Privacy
We protect and respect your privacy.
Privacy Policy
This policy explains when and why www.cupoty.com collects personal information about visitors to the website, how we use it, and the conditions under which we may disclose it to others.
If you have any questions about this policy you should contact privacy@cupoty.com.
Who are we?
We are Close-up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY) — an international photography competition, newsletter and blog celebrating close-up, macro and micro photography.
How do we collect information from you?
We obtain information about you when you visit our website, enter the competition, subscribe to our newsletter, contact us through the website or social media, comment on the blog, or buy a product or service from us.
What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information we collect might include:
your name, home address, email address, telephone number and date of birth if you voluntarily supply such information;
information about your visit to our website, such as your IP address, geographical location, browser and operating system, the type of device you are using;
the EXIF data on your images if entered in the competition;
your bank or credit card details if you enter the competition or purchase a product or service from us. Your card information is not held by us, our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, collect it.
How is your information used?
We may use your information to:
deal with your entry to the competition;
process orders that you have submitted;
provide you with services, products or information you asked for;
keep a record of your relationship with us;
personalise the website to enhance your browsing experience;
assist with our marketing efforts;
publish comments that you have submitted on our blog;
analyse how to improve our website, services and products;
seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
notify you of changes to our services;
provide third parties with statistical information, but this information will not be used to identify any individual user.
How long do we hold your information?
We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or until such time as you request that we delete your information.
Who has access to your information?
We will not sell, trade or rent your information to third parties. We will not share your information with third parties for direct marketing purposes unless you expressly agree to do so.
We may use the aggregated EXIF data of all the entries, namely camera manufacturer, model and lens, to help secure a sponsor.
We do allow third-party cookies and other similar technologies to collect or receive data from our website and elsewhere for use in advertising so we can serve adverts targeted to users interests, retarget visitors to this site, track conversions (i.e., tracking the actions users take after viewing or engaging with our advertisements), measuring ad effectiveness, and ensuring that you do not see the same ad repeatedly. See Facebook below.
Facebook and Instagram have cookies on our website, which allows them to collect information about pages you’ve visited on our website, so they can serve you targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram based on this information.
We may also use these cookies to build “lookalike” audiences, in order to reach more individuals who might be interested in CUPOTY.
Please note that we are not responsible for practices by Facebook and you should read the Facebook privacy policy for more information.
To opt out of interest-based advertising, please visit: https://optout.aboutads.info and www.networkadvertising.org/choices. These tools use cookies to record and implement your preferences. If you disable or delete cookies on your device after using these tools, you will need to complete the opt-out process again.
What about other third parties?
The site cannot function effectively without using some third-party service providers that require access to your information. We disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.
We use the following services:
Stripe and PayPal carry out the secure financial transactions on our website.
JotForm sends your encrypted image files to us.
MailChimp delivers our newsletter, which uses industry standard technology to gather statistics about email openings and any clickable actions so we can make our subscriber newsletter as relevant as possible.
Zapier connects the different apps we use and helps us to keep accurate records.
Google Analytics helps us to understand how the website is used. Google Analytics uses cookies (see Use of cookies below) to collect information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit, when they do so, and the website visited before coming to this site. We use the information from Google Analytics to improve the functionality and experience of this site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, and we do not match your IP address to any other information that would identify you as a unique individual person.
Squarespace is the platform this website is built on and records analytical information in a similar way to Google Analytics. We do not match your IP address to any other information that would identify you as a unique individual person.
Clicking on the links above will allow you to review each company’s privacy policy.
How you can access, update and delete your information
Email us at privacy@cupoty.com if:
you need to change any of your information, such as your name or email address;
the information we hold is inaccurate or out of date;
you would like a copy of the information we hold about you;
you would like to delete the information we hold about you.
Security precautions
We take steps to ensure your personal information is treated securely. Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected with a minimum 128-Bit encryption on SSL. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear next to the web address.
Non-sensitive details, such as your email address, are transmitted normally over the internet, which can never be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.
If you are 16 or under
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please obtain your parent or guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.
Transferring your information outside of Europe
As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (EU). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this policy.
If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.
Use of cookies
Like most other websites, we use cookies. Cookies are small files downloaded and stored on your computer that allow websites to remember you when you visit. In our case, cookies allow you to purchase entry to the competition and help to provide you with a better website and service by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not.
It is possible to control and disable cookies on your browser preferences. Turning cookies off completely may result in a loss of functionality when using our website, such as not letting you buy anything. Whereas blocking third party cookies will stop all cookies being placed on your device by our third party providers, such as Google Analytics or Facebook.
For more information about cookies and how to control them, please visit Cookies & You or All About Cookies.
Commenting on our blog
If you add a comment to our blog, the name and email address you enter with your comment will be saved to this website’s database, along with your computer’s IP address and the time and date that you submitted the comment. This information is only used to identify you as the comment author, and will not be used for any other purpose, nor is it transmitted to any third party or data processor. Only your name will be shown on the website, though if the supplied email address is linked to a Squarespace account, your Squarespace profile avatar may also be shown. You can read Squarespace's Privacy Policy here.
Your comment and associated personal data will remain on this site until such time that we either (a) remove the comment or (b) remove the blog post. If you wish to have your comment and data removed, you may request that we do so at any time by contacting us at privacy@cupoty.com.
Social media
This website may use social sharing buttons, which allow you to share web content directly from web pages to social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Use of the social sharing buttons is at your own discretion and you should note that the social media platform might track and save your request to share a web page through your social media account.
Links to other websites
Our website contains links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be held responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.
In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third-party site.
Questions?
Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to privacy@cupoty.com.
Review of this Policy
We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated on April 30th 2023.