Privacy and confidentiality policies

Vigilant Research operates in a sector where transparency and disclosure have to be balanced against the need to stay one step ahead of those who would do people harm. Not everything that the police or agencies do can ever be made public. Our guiding principle is to engage as a trusted partner with police and justice communities, and we take our responsibilities as a publisher very seriously. As researchers and analysts, we have some robust measures in place to ensure that our work protects confidential or sensitive information.

The full Digital Policing Review report and similar projects will be restricted to police, government and industry partner readers. For the time being, though, commentary pieces on this website will be freely available. As a rule, we will double-check with our sources whether they see any potential threat in the public disclosure of specific facts which we view as potentially sensitive.

Our use of notes from research conversations are guided by a version of the Chatham House Rule, with additional safeguards. We will never attribute a statement to any individual or identifiable group. We will never report that a conversation has taken place. We will also make every effort, when a fact or insight is shared, to elicit the information from a second trusted source. This ensures that our findings are robust, that the source of the information cannot be identified, and that the information shared can be reasonably treated as common knowledge. It also offers an extra opportunity to check with our interviewees that they see no potential harm from disclosure.

If you have any questions about how we handle these issues, please do get in touch.

The policy below governs the privacy of visitors to www.vigilantresearch.com and all other sites operated by Vigilant Media Ltd.

The policy sets out the different areas where user privacy is concerned and outlines the obligations and requirements of the users, the website and website owners. The way this website processes, stores and protects user data and information will also be detailed within this policy.

The website

This website and its owners take a proactive approach to user privacy and ensure that necessary steps are taken to protect the privacy of its users. This website complies with all UK national laws and requirements for user privacy.

Use of cookies

This website is built on the WordPress publishing platform, and either the website owner or the publishing platform provider may use cookies to improve the user’s experience while visiting the website. Cookies are small files saved to the user’s device that track, save and store information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server, to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website.

Where applicable the publishing platform uses a cookie control system allowing users on their first visit to the website to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their device. This complies with recent legislation requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user’s device.

Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website onto their device’s hard drive they should take necessary steps within their web browser’s security settings to block all cookies from this website and its external serving vendors.

This website may use tracking software to monitor its visitors and understand how they use it. The software will save a cookie to your computer’s hard drive in order to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the website, but will not store, save or collect personal information.

Other cookies may be stored to your computer’s hard drive by external vendors when this website uses referral programs, sponsored links or adverts. Such cookies are used for conversion and referral tracking and typically expire after 30 days, though some may take longer. No personal information is stored, saved or collected.

Contact and communication

Users contacting this website and/or its owners do so at their own discretion and provide any such personal details requested at their own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time it is no longer required or has no use, as detailed in the Data Protection Act 1998. Every effort has been made to ensure a safe and secure form-to-email submission process but we advise users using such form-to-email processes that they do so at their own risk.

This website and its owners may use any information submitted to provide you with access to copyright and protected information products, including market intelligence reports. They may also use the information in order to tell you more about the products and services they offer or to assist you in answering any questions or queries you may have submitted. This includes using your details to subscribe you to any email newsletter program the website operates but only if this was made clear to you and your express permission was granted when submitting any form-to-email process, or whereby you the consumer have previously purchased from or enquired about purchasing from the company a product or service that the email newsletter relates to. Your details are not passed on to any third parties, but the website owners may contact you on their behalf.

Email newsletters

This website may operate an email newsletter program, used to inform subscribers about news and research, but also in some cases to promote products and services supplied or endorsed by this website. Users can subscribe through an online automated process should they wish to do so, but do this at their own discretion. Some subscriptions may be manually processed through prior written agreement with the user.

Subscriptions are taken in compliance with UK “spam” laws detailed in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. All personal details relating to subscriptions are held securely and in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. No personal details are passed on to third parties nor shared with companies/people outside of the company that operates this website. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 you may request a copy of personal information held about you by this website’s email newsletter program. A small fee will be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write to the business address at the bottom of this policy.

Email marketing campaigns published by this website or its owners may contain tracking facilities within the actual email. Subscriber activity may be tracked and stored in a database for future analysis and evaluation. Such tracked activity may include, but may not be limited to: the opening of emails, forwarding of emails, the clicking of links within the email content, times, dates and frequency of activity.

This information is used to refine future email campaigns and supply users with more relevant content based on their activity.

In compliance with UK “spam” laws and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 subscribers are given the opportunity to unsubscribe at any time through an automated system. This process is detailed at the footer of each email campaign. If an automated un-subscription system is unavailable clear instructions on how to unsubscribe will be detailed instead.

External links

Although the owners of this website intend to include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised to adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website. (External links are clickable text / banner / image links to other websites, eg bluelight.gov.uk or content.met.police.uk)

The owners of this website cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite their best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Adverts and sponsored links

This website may contain sponsored links and adverts. These will typically be served through our advertising partners, which in turn may have detailed privacy policies relating directly to the adverts they serve.

Clicking on any such adverts will send you to the advertiser’s website through a referral program which may use cookies and will track the number of referrals sent from this website. This may include the use of cookies which may in turn be saved on your computer’s hard drive. Users should therefore note that they click on sponsored external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Social media platforms

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate on are subject to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies associated with each social media platform respectively.

Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate or engage upon them with due care and caution in regard to their own privacy and personal details.

This website may use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.

Shortened links in social media

This website and its owners through their social media platform accounts may share web links to relevant web pages. By default some social media platforms shorten lengthy web addresses.

Users are advised to use caution and good judgement before clicking any shortened URLs published on social media platforms by this website and its owners. Despite the best efforts to ensure only genuine URLs are published, many social media platforms are prone to spam and hacking and therefore this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any shortened links.