The Spamhaus Project

Privacy Notice

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Introduction

Introduction

The Spamhaus Project respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit or interact with our website (regardless of where you visit it from).

This privacy notice is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below. Please also use the Glossary to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy notice.

  1. IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE
  2. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
  3. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
  4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
  5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
  6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
  7. DATA SECURITY
  8. DATA RETENTION
  9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
  10. GLOSSARY

1. Important information and who we are

PURPOSE OF THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

This privacy notice gives you information on how the Spamhaus Project collects, uses, discloses and otherwise processes your personal data through your use and interaction with of www.spamhaus.org. This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children. It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

CONTROLLER

The Spamhaus Project is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Spamhaus”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

CONTACT DETAILS

We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, use the contact form available here to contact the data privacy manager.

Our full details are: Full name of legal entity: The Spamhaus Project SLU, Address: C. Prat de la Creu, 59-65, Esc D, 5, AD500 Andorra la Vella, Andorra

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY NOTICE AND YOUR DUTY TO INFORM US OF CHANGES

This version was last updated on 29 February 2024.

THIRD-PARTY LINKS

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements or practices. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

2. The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified or that relates to you. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows:

  • Identity Data - includes first name, last name, and username or similar identifier.
  • Contact Data - includes postal address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Technical Data - includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
  • Profile Data - includes your username and password, requests made by you, and any account preferences.
  • Usage Data - includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
  • Marketing and Communications - includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
  • Enquiry information – includes any information included within and relating to your contact/enquiry with us.

We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect aggregated data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

We do not collect any Special Categories of personal data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

IF YOU FAIL TO PROVIDE PERSONAL DATA

Where we need to collect personal under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. How is your personal data collected

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions: You may give us your Identity and Contact Data by filling in forms, by corresponding with us through the contact form and communications centre . This includes personal data you provide when you:

  • request delisting from the Spamhaus Block List (“SBL”), the **Spamhaus Exploits Block List **(“XBL”), the Spamhaus Policy Block List (“PBL”), the Spamhaus Domain Block List (“DBL”), and/or the Spamhaus Don't Route Or Peer lists (“DROP”);
  • submit malicious activity or threats via the Threat Intel Community form;
  • submit information via the contact form or communications centre on our website;
  • create an account on our website;
  • report a problem with our website; or
  • give us some feedback.

Automated technologies or interactions: As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.

Third parties or publicly available sources: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:

  • Technical Data from Google Analytics and Cloudflare.
  • Identity Data and Profile Data from Google, LinkedIn or Github to login or authenticate a login to your account.
  • Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources such as Companies House and Whois.

4. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when we have a valid legal reason to process your personal data (known as a ‘lawful basis’) The purposes for which we use your Personal Information and (where relevant) the lawful basis’ on which we rely, is as follows: Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/ActivityType of dataLawful basis for processing
To register you as a new customer(a) Identity

(b) Contact
(a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) To comply with our legal obligations in respect of required compliance checks to verify your identity
To manage our relationship with you which will include notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile
a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

(c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services)
To register your account with us(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile
(a) Necessary for your legitimate interest (in providing you with an account to submit malicious activity reports to us or for access to the Threat Intel Portal)
To respond to your requests and communications to us(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile
a) Necessary for our and your legitimate interests (to support you with your requests and enquires)
To respond to customer service requests and communications(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile
a) Necessary for our and your legitimate interests (to support you with your requests and enquires)
To provide you with service messages relating to our services provided to you(a) Identity

(b) Contact
(a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for managing and running our business)
To respond to requests/complaints we receive relating to the processing of your Personal Information as described in this Privacy notice(a) Identity

(b) Contact
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation to respond to such requests/complaints
To contact you via email, and phone with marketing communications relating to our products and services (including promotions)(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Marketing & Communications
(a) Where you have provided your consent
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Technical
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences(a) Technical

(b) Usage
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To gather and provide information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies or law enforcement authorities, and to assist service providers through actor attribution within the Register of Known Spam Operations database (“ROKSO”)(a) Identity

(b) Technical

(c) Profile
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests in preventing fraud

(b) Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest

(c) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To respond to claims and complaints that we receive(a) Identity

(b) Contact
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests in defending any actual or potential legal claims
To enable us to reorganise, restructure, sell or licence our business or its assets(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Technical

(d) Usage

(e) Marketing & Communications

(f) Enquiry

(g) Payment
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for managing and running our business)

Where we rely on consent as a legal basis (set out above), you may at any time withdraw your consent for us to use your information in any of the ways set out above. Please see Your Legal Rights for further details.

COOKIES

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy .

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in Section 4 above.

  • Internal Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
  • External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
  • Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them.
  • Third parties to whom we are under a duty to disclose or share your information in order to comply with any legal or regulatory obligation or request, including by the police, tribunals, regulators, the government or related agencies.

6. International transfers

Many of our Internal Third Parties and External Third Parties are based outside the UK so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK. In accordance with applicable data protection laws, we implement measures imposing conditions on the recipient, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, EU standard contractual clauses or declarations by regulators or governments (e.g. adequacy decisions) to ensure that any transferred personal information remains protected and secure and your rights are protected.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

7. Data security

SECURITY MEASURES

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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

8. Data retention

HOW LONG WILL YOU USE MY PERSONAL DATA FOR?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

10. Glossary

LAWFUL BASIS

Legitimate Interest means in your interests, or the interests of our business. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

THIRD PARTIES

Internal third parties

Other companies in the Spamhaus group of companies acting as joint controllers and who are based in Andorra and the United States and provide IT and system administration services and undertake leadership reporting.

External third parties

  • Service providers acting as processors based in the Netherlands and the US who provide IT and system administration services.
  • Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you. We may not provide you with a copy of your personal data if this concerns other individuals or we have another lawful reason to withhold that information.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and you want to object to processing on this ground. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it. In these situations, we may only process your Personal Information whilst its processing is restricted if we have your consent or are legally permitted to do so, for example for storage purposes, to protect the rights of another individual or company or in connection with legal proceedings.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent. If you would like to withdraw your consent to receiving any direct marketing to which you previously opted-in, you can also do so using our unsubscribe tool.

Complain to a data protection regulator (which in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)) if you are concerned about the way we have processed your personal information. Please visit the ICO’s website for further details.

The Spamhaus Project