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Privacy Notice for Journalists in Meltwater's database

At Meltwater, we know that you care about how your personal data is used and shared, and that is why we are committed to respecting your privacy and to helping you control the data we use, disclose and store (together referred to as “process”). This privacy notice (“Notice”) is applicable for the journalists and content creators (including but not limited to editors, reports, writers, columnists, bloggers, academics, broadcast and podcast hosts) ("Content Creators") included in Meltwater"s Media database. In this Notice you will find information about what personal data we hold about you, how and why we collect it, how we use and share it, and how we protect it. This Notice also includes information about privacy rights that may apply to you, how you can exercise them, explains how you can exercise your preferences to manage the personal data we process about you, and, if for any reason you do not want to be in our database, how to have your personal data deleted.

Who this Notice applies to

This Notice applies to Content Creators whose personal data we obtain from publicly available sources, including Content Creators who create a Meltwater profile, excluding Content Creators residing in Germany whose profiles have been added or updated after April 12th 2018.
As a Content Creator in our database, you also have the ability to review and manage your personal data within our database. You can do this by creating or claiming your profile, which will allow you full control and transparency over the personal data we hold about you. You can also choose which of our Customers you wish to receive outreach from and you also have the ability to remove all your personal data from our database. Please help us give you control over your personal data and have a better look at our service here.

Why do we collect your personal data and how it is used

Meltwater is a global media intelligence company and one of our products, Media Relations platform, enables our customers to identify and connect with Content Creators, distribute relevant outreach to those Content Creators and measure the impact of their outreach. Our customers are interested third parties, i.e., representatives of the PR and / or corporate communications departments of a range of industry verticals who have purchased Meltwater"s Media Relations platform (“Customers”). For further information on whom we share your personal data with, please see the Section “How we share your personal data and with whom”, below.
The Media Relations platform is a database consisting of information (and in particular contact information) relating to Content Creators like you. Our intention is to maintain a database of Content Creators who create any form of content and have the ability to influence the behaviour and opinions of others.
We use your personal data to create a Contact profile for you, which we include in the Media Relations platform. Our Customers can access our database via our online platform where they can view your profile, create media lists, and send outreach to the Content Creators on those lists. In some cases, our customers can also monitor your interaction with the communications that they send you (for example, whether you have opened or read an email sent from our platform). Depending on applicable laws, such monitoring may be subject to you consenting to the deployment of cookies or similar technologies on your device. This is also beneficial for you as it means you receive targeted news and press releases that may be helpful for you when writing your next story. Our primary goal is to facilitate the efficient communication between our Customer and Content Creators.

What personal data we collect

We limit the personal data we collect to personal data that enables our Customers to engage with you in a meaningful way. The personal data we collect includes basic information such as your name and contact details, your job title, public social media profiles, beats you are interested in, and possibly a brief description about your career history.
We only collect personal data that is necessary for the scope of the Media Relations platform. We collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which may include the following:
  • Prefix and name
  • Job title
  • Work address
  • Telephone number
  • Fax number
  • Work email address
  • Personal email address (if provided to us by you)
  • Twitter handle
  • Link to LinkedIn profile
  • Other Social Media handles (Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, WeChat, Weibo, Viadeo, Pinterest)
  • Preferred outreach method (email, Twitter)
  • Beats (i.e. subject matters you have written about)
  • Publication
  • Personal website
  • Working language
  • Link to articles published
  • Brief summary of journalism career based on publicly shared information

How we collect your personal data

All of the personal data we hold about you is obtained from publicly available sources (including public social media profiles and websites and information from articles you may have written), directly from you or, in some cases and to the extent permitted, from your employer.
Prior to it being added to our database, we take steps to verify that your personal data is correct by either contacting you or your employer directly or checking against publicly available information including your social media profile or websites you appear on and news by-lines.
We use reasonable efforts to ensure that the personal data we hold is up to date, and this may involve updating your personal data based on changes you provide to us (when you update your Meltwater profile, or you inform us of relevant changes) or changes you have made on the publicly available sources that we consult. Where you consider that your personal data is incorrect or not up to date, please update your Meltwater profile, or email us at journalists@meltwater.com.

Legal basis for processing your personal data

We process your personal data in order to provide our services to our Customers. The processing is therefore based on our and our Customers’ legitimate business interests. Processing your personal data in this way also benefits you as a Content Creator and also our Customers. You will receive focused content from our Customers, often ahead of general release, giving you material to write about that is relevant to you and your audience. Our Customers are able to communicate more efficiently to Content Creators who are likely to want to hear what they have to say. We consider and balance any potential negative impact on you and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where we believe that our interests or those of our Customers are overridden by any unwarranted adverse impact on you. If at any time you want us to remove you from our database please email us at journalists@meltwater.com and we will process this request promptly.

Tracking

As many of the companies operating in our field we may also monitor your engagement with the content that our Customers send to you through our platform. In most cases, we will conduct this monitoring on the basis of our legitimate interests and those of our Customers, unless where applicable law requires that we obtain your consent for such activities. We do this to inform our Customers which press releases have been read and opened. This may entail placing a cookie on email content that is sent through our platform. We do this to ensure that you only receive press releases that are of relevance to you. If you do not want us to use this cookie, you are free to opt-out at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of the press release.

How we share your personal data and with whom

We may share your personal data with one or all of the following:
  • Customers: our Customers are typically communications and marketing departments within businesses or other institutions, or PR agencies. Our Customers come from all sectors globally. We share information with our Customers for the purposes described above.
  • Internal Third Parties: these include other companies ultimately owned by Meltwater B.V. ("Meltwater Group")
  • External Third Parties:
    • Service providers: we may disclose personal data to our service providers, processors and vendors who process personal data on our behalf to enable us to provide our Services as described in this Policy.
    • Business partners: we may also disclose personal data to third parties in relation to business transfers, when implementing mergers, acquisitions, or transfer of assets.
    • Regulatory bodies: we may disclose your personal data to regulators, government entities and/or law enforcements when required by law or legal procedure.

International Transfers

We may share your personal data with entities within the Meltwater Group. This, as well as transfers to some of the third parties referred to above, may involve transferring your personal data to countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK, including the United States of America, that do not provide for a level of data protection equal to that in EEA or UK. Where your personal data is transferred outside of the EEA or UK, we will do on the basis of an appropriate data protection safeguards, such as data protection clauses approved by the European Commission and / or the UK Government, in order to ensure that there is an adequate level of protection for your personal data. We will make a copy of these safeguards available to you upon request.

How long will we use your personal data?

We will keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Notice and to fulfil our legal obligations. If you have given your consent, we process your personal data for as long as it is required for the purpose disclosed to you at the point of collection or until you withdraw your consent, unless there is another legal ground for the processing.
If you request us to remove your personal data through the unsubscribe and data removal options available in all press releases sent through our platform, your contact profile data and any associated email tracking data (if any) will be deleted within 30 days. We will retain your name and email address on a "do not contact list" to ensure that you will no longer be contacted by us or our Customers through our platform again.

Your Privacy Rights

You have certain rights under applicable data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Your rights may depend on where you reside and the rights granted to data subjects in the local legislation. If you wish to exercise your rights please contact journalists@meltwater.com.
Depending on where you reside your rights include the right to:
  • Access your personal data.
  • Require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data which we hold.
  • Require the erasure of personal data concerning you in certain situations.
  • Receive the personal data concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit such personal data to a third party in certain situations e.g. where our processing is based on your consent or if we have a contract with you.
  • Object in certain situations to our continued processing of your personal data, where the processing is based on our legitimate interests.
  • Otherwise restrict our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.

You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to your local supervisory authority, subject to applicable law. You can find information on the relevant EU data protection authorities here and the UK Information Commissioner"s Office here. You can also lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority, where Meltwater"s main establishment in Europe is located, for data protection issues.

How to contact the controller of your personal data?

Under applicable privacy laws, Meltwater is the controller of your personal data that we obtain and include in our database. Our full contact details for each area are as follows:

EMEA
Meltwater Deutschland GmbH
Jannowitz Centre
Brückenstrasse 6
10179 Berlin,
Germany

Americas
Meltwater News US Inc.
555 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 165
Redwood City 94065, California,
United States

APAC
MNews Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.
Menara UOA Bangsar, Unit A-31-2
No.5 Jalan Bangsar Utama
59000 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia

Note that our Customers will also be controllers of your personal data to the extent they process such personal data for their own purposes.

In addition to this Notice, we encourage our Customers to provide you with their privacy notices when they reach out to you. Please read this Notice and those of our Customers’ to understand how your personal data is processed and how you can exercise your privacy rights.

Support

If at any time you have any questions about this Notice or the way we use your personal data please contact our Support team at journalists@meltwater.com