Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 2024

About This Policy

We take the protection of your privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect about you, how we use it and the steps that we take to ensure that it is kept secure. It also describes your data protection rights, including a right to object to some of the processing which UKTV carries out. More information about your rights, and how to exercise them, is set out in the "Your Rights" section below.

In addition to information that you provide to us (e.g. when registering an account or contacting us), we also collect information about your visits to and use of our UKTV Digital Services (as defined below) through the use of cookies ("your personal information").

For more details about cookies and how you may control them, please see our table of Cookie Policies relevant to our websites:

Website/Application Cookie policy
U U Cookie policy
UKTV Corporate website Corporate website cookie policy
UKTV Press website Press website cookie policy
U&Alibi Alibi cookie policy
U&Gold Gold cookie policy
U&Us U&Us cookie policy

Who We Are

In this Privacy Policy, "we", "us" and "our" means UKTV Media Limited. We are a UK-based multi-channel broadcaster and content production business and a wholly owned subsidiary of BBC Studios, the principal commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation ("BBC"). You should read this Privacy Policy in conjunction with the Terms and Conditions and relevant Cookie Policy (see table above), which also apply to our UKTV website at corporate.uktv.co.uk and associated websites, services and applications including U (the "UKTV Digital Services").

We collect and process information about you that you provide through your use of the UKTV Digital Services.

Our legal status under applicable data protection law is that of a "data controller" (meaning that we decide the purposes for which and the ways in which your personal information is collected and used) and in this capacity we will securely store and process your personal information. Please be aware that some of the services provided on the UKTV Digital Services (e.g. U) are only accessible to registered users via a password. It is your responsibility to keep your password secure at all times.

The Information We Collect and How We Collect It

The better we know you the better we can make UKTV's digital products and services work for you and give you a more personalised experience.

Information provided by you

When you register for an account (such as U, for which registration is required in order to view content) on our UKTV Digital Services, or if you subscribe to one of our newsletters or other digital services, we collect contact details and other relevant information ("Account Information"), including:

(i) your first and last name;

(ii) your user name;

(iii) the password that you assign to your account;

(iv) your date of birth;

(v) your postcode;

(vi) your gender (although this is optional if you prefer not to say); and

(vii) your email address.

If you enter a competition, vote or post comments or other material on our UKTV Digital Services or respond to any other specific requests we make on our UKTV Digital Services, then we will collect any queries, comments or material that you submit in doing so ("User Provided Information").

Information about your use of our UKTV Digital Services

During your visit to, or use of, our UKTV Digital Services, we will also collect information about:

  • Your visit (e.g. time, date, duration, pages viewed);
  • The resources that you access or online services that you use; and
  • How you access our UKTV Digital Services (e.g. IP address, operating system, browser type).

If you use our live or video on-demand programme services such as U, we also collect information about:

  • The programmes that you watch and any interaction with them;
  • The adverts which are displayed to you and any interaction with those adverts (e.g. clicking to view further information);
  • Quality of service and diagnostic information concerning video streams; and
  • The time, date and duration of your viewing session.

We refer to this kind of information as "Usage Information".

Like most companies, we also use cookies to collect some of this information. Please see the relevant Cookie policy (see table above) for further information on how we and third parties use cookies to collect and process information about your use of our UKTV Digital Services.

We also receive lifestyle and demographic insight information about you ("Insight Information") from third party organisations which we use to provide you with tailored advertising (see the How We Use Your Personal Information section below for more information about this). Currently, this Insight Information is provided by Acxiom. Acxiom's privacy policy is available from: https://www.acxiom.co.uk/privacy/uk-privacy-policy/. If you want to manage how Acxiom uses your personal data and shares it with companies like UKTV, you should get in touch with them directly.

How We Use Your Personal Information

Depending on which of our services you are using (or how you are otherwise interacting with us), we may use your data for the purposes described below, and in ways which are consistent with our relationship with you (i.e. as a consumer or in a business context). We have set out a description of all the ways we might use your personal data and the types of data this could include. Under UK and EU data protection law we are required to tell you our lawful basis or processing your personal data and we have included this in the table below.

PURPOSE CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL DATA (EXAMPLES) LAWFUL BASIS

(UK AND EU ONLY)
To provide our products and services (including the UKTV Digital Services) to you. Including, as applicable, (i) the administration of your account (including providing customer management and support services) and (ii)verifying your identity (including where you exercise your data subject rights)
  • Identity (e.g. name)
  • Contact details
 (i) Our legitimate interests to keep our records updated and to manage our services effectively.

(ii) Performance of a contract with you
To manage our relationship with you, including: responding to your requests and feedback; managing our competitions (including publication of winners names, if required); contacting you about a submission you have made to our online services, including through our social media pages and accounts; asking you to leave a review or take a survey; sending you service-related communications; and notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy.
  • Identity (e.g. name)
  • Contact details
  • Communication preferences
  • Genre/content preferences
  • Communication history
 Our legitimate interests to ensure you have a good experience in using our services or in your business dealings with us, to keep our records updated and to respond to requests and feedback.
To manage and secure our services. Including troubleshooting, testing, system maintenance, reporting, and data hosting, preventing fraud or other potentially illegal activities (including copyright infringement), blocking disruptive users, protecting the safety of users and enforcing our terms of service.
  • Device identifiers, which may include your device's IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Policy for the service you are using to learn more).
  • Usage/analytics data
  • Log data
 Our legitimate interests for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, and to prevent fraud
To measure and improve our products and services, the effectiveness of our marketing and emails, and our customer relationships and experiences. We may use specialist research or IT service providers to help us to do this.
  • Device identifiers, which may include your device's IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Policy for the service you are using to learn more).
  • Usage/Analytics data (e.g. browsing history, whether you opened or clicked an email etc)
  • Demographics, such as gender, age range, interests (e.g. through market research)
  • Log data
 Our legitimate interests to study how customers use our products and services, to keep our services updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy

Consent (if you are located in the UK/EEA), in relation to non-essential cookies and related technologies used to support this purpose.

Consent where your personal information is shared/disclosed directly in response to a research questionnaire/survey.
To send you emails with news, offers, promotions and invitations to take part in market research relating to our content, brands and services and special promotions from our brand partners in accordance with your contact preferences. These communications may be personalised to you based on what we think may interest you.

We may also send notifications via your device or web browser, where you have specifically given permission when requested by your browser or device.

If you unsubscribe or opt-out from email marketing, we may add your email address to a suppression list to ensure we respect your preference.
  • Identity (e.g. name)
  • Contact details
  • Profile (e.g. your preferences and interests inferred from your interactions with our services)
  • Marketing and communications preferences
 Consent, as applicable, or our legitimate interests to promote our content, brands and services, and those of our partners and to manage your preferences.
To personalise your experience and our marketing communications to make it more relevant to you and to tell you about goods or services that we think might interest you.

We sometimes promote our products and services to you through advertising on other websites, services and/or platforms you may visit. This advertising may be personalised to you based on your browsing or purchase history with us.

Any use of your data by those websites, services and/or platforms in providing these promotional services to us will be subject to their privacy policy(ies) and the preferences you have set for their platform(s).
  • Identity
  • Contact details
  • Device identifiers, which may include your device's IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Policy for the service you are using to learn more).
  • Usage/analytics data (e.g. your browsing history)
  • Profile (e.g. your preferences and interests inferred from your interactions with our services)
  • Log data
 Consent (in relation to cookies and related technologies in the UK/EEA), or

Our legitimate interests to promote our services and engage our consumers and audiences
To market our products and services to you via social media. When we post marketing messages on social media platforms, we sometimes use the audience segmentation tools of the platform to show these to particular types of people - for example, based on your age, interests or (broad) location. When we do this, we only receive aggregated anonymous reports on the performance of these posts, no personal data is shared with us.

Any use of your data by those platforms in providing these services to us will be subject to their privacy policy(ies) and the preferences you have set for their platform(s).


Custom Audiences: We may use your contact details and browsing/transactions data we hold about you in order to show you relevant marketing and promotional posts on social media. When we do this, an encryption technique is applied to the data so the social media platform can only read the data that it already holds in order to create a match so it can show you the relevant advertising post.		 For general social media marketing we do not use personal data we hold about you.

Custom Audiences:

Where we use Custom Audiences, we may use the following data

  • Contact details
  • Transactions
  • Device identifiers, which may include your device's IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Policy for the service you are using to learn more).
  • Usage/analytics data (e.g. your browsing and/or transactions history)
  • Profile (e.g. your preferences and interests inferred from your interactions with our services)
 Our legitimate interests to promote our services and engage our consumers and audiences
Measuring and analysing the effectiveness of our marketing messages shown to you on our websites, in our emails and elsewhere online (e.g. where we purchase media space on other websites).
  • Device identifiers, which may include your device's IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Policy for the service you are using to learn more).
  • Usage/analytics data (e.g. the ad shown to you and whether you clicked on it)
  • Log data
 Our legitimate interests to analyse how customers use our products and services, to develop our products and services, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy.
To conduct market research into our brands and services. We may use specialist market research agencies to conduct research on our behalf. When we do this, the agencies will not usually share any information to enable us to identify respondents. If they were to do this, it would be explained to you at the time you take part in the research.

However, we may carry out research relating to actors and public figures and when we do this, we will receive information about public opinion of such people.		 For respondents: where we use an agency, usually no personal data only anonymous demographical data and opinions. Sometimes we may receive videos and vox pops featuring you, which will be explained to you at the time you take part.



If you choose to take part in research at our invitation, we may directly collect some data from you in order to facilitate the project, e.g. name, contact details and demographic information.



For 'talent' and other public figures: name and public opinions/perceptions about them.		 Our legitimate interest to better understand how our brands or talent are perceived and to engage with our customers/audiences.



Consent (where we collect data directly from you)
To personalise adverts shown to you by our partners and advertisers on our services (that include advertising). This may include advertising personalised to you based on your browsing of our websites and other websites, and inferred interests or demographics for the service you are using.

Our partners and advertisers may also measure and analyse the effectiveness of the adverts shown to you.

To find out more about advertising and to opt out of your data being used to personalise it, see the Cookies Policy for the service you are using.
  • Identity
  • Contact details
  • Device identifiers, which may include your device's IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Policy for the service you are using to learn more).
  • Ad Profile (e.g. demographics and interests inferred from your interactions with our services and elsewhere online)
  • Usage/analytics data (e.g. browsing history, ad views and click throughs)
  • Log data
 Consent (in relation to cookies and related technologies in the UK/EEA), or

Our legitimate interests to promote our brand partners and to generate revenue to help fund services.

Where we propose using your personal information for any other uses or for any other lawful basis, we will ensure that we notify you first and get your consent as appropriate.

Managing Your Preferences

You control the data we hold on you.
When you register you will be given the opportunity to indicate whether or not you are happy for us to use your personal information in order to tell you about our offers, products or services. You can control the way in which we contact you by editing your marketing preferences information in the 'Manage my Preferences' section of your U Profile.

If you would like us to stop using your personal information for targeted advertising purposes, you can send us an email at viewers@uktv.co.uk. Please note that if you opt out of profiling and targeted advertising, this does not mean that you will receive less advertising when you use our UKTV Digital Services. This just means that the advertising you see may not be as relevant to you.

Where We Store Your Personal Information

Your personal information will only be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area if adequate safeguards are in place to protect your data. For example, we use processors who have signed up to European Commission approved standard contractual clauses.

In any event, we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

How We Keep Your Personal Information Secure

We take privacy issues very seriously and we understand that keeping your personal information secure is very important to you. When handling your personal information, security is paramount and we use all reasonable measures to safeguard your information and to ensure it is adequately protected.

Our system is hosted by service providers whom we consider to have good reputations for security, but please note that we cannot guarantee that any personal information transmitted over the internet is completely secure.

Sharing and Disclosure of Your Personal Information
Information shared within the BBC Studios Group

To improve your experience of our services and brands, information about your use of our services may be shared between companies in the BBC Studios Group for the purposes of research, analysis, marketing and ad-serving.

Information shared through pixels and cookies

We work with third parties who use cookies and similar technologies to provide a variety of services to us, including to: measure and analyse use of and engagement with our online services and emails; deliver and personalise our online marketing and third party advertising on our services. These companies may be independently making decisions about how and why your personal data is processed, meaning they are a separate "Data Controller". Full details of how these technologies are used are provided in the Cookies Notice provided for the service you are using.

Information shared with our suppliers

We will disclose your data to our suppliers to the extent that they need access to your data in order to provide us with their services. We will only use suppliers who provide sufficient guarantees as to the processing of your data, including in relation to keeping it secure.

We work with a number of third parties to process your personal information for the purposes described above. Where these third parties act on our behalf they must only process your personal information in accordance with our instructions. The categories of suppliers and service providers that we use include:

  • IT and information technology and services companies
  • BBC Public Service

We work with:

  • Channel Four Corporation, who serve targeted advertising on our behalf, including to users of U, and who also design a survey that we send to a sample of around 30,000 registered users to help us model all our registered users into segments for the purposes of targeted advertising
  • Mediarithmics, who provide advertising related services and who are located in France (note that we pseudonymise your personal information by means of hashing before it is disclosed)
  • Infosum, who provide advertising related services (note that we pseudonymise your personal information by means of hashing before it is disclosed)
  • Aptitude, who provide user management software
  • 24i, who provide services related to content recommendation

Information shared with other parties

You should be aware that if we are requested by the police or any regulatory or government authority investigating suspected illegal activities to provide to them your personal information and/or information concerning your activities whilst visiting the site, we shall be entitled to do so.

We are also entitled to disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal information in order to enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions and other agreements; or if we reasonably consider this necessary; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of us, our customers, or others.

If our business is sold or integrated with another business, your personal information will be disclosed to our advisers and any prospective purchaser's adviser and will be passed to the new owners of the business.

Your Rights

You have various rights with respect to our use of your personal information:

  • Access: You have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you. Please note that there are exceptions to this right, so that access may be denied if, for example, making the information available to you would reveal personal information about another person, or would reveal trade secrets, or if we are legally prevented from disclosing such information. If we have deleted or anonymised your data then we won't be able to provide you with a copy of that data. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact us using the contact details provided below.
  • Accuracy: We aim to keep your information accurate, current, and complete. We encourage you to contact us using the contact details provided below to let us know if any of your personal information is not accurate or changes, so that we can keep your personal information up-to-date. You can also review and correct/update some of your personal information by logging-in to your account and going to your Profile, if you have registered on one of the UKTV Digital Services.
  • Objecting: In certain circumstances you also have the right to object to processing of your personal information: (i) which is based on our legitimate interests; (ii) for direct marketing purposes; and (iii) for profiling to the extent that it is related to direct marketing. If you would like to object to (i), please contact us using the contact details provided below. Please see the How We Use Your Personal Information section above for information on how to object to (ii) and (iii).
  • Erasing and Restricting: You have the right to ask us to erase or restrict your personal information. If you would like us to stop using your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided below. Please note that there are exceptions to these rights, if, for example, we are under a legal obligation to continue to process your personal information.
  • Porting: You have the right to request that your personal information is ported to you.
  • Complaints: If you believe that your data protection rights may have been breached, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in the country of your habitual residence, place of work or of the potential breach, or to seek a remedy through the courts. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner's Office, whose website at ico.org.uk provides information on how you can lodge a complaint.

When we ask you to supply us with information we will make it clear whether the information we are asking for must be supplied so that we can provide the products and services to you, or whether the supply of any information we ask for is optional. For example, registration is mandatory to use U on most platforms, and certain minimum details must be submitted in order to enter our competitions.

How Long We Keep Your Personal Information For

We will retain your personal information, whether or not your account is active, for as long as we reasonably believe it necessary to fulfil our business purposes or to comply with applicable law, audit requirements, regulatory requests or orders from competent courts. We will then delete or anonymise it. For example, we will normally delete or anonymise your U or UKTV Press account after 2 years of inactivity, but we will email you to warn you first.

Links

The UKTV Digital Services may contain links to other websites over which we have no control. We are not responsible for privacy policies or practices of other websites to which you choose to link from our UKTV Digital Services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of those other web sites so you can understand how they collect, use and share your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

If our privacy policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page (displaying a version date at the bottom of the page); and where required, we will notify you of such changes either by email or when you log in. Regularly reviewing this page will ensure that you are always aware of how we process your personal data.

Contact Details

You may contact us as follows:

Company Information UKTV Media Limited (registered with number 04266373) with registered address at: 10 Hammersmith Grove, London, W6 7AP