide you with a new notice explaining this new use prior to commencing the processing and setting out the relevant purposes and processing conditions.
Please check regularly to keep informed of updates to this Privacy Policy as you will be deemed to have accepted any changes if you continue to use our website after an update has been posted.
2nd March 2022 – Webinars section added detailing how information collected during registration is handled.
13th July 2021 – Information added about how data captured through the new Industry Guide enquiry form is handled.
27th July 2018 – Updated privacy statement published to reflect the launch of the new website, which changes to third-party service providers and cookies, plus additional detail included in all other areas.
