English Radio News (Known as ERN) is owned by The Fourway Media Group and any information you provide about yourself to The Fourway Media Group will only be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy Statement, detailed below. Please note, the Privacy Policy Statement does not apply to websites or text services operated by third parties.

We collect information from you for a number of reasons, for example…

• To provide personalised services for our individual users.
• To enable us to send out editorial content that you’ve requested.
• To enable us to send out promotions in which we think you will be interested.
• To help us to improve the services we offer.
• To use anonymous, aggregated details about our users to sell appropriate advertising space on our websites and other properties (for example, we may need to tell advertisers what proportion of the visitors to our websites are female), collect promotional and marketing information, and to pass on offers to our users, and does not mean sharing an individual’s details with an advertiser.

Our Aims

1. We are fully committed to protecting your privacy and will respect your privacy in terms of email, mobile and any other details you submit to us via any media.
2. We will not collect personally identifying information except with your specific knowledge and consent.
3. We will work with our suppliers to ensure that your data is protected with high quality, reliable and secure technology.
4. We follow strict security procedures set out in GDPR legistaltion in respect of the storage and disclosure of information given by you via our websites, your mobile or via any other media.

Collection of Information

5. We collect information on our users through cookies on websites, interactions with both our websites and our text services and via other media, such as postal registrations to club membership.
6. The information we need depends on how you are interacting with our website, text or otherwise but could include an email address, a password, age, gender and postcode and a mobile telephone number although additional information may also be requested. We may ask further or different questions for different services, including competitions. Unless stated, all questions are compulsory. We may also ask some further, voluntary questions so we can gain a clearer understanding of our users. Your responses help us to sell appropriate advertising space and to alert you to information we think may be of interest to you and so improve the offering we can make to users. They also enable us to personalise services for our users, for example through club membership. We do not share this information with third parties unless you have specifically consented to this.
7. If you are registered you may update your personal information at any time via the “My Details” page for web users, where registration is available on the site. You can get to the “My Details Page” from most pages on the website if you are logged-on. If you are a text user then the text messages you receive from us will alert you to options for unsubscription and/ or change of details – please follow these messages.
8. When you interact with us via either online or text services you may be invited to register with us. Such registration is your choice. Your decision to register or otherwise will not have any effect on the outcome of any competition.

GDPR

9. We will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely in accordance with GDPR and its relevant subordinate legislation and we will comply with the principles set out in that Regulation. When you supply any personal information to us we will meet our legal obligations towards you in the way that we deal with that information. In accordance with the data protection principles we have to collect the information fairly and to let you know how we will use it (see paragraphs 10 – 14) and whether we will pass the information on to anyone else. We will not supply your personal information to third parties without your express prior consent or where required by law. We will ensure that any information will be held only as long as is necessary to ensure that our service runs smoothly. We use up to date industry procedures to keep personal data as safe and secure as possible and to protect against loss, unauthorised disclosure or access.

Use of Information

10. Where you have submitted personal information about yourself we may from time to time provide you by e-mail, mail, text or otherwise with an update of information about our services and products. You may “opt out” by clicking on unsubscribe links provided in subsequent communications.
11. You should be aware that any information you post in our public areas on our websites, such as message boards, may be seen, collected and used by others, and may result in unsolicited messages from other users or parties. Alas, we can’t control this; you post at your own risk.
12. We will e-mail, mail, text or otherwise, as appropriate, occasionally with information about your registration and/or your club membership if you have joined one.
13. Sometimes you will provide us with data that doesn’t reveal your personal identity. We may use this sort of information for editorial marketing and promotion purposes and occasionally for other purposes.
14. Any research carried out via our websites or through text message to your mobile is for the exclusive use of The Fourway Media Group unless specifically stated at the time of completion. However, please note that “pooled” responses to questions may be shared with our partner organisations.

Advertisers, Sponsors and Associates

15. Where we collect registration information from you, we will only contact you ourselves.
16. We will not sell, trade, rent or pass on any individual’s user details (including your email address and/ or mobile telephone number) unless we have your prior consent. With your permission we will only share the information with carefully chosen, reputable and trustworthy third parties.
17. We will never share your personally identifying information with a third party, including an advertiser, without your explicit permission. Similarly, you will receive unsolicited mail or texts only from The Fourway Media Group and associated companies only if you have agreed to this.
18. A few special cases are worth noting: From time to time we may run competitions or request material we can publish; to participate, you must usually supply us with your identity which you agree to have publicly associated with your submission. The exact rules vary from case to case, and will be noted clearly on the relevant pages. Your participation will always be voluntary and knowing.
19. Otherwise, we will only share anonymous aggregate statistics about our users, sales and traffic patterns with our advertisers. Whilst your individual information is protected as outlined above, we reserve the right to use aggregated, anonymous data about our users as a group whether this is in connection with either web or text users. For example, we might report to potential advertisers that a certain percentage of our users are interested in its products, based on information requests.
20. We reserve the right to access and disclose individually identifiable information to comply with applicable laws and lawful government requests, to operate our systems properly and to protect both ourselves and our users.
21. We may provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to reputable third-party vendors, but these statistics will include no personally identifying information.
22. The Fourway Media Group follow the relevant legal requirements and uses all reasonable precautions to ensure only responsible third parties see the information, however we are not responsible for any breach of security or any actions of any third parties who receive the information

We reserve the right to change our privacy policy and all changes will be posted here. Where the changes are significant, we may also choose to email all our registered users with the new details.