This Privacy Policy explains how Cortex Collective Limited collects, uses, stores, and protects your personal information when you visit and interact with this website.
1. Introduction
This website is operated by Cortex Collective Limited (company number 16436947), a company registered in England and Wales with its registered office at 37-38 Market Street, Ferryhill, Durham, England, DL17 8JH. In this policy, "we", "us", and "our" refer to Cortex Collective Limited, and we are the data controller responsible for your personal information.
We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your personal data in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018, and other applicable privacy laws.
2. Information we collect
We may collect and process the following types of personal information:
- Details you provide through our contact form, such as your name, email address, company, and message.
- Details you provide through our creator application form, such as your name, email address, profession, social handle, primary platform, and location.
- Details you provide when you join our newsletter, The Cortex, such as your name, email address, the platform you post on and your handle there, the size of your following, your niche, how you describe yourself as a creator, and your role or credential.
- A record of your consent to receive the newsletter, including when you gave it and when you confirmed your email address.
- Technical information such as IP address, browser type, operating system, and device information, collected automatically when you visit the site.
- Anonymous, aggregate usage data collected through our cookieless analytics, such as which pages are viewed and the general region a visit comes from.
The website is open to a general audience. Our creator opportunities and applications are intended for individuals aged 18 or over, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18.
3. How we use your information
We may use your personal information to:
- Respond to your enquiries and provide the information or services you request.
- Review and respond to creator applications.
- Send you our newsletter, The Cortex, if you have joined it.
- Consider you for brand opportunities that may suit you, if you have joined our newsletter.
- Improve the performance, functionality, and security of our website.
- Understand general website usage through anonymous analytics.
- Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
We send one marketing email, our newsletter The Cortex. It goes out roughly once a fortnight to people who have asked for it, and we may occasionally send a one off email where there is something worth telling you. We only send it to you if you joined and then confirmed your email address, and you can unsubscribe from any email with one click.
If you join the newsletter, we may also contact you about a brand opportunity that looks like a fit for you. That is a may, not a promise. Joining does not mean we will have work for you, and we do not share your details with a brand without asking you first.
We do not use your information for anything else, and we do not sell it.
4. Lawful basis for processing
We process personal data only where we have a lawful basis under UK GDPR. Depending on the situation, this includes:
- Our legitimate interests, such as responding to your enquiries, reviewing creator applications, and operating and improving our business, where these are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. This is our main basis for handling the details you submit through our forms.
- Your consent, which is the basis on which we send you the newsletter and consider you for brand opportunities. You give it by joining and confirming your email address, and you can withdraw it at any time by unsubscribing, without giving a reason. Withdrawing does not affect anything we did before you withdrew.
- Compliance with a legal obligation, where the law requires us to process or retain data.
5. Data sharing
We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties.
We share information only with trusted service providers who help us operate our website and respond to you, and only so far as necessary for them to provide their service to us.
Our contact and creator application forms are handled by Formspree (Formspree, Inc.), a form-processing provider based in the United States. When you submit a form, the details you enter (such as your name, email address, company, and message) are transmitted to and stored on Formspree's servers in the United States so that we can receive and respond to you. Because this involves transferring your data outside the UK, we rely on the appropriate safeguards required by UK data protection law, and Formspree commits to providing appropriate protection for the information it handles on our behalf. Your information is transmitted only when you choose to submit a form; we do not capture what you type beforehand. You can review Formspree's privacy practices at formspree.io/legal/privacy-policy.
Our newsletter is run on beehiiv (beehiiv, Inc.), a newsletter platform based in the United States. If you join The Cortex, beehiiv holds your email address, the details you gave when joining, and the record of your consent, and it sends the emails on our behalf. We also keep a copy of your record in Google Sheets (Google LLC) so we can manage the list. Both involve transferring your data outside the UK, and we rely on the appropriate safeguards required by UK data protection law. You can review beehiiv's privacy practices at beehiiv.com/privacy.
We may also disclose information where required by law or to protect our legal rights.
6. Data security
We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard personal information against unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.
Whilst we take reasonable precautions, no method of internet transmission or electronic storage can be guaranteed as completely secure.
7. Data retention
We retain personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected. Enquiry and creator application details are generally kept for up to 24 months, unless we are required to keep them for longer to meet legal, accounting, or reporting obligations, after which they are securely deleted.
Newsletter subscriber records are kept for as long as you are subscribed, and for up to 24 months after you unsubscribe or stop opening our emails, after which we review the record and delete it if there is no reason to keep it.
8. Your rights
Under applicable data protection legislation, you may have the right to:
- Request access to your personal data.
- Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information.
- Request erasure of your personal data.
- Object to or restrict certain processing activities.
- Request transfer of your personal data.
- Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
If you receive our newsletter, every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. One click, no questions asked. You can also reply and ask us to remove you.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details below. We will deal with your request within one month. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection, at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.
9. Cookies and analytics
This website does not use tracking or advertising cookies. We use Plausible Analytics, a privacy-friendly, cookieless analytics tool, to count visits and understand general usage, such as which pages are viewed and roughly where visitors come from. Plausible does not use cookies, does not store anything on your device, and does not collect personal data that identifies you.
Our website is hosted by Netlify, which may process limited technical data, such as IP addresses in standard server logs, as part of delivering the site to you.
10. Third-party services
We rely on the following third-party providers to operate this website. These providers act as our data processors, meaning they process personal data only on our behalf and on our instructions, and each in accordance with its own privacy policy:
- Formspree, which processes contact and creator application form submissions.
- beehiiv, which runs our newsletter signup, sends the newsletter, and holds the subscription and consent record.
- Google, where we store a copy of newsletter subscriber records in Google Sheets.
- Plausible Analytics, which provides cookieless visitor statistics.
- Netlify, which hosts the website.
Our website may also link to external sites and social media platforms. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party websites or services you interact with.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in legal requirements, business practices, or website functionality. Any updates will be published on this page.
12. Contact us
For questions about this policy or how we handle your information, or to exercise any of your rights, please contact us:
Cortex Collective Limited
37-38 Market Street, Ferryhill, Durham, England, DL17 8JH
Company number 16436947
Email: admin@cortexca.com