Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

CountryWatch is presented by Economic Associates and Proshare (“CountryWatch”, “we”, “us”), who decide how your personal data is used. Our technology partner operates the website, subscriber area and payment collection on our behalf, under our instructions.

Contact for anything in this policy: countrywatch@countrywatch.co · 0700 001 0010.

2. What we collect

• Details you give us: your name, organisation, role, work email and phone number, when you subscribe, enquire, request a seminar proposal, sign up for the newsletter or contact support; and the content of your messages.
• Account data: your password (stored only as a one-way encrypted hash, never in readable form), sign-in codes, the colleagues you give access to, your notification preferences, and records of sign-ins.
• Order and payment data: what you bought, amounts, dates, payment references and status, and, for automatic renewals, the card type, last four digits and expiry date returned by the payment provider. We never receive or store your full card number or security code.
• Usage data: which reports, data and files you open or download, copy numbers marked on protected files, conference tickets, and technical data such as your IP address and browser, used for security and to prevent account sharing.
• Email data: whether our emails are delivered.

3. Why we use it, and our legal basis

• To provide your subscription (create your account, take payment, give access, issue tickets, send receipts, renewal notices and update notices): necessary to perform our contract with you.
• To keep the service secure (sign-in codes, detecting misuse and unauthorised sharing, protecting files): our legitimate interests and our contract with you.
• To meet legal duties such as tax, VAT and accounting records: legal obligation.
• To send the newsletter and announcements: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email.
• To answer enquiries and support requests: our legitimate interests, or steps you ask us to take before entering a contract.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for advertising.

4. Who we share it with

Only with service providers that help us run CountryWatch, under contract and only for that purpose:

• Paystack (naira payments) and Flutterwave (US dollar payments);
• ZeptoMail by Zoho, which delivers our emails;
• our technology partner and its hosting provider, which run the website and store the data;
• professional advisers, auditors and authorities where the law requires it.

If your organisation bought access for you, the person who manages that subscription can see that you have access.

5. Payments and card details

You enter your card or bank details on Paystack’s or Flutterwave’s own secure page, not on countrywatch.co. They process the payment under their own privacy policies and security standards and tell us only the result and the limited details listed in section 2.

6. Cookies

We use only cookies needed for the site to work: a session cookie that keeps you signed in, and, if you choose “remember this device”, a cookie that lets you skip the emailed sign-in code on that device for up to 30 days. We use no advertising cookies and no outside analytics service. Our pages load fonts from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address to deliver them.

Visit statistics. To understand which products and campaigns interest people, our own server counts page visits, checkouts started, confirmed purchases and downloads. For this we set one cookie (cw_vid, kept up to 12 months) holding a random number, so repeat visits from the same browser are counted once. If you arrived through one of our campaign or barcode links, your browser remembers that link’s name for 30 days. These statistics contain no names, email addresses or IP addresses, are not shared with anyone, and are kept for up to 24 months.

7. How long we keep it

• Account and subscription data: while you are a subscriber, and up to two years after your last subscription ends, so you can return without starting again.
• Orders, payments and invoices: six years, as required for tax and accounting.
• Sign-in records and file-access logs: up to 12 months, unless needed to investigate misuse.
• Newsletter contacts: until you unsubscribe.

After that, we delete the data or make it anonymous.

8. How we protect it

The website uses encrypted (HTTPS) connections. Passwords are stored as one-way hashes, sign-ins can require an emailed code, downloadable files are encrypted with a password unique to each copy, and staff access to subscriber data is limited and password-protected. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affecting your data occurs, we will notify you and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission as the law requires.

9. Your rights

Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal data we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct data that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete your data, where we no longer need it or have no legal reason to keep it;
• restrict or object to our use of it, or move it to another provider;
• withdraw your consent to marketing at any time.

Email countrywatch@countrywatch.co and we will respond within 30 days. You can also complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (ndpc.gov.ng).

10. Transfers outside Nigeria

Some of our providers (for example, our email delivery service) may store or process data outside Nigeria. Where they do, we rely on safeguards recognised by the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, such as contractual protections.

11. Changes and contact

We may update this policy. The version and date at the top of this page show which applies, and we will email subscribers about important changes. Questions or requests: countrywatch@countrywatch.co · 0700 001 0010.