DC Thomson is one of the leading media businesses in the UK, with a proud heritage of creating trusted brands that enlighten and entertain audiences across the globe. Established in 1905 and with our headquarters in Dundee, we are a privately owned, family run business with people, customers and communities at our heart. While our roots are firmly in publishing, with a portfolio of newspapers and magazines, we’ve diversified into digital technology, radio, TV and events. You can find out all about our brands by visiting our website, here.
FAQs
Find answers to frequently asked questions:
Across DC Thomson we have teams dedicated to each of our many brands, for example Beano, Stylist and bunkered. Some of these brands are also separate companies, under DC Thomson’s ownership. The main change we’re making is to help our different brands and companies work more closely together, as a single organisation.
This means that if you’ve previously given your personal data to our colleagues in a DC Thomson-owned company – for example if you’ve subscribed to Stylist or a bunkered newsletter – DC Thomson as a whole is now taking responsibility for keeping it safe and protecting your privacy.
In legal terms, DC Thomson & Co. Ltd has become what is known as a ‘joint controller’ of your personal data, in partnership with the DC Thomson company you first gave it to. D.C. Thomson & Co Ltd is registered with the UK’s Information Commissioner, registered number Z5748964.
It’s important that you know who’s responsible for your data and this why we’ve written to you. It’s also the reason why we’ve created a brand-new privacy policy, to explain how we handle your personal data as clearly and helpfully as we can.
We’re always trying to improve how we do things. Bringing our colleagues together to work as a single organisation will help us become more efficient and make better use of technology. For our customers, these improvements mean we’ll be able to serve you better whenever you use a DC Thomson product.
DC Thomson & Co. Ltd has now become a ‘joint controller’ of your personal data, in partnership with the DC Thomson company you gave it to. Over the next few months, we’ll make the same change for customers of our other companies and brands and we’ll write to them as well. The reason we’re managing this process gradually is to ensure we get it absolutely right and have time to answer customers’ questions along the way.
These changes don’t affect your marketing preferences. If you’ve already told us you’d prefer not to receive marketing, we won’t send you any. You’ll always stay in charge of your preferences and can change them at any time.
Absolutely not – you can be assured that we don’t sell your data.
This will depend on how you’ve interacted with us. For example, if you subscribe to one of our printed magazines, we’ll process the personal data we need to manage your subscription and deliver your magazine to you. Alternatively, if you’ve signed up to receive a regular newsletter, we might only process your name and email address. You can find more detailed information on the data we collect in our privacy policy.
We don’t want to publish the new Privacy Policy until we’ve told everyone that it will apply to. We’ll publish it as soon as we’ve done that. In the meantime, it does apply to you and you can refer to a copy of it here.
We’re making these changes gradually, to ensure we get them absolutely right and that we have time to answer customers’ questions along the way. This means that if you subscribe to another of our brands, we may write to you about that brand as well, but we’ll do our best not to contact you unnecessarily.
No, you’ll still be looked after by our friendly Customer Experience team.
No, these changes will have no effect on your subscription.
Under UK Data Protection law (including UK GDPR), we’re entitled to make these changes without asking customers’ permission. This is because we believe we have a fair and reasonable business justification for the changes, referred to as a ‘legitimate interest’ under UK GDPR. However, we know customers would want to know about the changes, which is why we’ve written to you. If you’re not happy with the changes, you can read more about your rights in our privacy policy.
You can read more about your rights in our privacy policy. If you’d like to exercise your rights (for example, if you want to object to us processing your personal data), please contact our Customer Experience team on 01382 575764. They’re available from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
If there’s something you’re not happy about, we’d like to know about it. Please contact our Customer Experience team on 01382 575764, from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and we’ll do our best to make things better.