Reader's Digest Privacy Policy

Reader’s Digest is committed to protecting your personal information when you are using our website, mobile app, other digital services, filling out subscription forms, buying a magazine subscription or entering our competitions.
We may from time to time collect and use different information depending on whether you are using our website or other services, and this Privacy Policy explains who we are, how we collect and use your personal information, and how we use that information.
At Reader’s Digest we respect your individual rights and this notice explains how you can exercise your personal rights, and if you have any queries or concerns please contact us using the contact details provided in this notice and on our website.
Please note that our services may contain links to other third party websites - These websites will have their own privacy policies and Reader’s Digest are not responsible for the privacy practices of any third party websites, so your use of such websites is done so at your own risk, and we ask you to review their policies.

Who we are

Reader’s Digest is an international publisher originally launched in 1922, and has built 96 years of trust with a loyal audience and has become the largest circulating magazine in the world. In the UK, Reader’s Digest was established in March 1938 and has been producing a monthly magazine every month ever since. We publish a monthly magazine and online content for the purpose of offering educational, informative and engaging interviews and articles, as well as sharing real-life stories, film and book reviews, and offering competitions, products and services relevant for our readership.

The types of information we may collect about you

When you sign up to our services, such as our website, newsletters, enter competitions, or purchase a subscription or other products, we may ask for personal information about you. This can include information such as your name, e-mail address, postal address, telephone number or date of birth.
If you are aged 16 or under, you must get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide us with your personal information. Unless you have this consent you are not allowed to give us your information.

What types of information do we collect from you and why

Information you give to us:
When you register an account, sign-up for our newsletters or purchase a magazine subscription or any other Reader’s Digest product or service, as part of the buying and selling process, we collect the personal information you give us such as your name, address, email address and telephone number. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our website, subscribing to any of our services, posting material, filling in a survey or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you enter a competition or promotion and when you report a problem with our services. We may also ask you for your date of birth, this is used for internal customer analysis, and so that we could send you special offers to celebrate your Birthday.
Information about your use of our websites:
we may collect your IP address and use cookies on our websites. For full information about our use of cookies please see our cookies policy at https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/cookie-policy
Information we collect automatically about you and the device you are using:
We may collect information about the device you use to access our website, including where available, the device’s unique identifiers, operating system, browser type and mobile network information – this is used for the purpose of internal analytics, system administration and to report statistical information for the purpose of advertisers. Collecting this information enables us to gain more understanding about the visitors who come to our Website, and what content on our Website is of interest to them.
Information about your purchases:
If you purchase any products or services from our website or via the Reader’s Digest magazine, subscription and other direct mail offers, we will record all of the details of your transaction, and this information will be held for financial audit purposes. We will use your personal address and telephone details for the purpose of the fulfilment and delivery of your order. We will use your email address, postal address and telephone number for the purpose of order fulfilment and customer services.

How we look after your information

The information that we collect from you is stored on servers based within the UK. Your personal information will be processed by staff as necessary to fulfil an order, process payment details or provide you with other customer services.
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information. Some of the specific measures we use include: regularly assessing all our systems security measures and protocols to ensure data is kept as securely as possible; using SSL to encrypt all data while in transit and encrypting data at rest as much as possible; monitor and regular scan all systems to identify any possible breach as quickly as possible.
We will hold your information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant service, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us. If you choose to change your preferences to opt-out of receiving communications from us, your record will stay on the system, so we can ensure that we do not contact you in the future, unless you execute your right to be forgotten, whereby we will delete your record or anonymise it.

How Reader’s Digest use your information

We will use your information for a number of purposes including the following:
• To fulfil subscriptions for orders placed via our website, by phone or by post for the Reader’s Digest magazine;
• To fulfil requests for any products or services as advertised through Reader’s Digest and our associated partners
• To send you carefully selected special offers and promotions from the service you are using or have signed up to receive by email, post or telephone;
• To ensure we keep our records completely up to date;
• To meet product orders, requests for services or information;
• To process payments and any other requests you make of us;
• To contact you for reasons related to products purchased or services you have signed up to receive;
• We may use your IP address to identify your location and user preferences for the purpose of internal analytics;
• To communicate with you about any changes to our service;
• To contact you about contribution you may have made to our reader letter’s, magazine content, websites, blogs or social media;
• To personalise or improve the way our content and advertising is delivered to you, and that it is relevant to you;
• To manage our competitions and contact winners and arrange delivery of related prizes;
• To analyse and improve the services we offer;
• To invite you to participate in surveys about our services (your participation is entirely voluntary);
• To enable other people or businesses to provide services on our behalf;
• To provide ongoing customer services and resolve any complaints;
The lawful basis we rely on for the collection and use of your personal data is upon your consent for the processing of personal data. We will only pass on your details as part of the consent you have given for us to complete an enquiry, transaction or service you have registered to receive from us.

Who Reader’s Digest share your information with

We will only disclose your information to third parties (including our group companies, order fulfilment partners and other trusted companies) with your consent or where we need to do so in order to provide a service you have requested, or to improve the service and advertising that you receive (on both our websites and within our Reader’s Digest magazine).
The data controller of your personal information is Vivat Direct Limited which is based in London, UK and is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office with registration number ZA471197.
We then use a number of data processors, and associated partners who we share relevant information with such as your name, address, email, telephone number or payment details to enable us to process transactions and deliver our customer orders.
For our Reader’s Digest magazine subscription mailings, we share your name and address information with Abstrakt Services, Birmingham, UK for the preparation of our mailings, and OnePost (The Delivery Group), UK for the handling of our outbound mail. Final delivery is made by Royal Mail, UK.
We may also share your personal information with our associated partners for the purpose of marketing special reader offers and other promotions, or to provide further information from registered customer enquiries. The current partners we work with include (but is not limited to) Responsible Life Equity Release, AXA Sun Life insurance, Aviva Life Insurance, Encore, Life Book, Mirthy and Parsley Box. We will only share your details with such partners with your full consent.
We ensure that all relevant safeguards are in place to ensure that any third parties with whom we share your information, process this under the guidance of our own privacy policies. We also require that any third party does not use your information for their own business purposes, unless you have already explicitly consented to this.
We may also disclose your information to third parties when the disclosure is required or permitted by law.
International data transfers
Your personal information including your name and full address may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident. These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of our country.
Any International data transfer is only for the purpose of fulfilment of our International subscription mailings, and the transfer of data is made on the basis of an adequacy decision by the European Commission under Article 45 of the UK GDPR.
Our website, database servers and all of our fulfilment partners are all located in England.
We have taken all the appropriate safeguards to ensure your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Notice, and if at any time your data is transferred and processed outside the UK, we only use systems and processes that ensure the protection of data.

Data retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so. This allows us to provide you with a service you have requested, or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements.
Once we no longer have any ongoing legitimate business requirement to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if for any reason this is not possible, then we will securely store your personal information until full deletion is possible.

Your data protection rights and further information

You have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. We will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct or delete personal information about you on our files.
If you wish to access, correct or update any of the personal information we hold you can do so by contacting our Customer Services using the details provided under our ‘Contact Us’ section of our website https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/contact-us
If you choose at any time that you wish to opt-out of our marketing communications, you can exercise this right by clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link in our email newsletters. To opt-out of our other marketing, including our regular magazine then please contact our Customer Services and we will action this immediately upon your request. For the magazine mailing please be advised that mailing files are produced in advance, so it may take up to 4 weeks to fully stop the magazine from being mailed if data has already been prepared for the next issue.
You are entitled to withdraw your consent for us to hold your personal information at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing Reader’s Digest conducted prior to your withdrawal.
You have the right to ask Reader’s Digest or any of our active partners to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances and as applicable.
You can at any time exercise your right to ask Reader’s Digest or any of our active partners to transfer the personal information you have given to another organization, or to yourself, at your request under certain circumstances.
You can at any time object to the processing of your personal data, and you additionally have the right to erasure which means you can request your details to be erased from our records. Please contact us at privacy@readersdigest.co.uk to notify us if you wish to pursue your right to object or right to erasure.
We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
If you have any questions or comments about this privacy policy, please contact:
Data Protection Officer, Reader’s Digest, Mills Bakery, Royal William Yard, Plymouth, PL1 3GE, United Kingdom.
Tel. 0203 651 5152
Email: privacy@readersdigest.co.uk
The data controller of your personal information is Vivat Direct Limited which is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office with registration number ZA471197.
Individuals have the right to raise a complaint with the ICO and you can contact them by email at dpo@ico.org.uk or call their helpline on 0303 123 1113. Normal opening hours are Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm.

Updates to our Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to update our privacy policy from time to time, so please review it frequently.
We may need to change our policy in response to changing legal, technical or internal business developments.
Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here that it has been updated, so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances. For any material Privacy Notice changes we will obtain your consent where this is required due to any change in data protection laws.
To be informed of any changes made please refer to the date that our Privacy Policy was last updated.
Last updated: 11th October 2023