Privacy Policy

Please find below the Privacy Policy for Council for Countering Online Disinformation ("CCOD").

CCOD Group Ltd, is a company registered with Companies House in England and Wales under number 16700722 whose registered office is at 167-169 Great Portland Street, Fifth Floor, London, W1W 5PF. CCOD Group Ltd is the publisher of the CCOD Blogs ("blogs"), CCOD Reports ("reports"), CCOD Newsletter ("newsletter") and delivers the CCOD website at www.ccod.co.uk ("website").

This Privacy Policy applies to our website, blogs, reports and newsletters. By registering to receive our newsletters, you consent to us processing your information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

You are able to amend any of the personal information that we hold about you or update your preferences through the links provided at the end of our newsletters if you wish to do so.

Details on how we use your personal information is listed below, however, if you have any further queries, please contact our Data Protection Officer at contact@ccod.co.uk

Information we collect about you

This section outlines the information that we may collect about you.

Newsletter Sign Up Information

If you choose to sign up to our newsletters, we will ask you to provide us with some specific information about you. We use technology such as that provided by Supabase to collect the following information about you in order for you to sign up to our newsletters and process your subscription. The information we collect includes:

  • Basic personal details – such as first name, last name, country of residence (optional);
  • Personal contact details – such as email address;
  • Work details – such as sector of activity (optional);

Additional information you voluntarily provide about our services

At times, we will ask you to voluntarily provide additional information, for example:

  • Your opinion and feedback of our blogs, reports, newsletters and website to understand your interests in order for us to cater our blogs, reports and newsletters to align with your preferences;
  • Your preferences of regions, topics and interests analysed in our blogs, reports and newsletters.
  • Completing product surveys, topics and interests surveys, and participating in focus groups.

Information you voluntarily provide when you contact us

This relates to information you voluntarily provide when you contact us in relation to an issue, a problem with our website, blogs, reports or newsletters.

  • General issue – when contacting us via email about a general issue, we may retain that correspondence and information for two years to ensure we can contact you if needed in relation to the issue for which you contacted us and/or for operational and performance improvement. This information will not be used for marketing purposes.
  • A problem with our website, blogs, reports or newsletters – when contacting us via email about a problem with our website, blogs, reports or newsletters, we may retain that correspondence and information for two years to ensure we can contact you if needed in relation to the issue for which you contacted us and/or for operational and performance improvement. This information will not be used for marketing purposes.
  • Processing your cancellation – If you would like us to process the cancellation of your subscription to our newsletters and provide us with your notice of cancellation, instructions and personal details. We may retain that correspondence and information for the amount of time prescribed by relevant laws and regulations. This is to ensure we can contact you if needed in relation to any issues with cancellation or payment processing and for any regulatory, taxation, accounting and law enforcement reasons. This information will not be used for marketing purposes.

When contacting us via email and through the join us form the information that you may provide may include but not limited to your first name, last name, email address, contact number, date of subscription, reason for cancellation, feedback, your CV and/or your cover letter.

Information we collect through the use of technologies and analytics tools

CCOD uses technology and analytics tools across our website, blogs, reports and newsletters to collect information about your use of these services. We use technology such as that provided by Supabase, Netlify and Google Analytics. Information collected by these tools may consist of your visits to our website and your use of our blogs, reports and newsletters. This enables us to analyse how you and others interact with our website, blogs, reports and newsletters. Information collected through these tools may be used to improve the performance of our website, blogs, reports and newsletters and enhance your user experience. This information collected by CCOD may include:

Website

  • Your IP address – to understand the country you are accessing the website from.
  • Your device – to understand what type of devices you are using to ensure you are shown the best version of the website. This helps us to identify which devices are used to ensure there are no usability issues across all devices.
  • Your use of browser – to understand what type of browser you use to ensure there are no usability issues across all used browsers.
  • The number of sessions per browser on each device.
  • Invite or referrer information to website and sign up to our newsletters.
  • Which pages you visited.

Newsletters

  • To understand whether you have opened our newsletters.
  • To understand your user preference and interests.

Blogs and Reports

  • To understand whether you have read our blogs and/or reports.
  • To understand your user preference and interests.

How we use the information we collect about you

We use the personal information we collect about you for the following main reasons:

  • To enable us to provide our service – blogs, reports, newsletters and website.
  • To improve and maintain our performance – to ensure our website, blogs, reports and newsletters are working fully and most effectively for your use. Additionally, to ensure our content across our blogs, reports, newsletters and website is presented most effectively across your devices to ensure you have the best user friendly experience.
  • To personalise our products and services – to understand your interests in order for us to cater our blogs, reports and newsletters to align with your preferences.
  • To contact subscribers with product surveys, topics and interests surveys, focus groups and analysing this data for the development of CCOD and our products.
  • To communicate changes to our website, blogs, reports and newsletters.
  • To deliver to you marketing information about us and our new and existing products and services. We want our subscribers to benefit the most from the content across our blogs, reports, newsletters, online and in person events, and collaborations. We also want you to benefit the most from any new product or service arrivals.
  • To fulfil our obligations arising from our terms and conditions.
  • Recruitment – only used if you contact us in relation to joining our voluntary team through the join us form on our website, through an external job posting site such as LinkedIn or directly via email. We will process your information provided to facilitate the application process.
  • To maintain internal records and for administrative purposes.

There may be instances where we will notify you to obtain your consent to use your personal information for any other uses than those detailed. You will have the full opportunity to decide whether to provide or withhold your consent.

Whether we share your personal information with others

We share your non-anonymised information with others where we have your permission to do so in accordance with this policy to facilitate the running of our business and to provide you with our website, blogs, reports and newsletters that you have requested (as applicable).

CCOD works with technology and analytics providers and consequently we may receive information in relation to you from them. We provide a non-exhaustive list of third parties we work with. We may work with third parties not listed below or stop working with the third parties listed below.

Third Party and why with them

  • IONOS – to process emails, distribute our newsletters and allow us to manage our communications with you.
  • Google Analytics – to monitor the performance of our website, blogs and reports and our user experience.
  • Netlify – to host our website and domain, distribute our newsletters to you, monitor newsletter performances and user experiences. It also allows us to manage our communications with you, such as our current and upcoming products and services, events, surveys, focus groups, research and marketing.
  • Supabase - to store the details you provide to us when signing up to our newsletters, to store your application and the supporting documents for a voluntary role that you applied for via our website or email, to maintain the backend of our website, and to store the data that appears on our website, blogs, reports, newsletters and services.
  • LinkedIn – to process your application for a voluntary role that you applied for via LinkedIn.
  • Cloudinary - to store images and files that appear on our website, blogs, reports, newsletters and services.

We may disclose your personal information to certain other third parties in order to ensure the following:

  • where CCOD has a duty to disclose or share this to comply with regulatory or legal requests or obligations;
  • to apply and protect our terms and conditions, alongside investigating any potential breaches of our terms and conditions; and
  • to protect our website, blogs, reports and newsletters' safety, rights and property.

Keeping your Information Secure

Information you provide us when signing up to our newsletters - All information you provide to us to sign up to our newsletters is stored and processed on servers owned and operated by Supabase, Netlify and Ionos.

Information you voluntarily provide when you contact us - Information that you provide us through emails when you contact us in relation to general issues and problems with our website, blogs, reports and newsletters are stored on severs owned and operated by IONOS.

Information in relation to your use of our website, blogs, reports and newsletters - Information that is obtained in relation to monitoring your use of our website, blogs, reports and newsletters is stored on servers owned and operated by Netlify, Supabase and Google Analytics.

These parties have enhanced security and protection measures in place to ensure your information remains secure. The information that is collected about you may be processed outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

How long we retain your personal information

Your personal information will be retained for the length of time you remain a subscriber to our newsletters. Retaining your information for this time allows you to continue accessing our content and newsletters.

There may be instances in which it is necessary for us to retain your personal information for more extensive periods of time beyond the length of time you remain a subscriber to our newsletter such as:

  • The presence of a statutory requirement requiring us to keep your information.
  • If the information is required by us for legal reasons or there is a legitimate business need for us to retain it. This includes accounting records, subscription information, and a record of the communications we have sent you in relation to your subscription.

Your Rights in relation to your information

At CCOD we believe it is imperative for each individual to have control over their personal information that we hold and for us to provide you with a secure environment for your personal information. This conforms with your individual's rights under data protection laws which stipulate that you hold the following rights as an individual in relation to the personal data we hold about you. These rights consist of:

  • The right to inform us that you do not want your personal information processed for direct marketing purposes with the exception of certain customer communications such as welcome emails, faults, holiday announcements and service-related emails.
  • The right to access and request a copy of the personal information we retain about you. This information will be supplied to you within the appropriate time specified by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
  • The right to restrict the processing of your personal information.
  • The right to request that the personal information that we hold about you is deleted.
  • The right to rectification of the personal information that we hold about you. You can rectify some of your information by accessing the 'update your preferences' option at the bottom of our newsletters.

CCOD will comply with your requests as stipulated by the applicable law.

Please note to exercise certain rights we will initially require you to prove your identity by providing us with two types of approved identification which we shall specify in writing.

You can exercise your following rights at any time by contacting us via email at contact@ccod.co.uk

Please contact us initially if you have any queries, are unhappy or wish to complain about the processing of your personal information. We envisage to satisfactorily resolve your query and complaint. However, if you feel this is not the case then you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK data supervising authority, this being the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

Third Party websites accessed from our blogs, reports, newsletters, emails and website

Our blogs, reports, newsletters, emails and website may contain links or references to third party websites which are not subject to this privacy policy. Please note if you choose to follow a link to a third party website, these third parties will have their own privacy policies that administer the use of any personal information that they process. CCOD is not responsible for their content, use of personal information or their security policies and practices.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

This privacy policy is effective from 7 September 2025.

If any changes are made to our privacy policy these will be posted on this page. In the event that significant or material changes are made, we may decide to inform you via email or indicate on our website that changes have been made.

Contacting us about our Privacy Policy

If you have any queries, request or comments in relation to our Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us via email at contact@ccod.co.uk