In Pursuit of Critters
Enter now

Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY

Policy version: 29/10/2026

1. INTRODUCTION

This Privacy Policy is provided by In Pursuit of Critters, a sole trader business (‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’) for use of our website https://www.inpursuitofcritters.com (Website) and any monthly wildlife photography competitions we run (Competitions) (together the Services).

We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on how and why we collect, store, use and share any information relating to you (your personal data).

It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or the relevant regulator in the event you have a complaint. Our collection, storage, use and sharing of your personal data is regulated by law, including under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

We are the controller of personal data obtained via the Website and Services, meaning we are the organisation legally responsible for deciding how and for what purposes it is used.

2. WHAT THIS POLICY APPLIES TO

This privacy policy relates to your use of the Website and Services only.

The Website may link to or rely on other websites or services owned and operated by us or by certain trusted third parties to enable us to provide you with Services. These other websites or services may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy policies. For privacy information relating to these other websites or services, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate. For more information see the section ‘Who we share your personal data with’ below.

3. PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

The personal data we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through the Website and Services. We will collect and use the following personal data about you:

Identity data when you enter a Competition or create an Account on our Website
– Your name, date of birth, phone number, email address and home address
– Your account details, such as username and password

Competition entry, photograph submission and transaction data
– Wildlife photographs you submit, together with any title, caption, entry details, image metadata and information about the photograph or its subject or location that you choose to provide. This may include personal data contained in or associated with a photograph. For a paid entry, we may also receive the payment status, amount and transaction reference from our payment provider; the payment provider processes your payment card details under its own privacy policy.

Other data the Services collect automatically when you use them
– Your activities on, and use of, the Services which reveal your preferences, interests or manner of use of the Services and the times of use

Data collected when you make an enquiry with us
– Your name and email address

If you do not provide personal data we ask for where it is required, it may prevent us from providing access to the Website and/or the Services to you. The Competitions are not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect Competition entry data from anyone under 18.

We collect and use this personal data for the purposes described in the section ‘How and why we use your personal data’ below.

4. SENSITIVE DATA

Sensitive personal data (also known as special category data) means information related to personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin; political opinions; religious or philosophical beliefs; trade union membership; genetic data; biometric data (where used for identification purposes); data concerning health; data concerning a person’s sex life; and data concerning a person’s sexual orientation.

Please note that we do not knowingly or intentionally collect sensitive personal data or information about criminal convictions from individuals and that you should not submit sensitive data to us.

If, however, you submit sensitive data to us, such as if you make this sensitive data available to other users of the Services (such as by publishing it through any forum feature we may make available from time to time) we will assume that you have purposefully made any such sensitive data manifestly public.

5. HOW YOUR PERSONAL DATA IS COLLECTED

We collect personal data from you directly when you create or use an Account, enter a Competition, submit a wildlife photograph or other entry information, contact us or reach out to us via social media. We may also collect personal data indirectly through your activity when using the Website and, for paid entries, from our payment provider.

We may collect personal data about your use of the Website using cookies or similar technologies. We will provide information about those technologies and, where required, ask for your consent in accordance with our Cookie Policy.

6. HOW AND WHY WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, e.g.:
(i) where you have given consent;
(ii) to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
(iii) for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract; or
(iv) for our legitimate interests or those of a third party.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We will carry out an assessment when relying on legitimate interests, to balance our interests against your own. You can obtain details of this assessment by contacting us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).

What we use your personal data for, and our reasons:

Create and manage your account with us
Reason: To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract.

Administering and judging the Competition, including receiving and validating entries and wildlife photograph submissions, arranging judging and selecting Winners
Reason: To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract (being the Competition Terms available on our Website), and for our legitimate interests in running a fair and effective Competition.

If you are a Winner of a Competition, notifying you, verifying eligibility, publishing the result and delivering or arranging the Prize
Reason:
– To perform our contract with you, including to contact you, verify your identity or eligibility where required, publish your surname and county and, where applicable, your winning photograph and arrange delivery of the Prize; and
– to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, including to notify any person who enquires about the Winner of a Competition.

Providing the Website to you
Reason: To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract (being the Website Terms of Use).

To enforce legal rights or defend or undertake legal proceedings
Reason, depending on the circumstances:
– to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
– in other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect our business, interests and rights or those of others.

Responding to enquiries and communications with you not related to marketing, including about your Account, entry, Prize, changes to our terms or policies, changes to the Services or other important notices
Reason, depending on the circumstances:
– to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
– in other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to provide the best service to you.

Protect the security of systems and data
Reason: To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. We may also use your personal data to ensure the security of systems and data to a standard that goes beyond our legal obligations, and in those cases our reasons are for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect systems and data and to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us.

Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control or to provide support to you
Reason: For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you.

Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, e.g. in relation to our performance, entrant base, Website, Competitions and functionality or other efficiency measures
Reason: For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you and improve and develop our Services.

Updating and enhancing user records
Reason, depending on the circumstances:
– to perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract (in this case, the contract means the Competition Terms or Website Terms of Use which apply to the Services)
– to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
– where neither of the above apply, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, e.g. making sure that we can keep in touch with entrants and Website users about their Accounts and use of the Services.

Processing paid Competition entry fees and any refunds, where applicable
Reason, depending on the circumstances:
– to perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract (in this case, the contract means the Competition Terms or Website Terms of Use which apply to the Services)
– to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
– where neither of the above apply, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, e.g. making sure that we can keep in touch with entrants and Website users about their Accounts and use of the Services.

To share your personal data with third parties in connection with a significant business transaction or restructuring, including a sale of the business or its assets, or in the event of our insolvency. In such cases information will be anonymised where possible and only shared where necessary.
Reason, depending on the circumstances:
– to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
– in other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect, realise or grow the value in our business and assets.

See ‘Who we share your personal data with’ for further information on the steps we will take to protect your personal data where we need to share it with others.

7. MARKETING

We intend to send you email marketing to inform you of our services such as promotions.

We will always ask you for your consent before sending you marketing communications, except where you have explicitly opted in to receiving email marketing from us in the past or except where you were given the option to opt out of email marketing when you initially signed up for your account with us and you did not do so.

You will have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:
– contacting us at [email protected]
– using the ‘unsubscribe’ link included in all marketing emails you may receive from us

We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

For more information on your right to object at any time to your personal data being used for marketing purposes, see ‘Your rights’ below.

8. WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA WITH

We routinely share personal data with service providers we use to help us run our business or provide the services or functionalities in the Services, including developers and cloud storage providers.

We only allow service providers to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers to ensure they can only use your personal data to provide services to us and to you.

We or the third parties mentioned above may occasionally also need to share your personal data with:
– external accountants or auditors, e.g. in relation to our accounts; the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations
– professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors); the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations
– law enforcement agencies, courts or tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with legal and regulatory obligations
– other parties in connection with a significant business transaction or restructuring, including a sale of the business or its assets, or in the event of our insolvency; usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible, however, the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations

If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).

We will not share your personal data with any other third party except as described in this policy or where required or permitted by law.

9. HOW LONG YOUR PERSONAL DATA WILL BE KEPT

We will keep Account data while your Account is active. We will retain Competition entries and wildlife photographs, judging records, Winner and Prize administration records, enquiries and marketing records only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, taking account of the nature and sensitivity of the data and any applicable legal, regulatory, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain relevant records for up to 6 years where necessary to comply with those requirements or to establish, pursue or defend legal claims. Access to retained data will be limited on a need-to-know basis.

Following the end of the applicable retention period, we will delete or anonymise your personal data.

10. TRANSFERRING YOUR PERSONAL DATA OUT OF THE UK

At this point in time, we do not transfer your personal data outside of the UK. If this changes, we would comply with applicable UK laws designed to ensure the continued protection and privacy of your personal data. Any updated destinations to which we send your personal data would be indicated in this section and notified to you in accordance with the section ‘Changes to this privacy policy’ below.

Furthermore, under UK data protection laws, we can only transfer your personal data to a country outside the UK where: the UK government has decided the particular country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy regulation’) further to Article 45 of the UK GDPR; there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you; or a specific exception applies under relevant data protection law.

Accordingly, if we were to start transferring your personal data from the UK to:
– The EEA: we would rely on the adequacy regulations made by the UK in respect of the EEA; for any transfers from the EU to the UK, we would rely on the adequacy decision granted to the UK by the EU.
– Any country located outside the UK/EEA: we would rely on appropriate safeguards under the UK GDPR, such as by including the relevant Standard Contractual Clauses in our data processing agreements.

In the event we could not or choose not to continue to rely on either of those mechanisms at any time we would not transfer your personal data outside the UK unless we could do so on the basis of an alternative mechanism or exception provided by UK data protection law.

11. YOUR RIGHTS

You generally have the following rights, which you can usually exercise free of charge. For more information regarding these rights, please visit the ICO website at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/

Access to a copy of your personal data: The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data.

Correction (also known as rectification): The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data.

Erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten): The right to require us to delete your personal data, in certain situations.

Restriction of use: The right to require us to restrict use of your personal data in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data.

Data portability: The right to receive the personal data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party, in certain situations.

To object to use: The right to object:
– at any time to your personal data being used for direct marketing (including profiling)
– in certain other situations to our continued use of your personal data, e.g. where we use your personal data for our legitimate interests.

Not to be subject to decisions without human involvement: The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you. We do not make any such decisions based on data collected by the Services.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they do and do not apply, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below). You may also find it helpful to refer to the guidance from the UK’s Information Commissioner on your rights under the UK GDPR.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please email us (see ‘How to contact us’ below). When contacting us please:
– provide enough information to identify yourself (e.g. your full name and username) and any additional identity information we may reasonably request from you, and
– let us know which right(s) you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.

12. KEEPING YOUR PERSONAL DATA SECURE

We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access it.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

13. HOW TO COMPLAIN

Please contact us if you have any queries or concerns about our use of your information (see ‘How to contact us’ below). We hope we will be able to resolve any issues you may have.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

14. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. When we make significant changes we will take steps to inform you, for example via the Services or by other means, such as email.

15. HOW TO CONTACT US

You can contact us by email if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you, to exercise a right under data protection law or to make a complaint.

Email: [email protected]