Here you can find out how we collect, use and protect your personal information, as well as how to contact us if you would like to ask a question or submit a request to exercise one of your data protection rights. Our full Privacy Notice is available below.
If you don’t want to read the full Notice, but you would still like to understand how we collect and handle your information, you can read more about your situation in the next section.
We sell our software to business customers to enable them to diagnose the causes of poor digital quality. To do that, our software does not monitor what you do on your device. It does not have visibility of your activity at all. Instead, the Digital User takes measurements in the background of your device. This information is sent to our analytical powerhouse - the Analytics Cloud. This information is then used to identify the elements of the digital supply chain that are causing problems. Our customers will usually install our software on multiple devices across their organisation to make the most of the analytics we provide.
To install our software on your device, your employer may collect information about your device and the network on which it is located, including, but not limited to, the IP address, subnet address, gateway IP address and hostname. Additionally, your employer may choose to add additional information about you, such as a Digital User Description which is a free-text description used to uniquely identify your device.
The measurement data collected by the Digital User is then used to pinpoint the sources of problems in the digital supply chain. The Digital User will collect a basic geo-location of your device, down to your nearest city. We will use the measurement data internally for testing, research, development and to provide support to our customers and the relevant parties involved.
We will only retain the information about you for as long as there is a business need. Please contact your employer to find out more, as they are responsible for determining for how long your information will be kept. You should also contact your employer to make a request to exercise your data protection rights.
Like any other website on the Internet, we collect some data about our visitors. This includes information about how you reached us, what parts of our Website you visited, how much time you spent on the Website, as well as your IP address, device identification number and browser type. We will use this information to improve our visitor’s experience of our Website, as well as to create better, more engaging content. The information collected in this way will not be used to uniquely identify you.
In the past, we offered our analytics services directly to consumers - Actual Home. In May 2018, we deleted all Actual Home user data collected when users registered their accounts, as well as all the measurement data gathered by the Digital Users they installed. Therefore, we no longer store any personal information about Actual Home users, such as names, email addresses, DU locations, phone numbers, information about users’ broadband providers and IP addresses. As a result of the deletion, we will not be able to fulfil any subject access requests in relation to personal data of former Actual Home users, as we no longer hold this data.
We use the information you provide to us in your job application to assess your suitability for the role. We will also keep a record of any information you decide to disclose to us throughout the application process.
We will hold your information for 12 months after your initial application, so that we can contact you about possible openings, as well as to comply with legal requirements. You can ask us to delete your information at any point. You can refer to the full Privacy Notice below for more information.
Actual Experience plc is a UK incorporated company, with registered number 06838738 at Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, Somerset, BA1 1UA. In this notice, we refer to Actual Experience plc and our affiliate Actual Experience Inc. as Actual Experience, “we” or “us”.
Data privacy is an important priority for us. We recognise the importance of protecting your privacy and data protection rights and we provide this Privacy Notice (“Privacy Notice”) to explain how your information is collected, used and disclosed by us. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you have a right to be informed of how and why your personal data is being processed. Therefore, below we provide the information required by GDPR, including details of what personal data we collect about you, how and why we use it.
Please read the below Privacy Notice to understand how we handle your personal information and what rights you have in respect to that information.
This Privacy Notice applies to information collected when you:
At Actual Experience, we enable Service Providers and their Enterprise customers to understand the correlation between a user’s experience of a digital journey and any bad behaviour amongst the many businesses, technologies, networks, data centres and applications involved in the delivery of that digital journey.
Developed from over 10 years of scientific research, our analytics-as-a-service requires no integration. We analyse digital journeys by taking measurements of the businesses, technologies, networks, data centres and applications involved in a digital journey. These are sent to our Analytics Cloud, where we provide actionable evidence to our customers, enabling them to manage and improve their user’s experience.
Using our unique approach to analysing a digital journey enables our customers to improve customer satisfaction, drive up the productivity of their staff, increase revenue and brand reputation from loyal customers and ultimately deliver success for their business.
Before a digital product reaches the end user, it passes through various points. The journey from the content provider to the end destination is referred to as the “digital supply chain”. Our small software program, the “Digital User”, monitors the performance of this digital supply chain from the user’s perspective. It analyses the providers, networks, IT infrastructure and applications that underpin the delivery of digital products and services, to then identify the underlying issues. The Digital User can be installed on a variety of different devices.
To assess digital performance, our software does not monitor what you do on your device. It does not have visibility of your activity at all. Instead, the Digital User autonomously takes small measurements in the background of your device. This information is sent to our analytical powerhouse - the Analytics Cloud. It is then gathered and analysed to pinpoint which elements of the digital supply chain are causing the problems you are experiencing. In a typical organisation, our software is installed on multiple devices, so that we can provide meaningful reporting about the digital experience of end users.
We are an analytics-as-a-service company, which means we provide analytics services to our customers. We need to collect some personal information to provide our services to our customers. How your data is being used is determined in the specific contract we have with our customer.
If you are a user of our software and want to learn more about how your information is being used, you can contact your employer, who in most cases will be the data controller of your personal data. On some occasions a customer contract will specify that we are the data controller or a joint data controller. In this case, you should also contact your employer to find out more. If you prefer to contact us anyway, our contact information is provided in the Contacting us section of this Notice.
Apart from our core business activity, like any other business we also carry out other activities, such as recruitment, marketing and sales. When we collect information in relation to these activities, we are the data controller. We are also the data controller of the personal information we collect about you when you access our Websites or otherwise directly interact with us.
To be able to function as a business, we collect and process certain categories of personal data, as outlined in the below section.
During installation of a Digital User, your employer may collect information about your device and the network on which it is located, including, but not limited to, the IP address, subnet address, gateway IP address and hostname. Additionally, your employer may choose to add additional information about you, such as a Digital User Description which is a free-text description used to uniquely identify your device. Please contact your employer to find out more about what information about you is provided during the installation process.
When our software – the Digital User – runs in the background of your device, it collects measurement data. This data is then sent to the Analytics Cloud where it is analysed to provide insights about the experience of a digital product or a service. In addition to the information provided to us during the installation process, the Digital User collects the following personal information as part of its measurements: the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your device on which it is installed, the IP address used to connect the device to the Internet, if different, and information on whether the device has network connectivity. We also collect geo-location information, which represents the general geographical area your device is located down to the nearest city. This information is shown as ‘At home’ or ‘In the office’, where we can see how your experience changes in those locations.
To access our digital quality analytics service, usually referred to as Actual Work, you need an email address to form your unique username, as well as a password. We will keep a record of all your activities on the service, such as the time and date of your logins, how much time you spent on the page, what you clicked on, your IP address, your location and a unique ID associated with your account. The information gathered could be traced back to your account and email address, as it enables us to operate the service and improve it according to the needs of our customers.
When you’re using our software, you may choose to share some additional information with us, including sensitive personal information. This may happen for instance when you communicate with us, raise queries or provide feedback about your experience using our service to allow us to swiftly deploy our software, and then to administer your use of our product and services.
Billing and financial reporting purposes. From our business customers, we may collect additional billing information and any other information needed to complete the financial transactions between us and the customer.
Communicating with us as a business customer. When you have an established business relationship with us, we will hold the following information about you: your name, company, job title, email address, and in some cases your phone number and billing information if needed for invoices and financial reporting. If you choose to share any other information with us while you have a business relationship with us, including sensitive personal information, we reserve the right to retain this information.
When applying for a position with us, you will share your personal information with us as part of the application process. You can refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more details.
Information about your visit. Similar to most websites on the Internet, we automatically collect some information about your visit, such as information on how you reached us, which pages on our domain you visited, how long you spent on the Website, as well as other information on your page interactions. We will also collect more technical information, such as your IP address, device identification numbers, browser type, your Internet service provider, the date and time of visit, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, as well as your location and the URL of the website you came from and the next the URL of the next website you visit after you leave our Website. This data helps us better understand your experience of our Website and analyse aggregate trends, so that we can improve our Website, services and marketing efforts. We will not use this information to uniquely identify you.
Cookies. Our Websites use cookies and similar tracking technologies to help us improve your experience when visiting our Sites. We also use the aggregated information about our visitors to improve our Sites. More information about cookies and other technologies we use can be found in our Cookies Notice.
When you engage with us on social media. We may collect information about our employees, customers and any other individuals who engage with Actual Experience on our social media channels, such as Twitter® and LinkedIn®.
We may place social media features on our Website, such as widgets or plugins. These features may gather the information about your IP address and details of pages you are visiting and place a cookie on your device to improve your experience of the Website. We may also link the information about your social media account to your existing customer account to be able to better engage with you on social media.
We will collect and process information that individuals have provided to us by making the information public. We may use the information individuals made publicly available on social media to conduct outbound marketing activities, design marketing and advertising campaigns, as well as reach out to prospective customers and other relevant professionals. In doing so, we comply with the applicable law and Terms and Conditions of the services we are using. Please refer to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policies of the specific services to understand how your data is handled and how you can change your privacy preferences.
Third-parties. We may receive information about you from third parties we work with, such as business partners, consultants, resellers, service providers, recruiters and sub-contractors. We may also combine this with the information we have already collected about you.
When you are using co-branded or re-branded services. On certain occasions, we will work with our customers to offer co-branded services. We may also sell our services to a customer, so that the customer can then offer the services under their brand to their customers. If you are using such a service, authorised personnel within Actual Experience and the involved parties will have access to the personal information collected about you in relation to our product and services. It is the company whose privacy statement is provided within the service who is the data controller responsible for this information.
In some situations, we may need to collect your personal data to meet terms of a contract. If you fail to provide the information we need, we may not be able to perform our contractual duties. As a result, we may be forced to stop providing our product or services to you. When this is the case, we will notify you.
Under the GDPR, there are certain legal reasons, also known as lawful basis, that allow companies to use personal information. In this section we provide an overview of the different lawful bases we rely on for different processing purposes. We may rely on more than one lawful basis when we process your information for a specific purpose. If you wish to, you can contact us to obtain more information about the relevant legal basis applicable to your processing situation.
We have developed our software to help customers identify causes of poor digital quality. To enable our product to operate and us to meet the purpose for which we created it, we need to collect some personal data. We use the information we gather about users to manage and test, develop and improve our product and services, as that is in our best business interest. We also use the information to train employees on the functionalities of our product and services, as well as create a preview of the work our employees have done, for the use of the development team and the relevant stakeholders.
To flourish and grow as a company, we need to manage and administer existing business relationships and form new ones. For instance, when you are a relevant procurement decision-maker for a prospective customer, we may use your personal information we obtained from a legitimate source to get in touch with you to offer you our product or services.
We may also use the information we collect about you when you interact with us for marketing purposes. We will gather this information for instance when you engage with us on social media or through other channels. We will process your information to analyse the effectiveness of our direct marketing, promotional campaigns and advertising, as well as to help us create and communicate more relevant and interesting marketing content. If you are an existing customer, we will use your personal information to communicate the relevant information about our product, services and related offers.
Our Websites and social media channels help us promote our product and services and improve our brand reputation. It is therefore in our business interest to aggregate data about our visitors, so that we can improve their experience and better administer our Websites. We will use this information for troubleshooting, data analysis and maintenance and to create content that better resonates with our customers and other visitors.
Our unique analytics are based on years of research at Queen Mary, University of London. Analysing the measurement data collected by Digital Users installed on end users’ devices helps us conduct scientific research and development activities. The information used includes measurement data collected by Digital Users, as well as the associated account information.
The software and analytics we have developed help our customers uncover issues causing poor digital experience quality. The contracts we have in place with our customers place certain obligations on us. We are committed to delivering certain service levels to our customers and supporting them when they are using our product. Processing personal data also enables us to provide appropriate assistance and training to our customers. Therefore, we will use personal data to:
In some cases, we may need to collect certain information, because we have a legal obligation to do so. For example, employment and financial laws require us to collect certain documentation about our employees and our business. We will also monitor our Website and services against illegal activities, such as unauthorised access.
In some circumstances, we will seek your consent to process personal data. When we market to prospective customers on social media, we will rely on the relevant permissions they have given to the social media services. If you sign up to receive marketing communications from us, we will also rely on your consent.
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it. If we at any point find that we need to use your data for a new purpose that has emerged, we will carefully investigate whether the new purpose is compatible with the purpose for which we have initially collected the data. You can contact us to request more details about why we consider this new purpose to be compatible. As we are committed to complying with the existing data protection regulations, we will get in touch with you to notify you of a new processing purpose whenever we are required by law to do so.
We will only keep the personal information we collected about you for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which we collected it. When determining how long your information should be retained for, we will take into account the nature and sensitivity of the information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised disclosure or use, the purpose for which we collected the information and any applicable legal requirements. Therefore, retention periods will differ for specific processing situations, as shown in the below examples.
When you are an end-user of our software. We will retain information about you for as long as specified in the relevant customer contract. It is the responsibility of your employer to determine whether they will comply with any request you raise concerning the personal data collected about you in relation to our software. When you request the erasure of your data, the information your employer has provided about you during the installation will be deleted. If you can provide information that would allow us to identify the Digital User, or Users when applicable, associated with you, you can also request deletion of the measurement data gathered. If requested by the data controller, we can delete the measurement data gathered by the Digital User, or Users, associated with you.
When you are our customer. We will retain the information about you for the duration of our business relationship to enable us to communicate with you about our product and services and meet any other obligations we have committed ourselves to. When our relationship ends, we will comply with our data retention and erasure duties as stated in our contract.
When you are a job applicant. We will keep your information for 12 months after your initial application, unless you ask us to erase this information earlier.
Apart from the situations outlined above, we will also hold your information to meet the different legal, accounting and reporting obligations we are subject to.
When we work together with our customers. To be able to meet the contractual obligations to our customers, we need to share some information with them. We will share the information collected in relation to your use of our software with them, so that they can use our product to identify the underlying causes of poor digital quality.
When we engage with third-party service providers to help us provide our services. We may share your information with vendors, service providers, subcontractors, or consultants to enable us to smoothly run and improve our services. We would only share information they require to carry out the work we have instructed them to do. We may also share your information with analytics and search engine providers to allow us to improve and optimise our Websites.
When we need to comply with legal requirements. We, as any other company, may be required to disclose or share your information to comply with a legal obligation, to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements to protect the rights, property, or safety of Actual Experience, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with regulators, public authorities, law enforcement agencies, courts, debt collection and tracing agencies, and other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
When you have given us consent. We may disclose your information to any third party you have given us consent to share your information with.
When your data has been anonymised. We may share anonymised or aggregate data with third parties. The information we disclose to them will not directly identify you.
When our circumstances change. If we significantly reorganise our business or assets, for example because of, or in preparation to, a sale, merger, buyout or insolvency, we may disclose your information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets and their advisers.
We are an EEA-based company, so the majority of our operations take place in the EEA.
Our customers can determine where the personal data on their Analytics Cloud is hosted. To enable us to meet the needs of our customers, we may transfer personal information between your country of residence and the location where our staff is based for billing, invoicing, financial reporting and support purposes. We take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that information transferred in this way is handled securely and in compliance with GDPR. We have measures in place which ensure an adequate level of protection of your personal data when it is transferred outside the European Economic Area as required by the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and the UK Data Protection Bill 2017.
We do not use automated decision-making for any decisions about individuals.
All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Where you are our customer and we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our Sites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.
We use commercially reasonable business and technical practices to secure our systems. We have implemented security policies, rules, and other technical measures to protect the personal data that we have under our control from unauthorised access, improper use or disclosure, unauthorised modification, and unlawful destruction or accidental loss.
All employees who have access to and are associated with the processing of personal data are obliged to respect the confidentiality of personal data.
Under the GDPR you have the following data protection rights:
Please note that not all of these rights are absolute, and they will not always apply to your particular situation. You can visit the ICO’s Website to find out more about individual rights under the GDPR.
If you are an end-user of our product, you can contact your employer to exercise any of the above rights. If you interact with us directly, for instance because you are our customer, you can make a request directly to us by contacting us at dpo@actual-experience.com.
Please note that before we process your request we may need to ask specific information from you to enable us to confirm your identity.
We have not intended our Websites and services to be used by children under the age of 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you are under 13, please do not give us any personal information. We encourage those who hold parental responsibility to monitor the child’s Internet usage and to help enforce our Privacy Notice by instructing the child never to provide personal data to us without the guardian’s permission. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of 13 has provided personal data to us, please contact us, and we will delete their information from our databases.
We are committed to protecting the privacy of users and visitors to our Websites, and that is why we provide more information about how you can control cookies in our Cookies Notice.
We know that some browsers offer their users an option to opt out of any behavioural advertising - a “do not track” option (DNT). We do not, however, monitor, recognize, or honour any DNT opt-outs or do not track mechanisms, including general web browser “Do Not Track” settings or signals.
Occasionally we may choose to update this Privacy Notice. We may need to edit the content of this Privacy Notice to comply with applicable data protection laws or to reflect a change in our business practices.
We will indicate that changes were made by updating the “Last Updated” date at the top of this Notice. If we introduce any material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify you directly, for instance by sending you a notification or including the information on our homepage.
We are committed to resolving any questions or queries you may have about this Privacy Notice. If you have any questions or concerns, you should first contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO) at dpo@actual-experience.com. The DPO is responsible for ensuring we, as a company, are compliant with the relevant data protection regulation and this Privacy Notice.
If you have any further concerns you have been unable to resolve, under the GDPR you also have the right to complain to the relevant supervisory authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). More information can be found on the ICO’s Website - https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.
By downloading, installing or using our software, as well as by accessing our Websites and otherwise interacting with us, you express that you have read this Privacy Notice.
