Skip to content
logo

Privacy Notice for Journalists & Influencers in Meltwater’s database

Table of Contents

View in German

At Meltwater, we know that you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and that is why we are committed to respecting your privacy and to helping you control the data we store. This Privacy Notice is applicable for the Influencers included in Meltwater’s Influencer database (“Notice”). In this Notice you will find information about what sort of information we hold about you, how and why we collect it, how we use it, and how we protect it. This Notice also includes information about your rights, how you can exercise them, explains how you can exercise your preferences to manage the information we store about you, and, if for any reason you do not want to be in our database, how to have your information deleted.

Who this Notice applies to

All European journalists added post April 12th 2018 have given us their consent and this Notice only applies to you if you are a non-European journalist, or a European journalists who has been added to our database prior to the above mentioned date. All updates to your profile, even if it has been created prior to April 12th 2018, are only done with your consent.

As an Influencer who has been in our database prior to April 12th 2018, you also have the ability to consent to the processing and manage the information that is stored in our database. By creating or claiming your profile you have full control and transparency over the data we hold. You can also choose which clients you wish to receive outreach from and also have the ability to remove all your data from our database. Please help us give you control over your data and have a better look at our service here.

Why do we collect your data and how it is used

Meltwater is a global media intelligence company and one of our products, Influencer Contact Manager, enables our customers (“Customers”) to identify and connect with Influencers, distribute relevant outreach to those Influencers and measure the impact of their outreach. Customers are interested third parties, i.e. representatives of the PR and / or corporate communications departments of a range of industry verticals who have purchased Meltwater’s Influencer Contact Manager platform. For further information on whom we share your data with, please see Section 6 below.

The Influencer Contact Manager is a database consisting of information (and in particular contact information) relating to Influencers like you. We call you an “Influencer” because you have the ability to influence the behaviour and opinions of others. This term includes traditional journalists working for news publications (print and online), freelance journalists, and other influencers including social media influencers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.

We use your data to create an Influencer profile for you and include it in the Influencer Contact Manager. Our Customers can access our database via our online platform where they can view your profile, create media lists and send outreach to the Influencers on those lists. Our Customers can as well monitor your interaction with the communications that they send you (for example, whether you have opened or read an email sent from our platform). This is also beneficial for you as it means you receive targeted news and press releases that may be helpful for you when writing your next story. Our primary goal is to facilitate the efficient communication between our Customer and Influencers. 

What personal information we collect

We limit the information we collect to information that enables our Customers to engage with you in a meaningful and targeted way.  The information includes basic information such as your name and contact details, your job title, public social media profiles, beats you are interested in, and possibly a brief description about your career history.

We only collect data that is necessary for the scope of the Influencer Contact Manager. We collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of data about you which may include the following:

  • Prefix and name
  • Job title
  • Work address
  • Telephone number
  • Fax number
  • Work email address
  • Personal email address (if provided to us by you)
  • Twitter handle
  • Link to LinkedIn profile
  • Other Social Media handles (Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Youtube, WeChat, Weibo, Viadeo, Pinterest)
  • Preferred outreach method (email, Twitter)
  • Beats (i.e. subject matters you have written about)
  • Publication
  • Personal website
  • Working language
  • Link to articles published
  • Brief summary of journalism career based on publicly shared information

How we collect your personal data

All of the information we hold about you is obtained from publicly available sources (including public social media profiles and websites and information from articles you may have written), directly from you or, in some cases and to the extent permitted, from your employer. Your information is always gathered by our experienced media research teams and confirmed before adding it to our database.

Prior to it being added to our database, we verify that your contact details are correct via either contacting you or your employer directly or checking against your social media profile or websites you appear on.

We process your personal data in order to provide our services to our Customers. The processing is therefore based on our and our Customers’ legitimate business interests (Art. 6 para. 1 f GDPR). If you want to give us your consent or otherwise control the information that is stored in our database, you are free to do so here. Processing your data in this way also benefits you as an Influencer and also our Customers. You will receive focused information from our Customers, often ahead of general release, giving you material to write about that is relevant to you and your audience. Our Customers are able to communicate more efficiently to Influencers who are likely to want to hear what they have to say. We consider and balance any potential negative impact on you and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where we believe that our interests are overridden by any unwarranted adverse impact on you. If at any time you want us to remove you from our database please email us at influencers@meltwater.com and we will process this request promptly.

Tracking

As many of the companies operating in our field we also monitor your engagement with the content that our Customers send to you through our platform. We inform our Customers which press releases have been read and opened. This may include placing a cookie on email content that is sent through our platform. We do this to ensure that you only receive press releases that are of relevance to you. If you do not want us to use this cookie, you are free to opt-out at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of the press release.

How we share your personal data and with whom

We may share your personal data with one or all of the following:

  • Customers: our Customers are typically communications and marketing departments within businesses or other institutions, or PR agencies. Our Customers come from all sectors globally.
    undefined
  • Internal Third Parties: these include other companies within the Meltwater Group
  • External Third Parties:
    undefined

International Transfers

We may share your personal data with entities within the Meltwater Group. This, as well as transfers to some of the third parties to whom we may transfer your data in accordance with this Privacy Notice, may involve transferring your personal data to countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), including the United States of America, that do not provide for a level of data protection equal to that in EEA countries. Where your personal data is transferred outside of the EEA we do on the basis of appropriate data protection safeguards, such as data protection clauses approved by the European Commission, in order to ensure that there is an adequate level of protection for your personal data. We will make a copy of these safeguards available to you upon request.

How long will we use your personal data?

We will keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Notice and to fulfill our legal obligations. If you have given your consent, we process your data for as long as stipulated therein or until you withdraw your consent, unless there is another legal ground for the processing.

If you request us to remove your information through the unsubscribe and data removal options available in all press releases sent through our platform, your contact profile data will be deleted at the latest on the next business day, and any associated email tracking data (if any) will be deleted within 30 days. A request sent via email will be addressed promptly. We will not delete your name and email address to ensure that you will no longer be contacted by us or our Customers through our platform again.

Your rights

You have certain rights under applicable data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Your rights may depend on where you reside and the rights granted to data subjects in the local legislation. If you wish to exercise your rights please contact influencers@meltwater.com.

Depending on where you reside your rights include the right to:

  • Access your personal information.
  • Require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold.
  • Require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations.
  • Receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations.
  • Object to decisions being taken by automated means (including profiling) which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you.
  • Object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information, where the processing is based on our legitimate interests.
  • Otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to your local supervisory authority or the Berlin Data Protection Authority, where Meltwater’s main establishment in Europe is located, for data protection issues.

Who is the Data Controller?

Meltwater is the data controller and is responsible for your personal data. Our full contact details for each area are as follows:

EMEA
Meltwater Deutschland GmbH
Rotherstrasse 22
10245 Berlin,
Germany

Americas
Meltwater News US Inc.
225 Bush Street, Suite 1000
San Francisco, California,
United States

APAC
MNews Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.
Menara UOA Bangsar, Unit A-31-2
No.5 Jalan Bangsar Utama
59000 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia

 

Influencer Support

If at any time you have any questions about this Notice or the way we use your personal data please contact our Influencer team at influencers@meltwater.com