Privacy Policy

Kontinentalist is an editorial outfit that uses maps and data to tell compelling stories. Our focus is Asia, and our mission is to enhance the region’s voice in the global narrative. Thank you for being part of our community at Kontinentalist (“we”,”us”). We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy in accordance with Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (“PDPA”) and, where applicable, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

When you visit us at https://kontinentalist.com (“website” or “websites”) and use our services, you trust us with your personal information.

This policy sets out

• the information we collect about you when you visit our website, use our products or services, or otherwise interact with us;
• how we use, share, store, and secure the information; and
• how you may access and control the information.

By using this website and our services you are agreeing to our privacy policy. If there are any terms in this privacy policy that you disagree with, please discontinue the use of our website and our services.

1. What is your personal information?

In this policy, your “personal information” refers to any data, information, or combination of data and information that is provided by you, to us, or through your use of any of our products or services, that relates to an identifiable individual.

2. What information do we collect?

We only collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when expressing an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and services, when using features on our website, or when you contact us.

The type of information collected depends on how you have interacted with us and our website. We collect the following types of information that you disclose to us:

Name and Contact Data. We collect information that you provide when you register or sign up for our products or services, namely, your name and email address.

Support Data. We collect information that you provide through support channels, for example when you report a problem to us or interact with our support team, including any contact information, documentation, or screenshots you may provide us with.

Preference Data. We collect communication, marketing, and other preferences that you set when you set up your account or profile, or when you participate in a survey or a questionnaire that we send you.

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate our website. They are:

Technical Data. We collect information about your device or connection, for example your browser type and version, time-zone setting, browser versions, operating system and website, and other technology on the devices you use to access our products or services and information we collect through cookies and other data collection technologies (please see “8. Do we use cookies?” for details).

Usage Data. We collect information about your use of or visit to our website, for example your clickstream to, through, and from our website, pages you viewed, page response times, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), or methods to browse away from the page.

We may also receive information about you from other sources and third parties, including:

Our business partners and service providers based in Singapore and overseas who provide technical, payment, and analytics services. We have categorised them below for you to easily understand the purpose of this collection.

Functionality and Infrastructure Optimisation

Amazon Web Services

Invoice and Billing

PayPal

Stripe

Retargeting Platforms

Facebook Custom Audience

Social Media Sharing and Advertising

Facebook advertising and Facebook social plugins

Web and Mobile Analytics

Google Analytics

Hotjar

Marketing Analytics

Facebook Pixel

Email Marketing

Ghost

We do not collect sensitive data or special category data about you. This includes details about your race, ethnic origin, political, religious, or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetics, biometrics, health, or sexual orientation.

3. How do we use your information?

We use your personal information only for the purposes listed below:

To fulfill our services. To perform the contract we have entered into (or are about to enter into) with you, including to operate our products or services, to provide customer support and personalised features, and to protect the safety and security of our website;

To improve our business. To improve our products and services, such as research and development, customer analysis or segmentation, and only insofar as it does not have any adverse effects on the individual and it cannot reasonably be achieved without using personal information; 

To protect our legal rights and interests. To use the information to the extent required by law or to such an extent we reasonably believe is necessary to protect our legal interests. We need to comply with legal or regulatory obligations.

To send you marketing and promotional communications. To send you direct marketing materials or promotional communications. With your express permission, we may publish your information as part of our testimonials or customer stories to promote our products or services.

To deliver targeted advertising to you. We may use your information to develop and display content and advertising (and work with third parties who do so) tailored to your interests and/or location and to measure its effectiveness.

 

4. Will your information be shared?

Sharing with our group. We share information with other companies in our parent group in order to operate our website and to offer and improve our products and services. We will not share your personal information with any company outside our group for marketing purpose, without your express, specific consent to do so.

Sharing with third parties. We share information with third parties that help us operate, provide, support, improve, and market our products and services, for example third-party service providers who provide website and application development, data storage and backup, infrastructure, billing, payment processing, customer support, business analytics, and other services.

Third-party service providers have access to your personal information only for the purpose of performing their services and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. We check that these third-party service providers have policies in place to maintain confidentiality and security of all personal information that they process on our behalf and to implement and maintain reasonable security measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your personal information.

We take reasonable steps to confirm that all third-party service providers that we engage process personal information in a manner that provides at least the same level of protection as is provided under this policy. Where any third-party provider is unable to satisfy our requirements, we will require them to notify us immediately and we will take reasonable steps to prevent or stop non-compliant processing. In the event that the third-party provider does not comply with our required actions, we will terminate all services with them immediately, and demand that they provide proof to show that all the data shared with them has been destroyed.

We may share personal information on an aggregated or de-identified basis with third parties for research and analysis, profiling, and similar purposes to help us improve our products and services.

Using your own third-party software. If you use any third-party software in connection with our products or services, for example any third-party software that our website integrates with, you might give the third-party software provider access to your account and information. Policies and procedures of third-party software providers are not controlled by us, and this policy does not cover how your information is collected or used by third-party software providers. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of third-party software providers before you use the third-party software.

Links to other websites. Our website may contain links to third-party websites over which we have no control. If you follow a link to any of these websites or submit information to them, your information will be governed by their policies. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of third-party websites before you submit information to them.

Sharing for legal obligations. We may share your information with government and law enforcement officials to comply with applicable laws or regulations, for example when we respond to claims, legal processes, law enforcement, or national security requests.

Business transfers. If we are acquired by a third party as a result of a merger, acquisition, or business transfer, your personal information may be disclosed and/or transferred to a third party in connection with such transaction. We will notify you if such transaction takes place and inform you of any choices you may have regarding your information.

5. How do we store and secure information?

We use data hosting and other cloud service providers whose data centres may not be  in Singapore. We have taken steps to satisfy ourselves that the service providers we use take reasonable steps to protect the personal data that they hold to a standard that is acceptable to Singapore’s Privacy and Data Protection Commission (PDPC)

We have also adopted the following measures to protect the security and integrity of your personal information:

• Information is encrypted using TLS/SSL technology;
• Access to your personal information is restricted to personnel or service providers on a strictly need-to-know basis, who will only process your information on our instructions and who are subject to a duty of confidentiality; and
• Our information collection, storage, and processing practices are reviewed regularly.
• We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected privacy or data protection  breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

While we implement safeguards designed to protect your information, please note that no transmission of information on the Internet is completely secure. We cannot guarantee that your information, during transmission through the Internet or while stored on our systems or processed by us, is absolutely safe and secure.

We only retain personal information for so long as it is reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Your information will be stored securely and used for internal purposes only. It can be removed upon your request, after which we will ensure that your information is deleted, or if this is not possible, it will be anonymised so that you cannot be identified from the information. We periodically review the basis and appropriateness of our data retention policy.

6. What are your rights?

You have the right to:

• be informed of what we do with your personal information;
• request a copy of personal information we hold about you;
• require us to correct any inaccuracy or error in any personal information we hold about you;
• request erasure of your personal information (note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for record keeping purposes, to complete transactions, or to comply with our legal obligations);
• object to or restrict the processing by us of your personal information (including for marketing purposes);
• request to receive some of your personal information in a structured, commonly used, and machine readable format, and request that we transfer such information to another party; 
• withdraw your consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal information (although this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent). (Note also that the withdrawal of your consent may affect the services that you receive from us.)
• You may opt out of receiving marketing materials from us by using the unsubscribe link in our communications, or by contacting us. Please note, however, that even if you opt out from receiving marketing materials from us, you will continue to receive notifications or information from us that are necessary for the use of our products or services.
• As a security measure, we may need specific information from you to help us confirm your identity when processing your privacy requests or when you exercise your rights.

We will respond to your request as soon as reasonably possible. Should we not be able to respond to your request within thirty (30) calendar days after receiving your request, we will inform you in writing within that period of the time by which we will be able to respond to your request. Note that for withdrawal of consent and erasure of data, we will generally process your request within 10 days, and if that is not possible within 30 days.

Do note that we may not be obliged to comply with your requests under certain conditions as prescribed by the applicable law. In such an event, we will notify you accordingly of the basis for not acceding to your request.

Please note that withdrawing consent does not affect our right to continue to collect, use and disclose personal data where such collection, use and disclosure without consent is permitted or required under applicable laws.

7. Do we collect information from individuals under the age of 16?

Our products and services are not directed to individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under 16. If we become aware that an individual under 16 has provided us with personal information, we will take steps to delete such information. Please contact us if you believe that we have mistakenly or unintentionally collected information from an individual under the age of 16.

8. Do we use cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device by a web server when you access our website. We use cookies to identify your access and monitor usage and web traffic on our website to customise and improve our products and services.

We use both persistent cookies and session cookies. A persistent cookie stays in your browser and will be read by us when you return to our website or a partner site that uses our services. Session cookies only last for as long as the session lasts (usually the current visit to a website or a browser session).

We use the following types of cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our site. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log in to secure areas of our website.

Analytical/performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our Site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our site works, for example, by ensuring that users can easily find what they are looking for.

Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our site, the pages you have visited, and the links you have followed.

Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove cookies and to reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our website.

9. Changes to this policy

We may amend this policy from time to time. The updated version will be indicated with a “Last updated” date on our website. This updated policy will be available on our website and effective as soon as it is accessible. By continuing to use our website after the changes come into effect, you agree to be bound by the revised policy. Should we make any major material change to this privacy policy, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of these changes on our website, or by sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy policy frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

10. How can you contact us about this policy?

If you have questions or comments about this policy, you may email us at hello@kontinentalist.com or by post to:

Kontinentalist Pte Ltd
21 Bedok North Street 1
#01-01
Singapore 469659

The Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dpo@kontinentalist.com or +65 6836 4030

Please contact us in the first instance if you have any questions or concerns. If you have unresolved concerns, you have the right to file a complaint with a data protection authority in the country where you live or work, or where you feel your rights have been infringed.

If you are resident in the European Union and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to file a complaint to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/bodies/authorities/index_en.htm