Privacy Policy, Cookies & Advertising

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Version 1.0 Effective 25th May 2018

This Privacy, Cookie & Advertising Policy describes how and when Rocket Sports Internet Limited ("Rocket") collects, uses, and shares your information when you use any of Rocket's web properties (the "Services"), which include, but are not limited to, benchwarmers.ie, caughtoffside.com, celticshorts.com, chelsea.news, cultofcalcio.com, empireofthekop.com, esteemedkompany.com, football-espana.net, football-italia.net, guerillacricket.com, justarsenal.com, juvefc.com, manunitedzone.com, milantalk.com, psgtalk.com, sempreinter.com, sempremilan.com, sempremilan.it, sheffunitedway.co.uk, strettynews.com, talkchelsea.net, theboyhotspur.com, thecelticstar.com, and thelaziali.com.

Personally Identifiable Information

Rocket does not collect any direct personally identifiable information ("PII") such as your name, address, email address, phone number, age, gender, or social media account details.

Anonymous Identifiers

Rocket collects statistical information about visitors to the Services, including which pages are visited and when they are visited. Information recorded may include your IP address, browser type, operating system, the referring web page, pages visited, location, your mobile carrier, device and application IDs, and search terms. This information is aggregated for statistical purposes, and is never connected to any PII and remains anonymous. This analysis is provided and managed by Google Analytics. Any statistical information collected via Google Analytics for these purposes is not shared outside of this system.

When you browse through our websites or use our mobile applications and when you enter your email address on these (either to log in, or to sign up to a newsletter, or similar) we may share personal or other information that we collect from you, such as your email address (in hashed, pseudonymous form), IP address, your mobile advertising ID or information about your browser or operating system, with our partner LiveRamp, Inc. and its group companies, acting as joint controllers. LiveRamp uses this information to create an online identification code for the purpose of recognising you on your devices. This code does not contain any of your identifiable personal data and will not be used by LiveRamp to re-identify you. We place this code in our first party cookie or use a LiveRamp cookie and allow it to be used for online and cross-channel advertising. It may be shared with our advertising partners and other third-party advertising companies globally for the purpose of enabling interest-based content or targeted advertising throughout your online experience (e.g., web, email, connected devices, and in-app, etc). These third parties may in turn use this code to link demographic or interest-based information you have provided in your interactions with them. Detailed information on LiveRamp's data processing activities is available in LiveRamp's privacy policy and opt-out here. You have the right to withdraw your consent or opt-out to the processing of your personal data at any time.

Legitimate Interest

Under the data protection laws entering in to force in Europe in 2018 there are a number of justifications that websites can use for lawfully collecting and processing information about their visitors. One such justification is named "Legitimate Interest" and, broadly, means that websites can process visitor information if they have a genuine and legitimate reason, and are not harming any individuals' rights and interests.

Our goal at Rocket is to provide a high quality free sports news service. To help keep this service free we provide our advertising partners with anonymised data about visitors to our websites, such that these partners may target their promotional messages more appropriately to the most relevant audiences. Without this anonymised data these partners would pay significantly less to promote their goods and services, and our service would not be sustainable.

We believe that providing this anonymised data, in a way which does not harm any of your rights or interests, is in our legitimate interest in continuing to provide our free news service.

Social & Sharing Platforms

Rocket uses code provided by various social media & sharing platforms to provide a number of features and enhancements, as outlined below. At no time does Rocket store, process or receive any information from these services about you or your account(s) with them. These third-party service providers may use cookies and other technologies to collect information about your use of our Services and other websites and services, including your IP address, device ID, and pages viewed.

  • Twitter, Instagram and YouTube enhance our articles by allowing us to display content from their users directly
  • Facebook and Disqus provide our comments feature and allows discussion on individual articles
  • Shareaholic provides a simple means for you to share our articles on many popular social platforms
  • OneSignal allows visitors to register for notifications about major news stories via their web browser

Image Use

Rocket uses images provided by the following image agencies:

Advertising

Rocket displays advertising from a variety of partners in order to fund its activities. These partners may use cookies or other means to target their adverts based on a variety of criteria, such as the country you are in (determined by your device's settings or IP address), the type of device you are using, and which other websites or online properties you have visited in the past. At no point does Rocket provide any advertisers with any PII, nor do we receive any data from them.

Rocket also provides advertisers with sponsored articles and links from time-to-time. It should be immediately obvious where this is the case because of the topics involved, the calls-to-action and the outbound links that typically appear in such content. Any such advertorial or paid-for content sold on the service is subject to a maximum 12 month term and may be removed or altered subject to, or to conform to, requirements from the Advertising Standards Authority, Google or similar such agency, body or company that sets standards for this type of marketing, which will be reviewed from time-to-time or 12 months from the publishing date of any such material. This clause, these terms of service and the need to conform to standards set by authorities (e.g. - the Advertising Standards Authority, etc..) or Internet intermediaries (e.g. - Google, Facebook, etc..) take precedence over any other agreement, verbal or written, between Rocket and any relevant advertiser.

All or partial advertising on this Website or App is managed by Playwire LLC. If Playwire publisher advertising services are used, Playwire LLC may collect and use certain aggregated and anonymized data for advertising purposes. To learn more about the types of data collected, how data is used and your choices as a user, please visit https://www.playwire.com/privacy-policy.

You may change your consent preference as regards cookies used for advertising purposes.

Cookies

Like many websites, we use "cookie" technology to collect additional website usage data and to improve our Services, but we do not explicitly require cookies for many parts of our Services. A cookie is a small data file that is transferred to your computer's hard disk. Rocket may use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how you interact with our Services, to monitor aggregate usage by our users and web traffic routing on our Services, and to customize and improve our Services. Most Internet browsers automatically accept cookies. If you do not want cookies from Rocket or other websites, you can instruct your browser, by changing its settings, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. However, some Services may not function properly if you disable cookies.

User Rights

You have various rights under the GDPR as regards personal data we may hold on you. You have the right: to be informed as to what data we hold and request copies of such; to have us rectify or complete any such data you deem incorrect or incomplete; to have us erase any such data we may hold on you; to ask that we transfer such data to another organisation or to you; to object to or restrict us from processing any such personal data.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Officer (ICO), which regulates data protection compliance in the UK, if you are unhappy with how we have processed any of your personal data. Visit the ICO's website for more information.

Log Data

Our servers automatically record information ("Log Data") created by your use of the Services. Log Data may include information such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, the referring web page, pages visited, location, your mobile carrier, device and application IDs, and search terms. We receive Log Data when you interact with our Services, such as when you visit our website(s). Rocket uses Log Data to provide our Services and to measure, customize, and improve them. If not already done earlier, we will either delete Log Data or remove any common identifiers, such as your full IP address, after 18 months.

Law and Harm

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Policy, we may preserve or disclose your information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation or legal request; to protect the safety of any person; to address fraud, security or technical issues; or to protect Rocket's rights or property. However, nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal defences or objections that you may have to a third party's, including a government's, request to disclose your information.

Business Transfers

In the event that Rocket is involved in a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, your information may be sold or transferred as part of that transaction. The promises in this Privacy Policy will apply to your information as transferred to the new entity.

Our Policy Towards Children

Our Services are not directed to persons under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children or persons under 18. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we take steps to remove such information and terminate the child's account. If you become aware that your child has provided us with personal information without your consent, please email help@rocketsportsnetwork.com.

Changes to this Policy

We may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time, and will endeavour to draw your attention to any material changes via more prominent messaging on the Services. The most current version of the policy will govern our use of your information.

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