NOW Privacy and Cookies Notice

Introduction and scope

This privacy and cookies notice applies to the processing of personal data by NOW, including information we collect and store via cookies. NOW is a trading name of:

  • Sky UK Limited, if you access our UK products and services or our online digital platforms, or
  • Sky Ireland Limited acting as agent for Sky Subscribers Services Limited (Irish branch), if you access our Irish products and services or online digital platforms.

References in this policy to “Sky”, “NOW”, “we” “us” or “our” should be interpreted accordingly.

The processing explained in this notice may be carried out by Sky or other data controllers in the Sky group of companies (including Sky Subscribers Services Limited, Sky In-Home Service Limited and Sky Retail Stores Limited).

References to Comcast refer to the parent company of Sky, Comcast Corporation, 500 Gravers Road Suite 3000 Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462 United States.

If you access the products and services or online and digital platforms of other Sky brands and businesses, you should refer to their privacy notices.

Information we collect and how we use it

Information you provide to us

Contact Details & Account Information

Contact details and other information on or about your account. This includes your:

  • name
  • address
  • contact information (such as phone numbers and email addresses)
  • date of birth
  • account number
  • marketing preferences
  • payment information

Product Holdings

Information about the products and services you have (or enquired about) or previously had, and your (i) interactions with us about those products and services; (ii) payment and offer history in respect of them.

Customer Service Interaction Data & CCTV Data

This includes:

  • records of your customer service interactions with us, such as call recordings and records of your conversations and correspondence with us.
  • images recorded by cameras fitted to engineer vans.

Special category data

This includes health data or other special category data.

Information we collect automatically

Viewing Data, Usage Data and User Generated Content

Information about how you or your household use, access, view, share, contribute to, or otherwise interact with NOW products, services, apps, content and websites.

This includes the content you watch and how long you watch it for (we call this viewing activity), as well as content you add to your Watchlist

Device Information & Telemetry Data

This includes technical information, including diagnostic (such as errors and system statuses), traffic and location data.

Product Analytics

This includes information about your household’s use of NOW, and/or third party content, products, services and apps such as your:

  • device, machine or browser
  • how you use our or third party apps, products and services (e.g. time spent watching content or within apps, how you navigate the user interface); and
  • the devices you use or have connected to your NOW devices.

IP Addresses & Online Identifiers

This includes information from the devices you use to communicate with websites and applications on the internet, such as:

  • IP addresses
  • MAC addresses
  • unique identification numbers
  • online identifiers (for example, device IDs and advertising IDs)
  • browser information

Information from third parties

Third Party Data

Information we obtain from third parties, including:

  • address verification data
  • contact information
  • modelled household profile information (such as affluence and household composition)
  • personal data that is publicly available
  • personal data relating to your financial circumstances and payment performance (such as county court judgments and payment history against other credit agreements).

More information about certain activities

AdSmart is Sky’s tailored TV advertising solution and is used on Sky’s and Virgin’s TV platforms. AdSmart allows us to show adverts within your TV services on NOW to the people most likely to be interested in the products and services being promoted.

With AdSmart, Sky can show different adverts to different households (in groups of 5,000 or more across Sky and Virgin households) watching the same programme or service. To do this we create a profile about a household comprising factors like interests, age and location using the information you have provided to us, information about your use of our products and services, and information we have acquired from other organisations, and which we may combine with information received from brands wishing to target their advertising to a particular audience. We use this profile information to define groups of audiences to whom we send adverts.

As part of showing these adverts, we also carry out quality and frequency checks, such as whether adverts were displayed correctly and how often particular adverts have been shown.

PromoSmart uses the same process described above to deliver tailored promotions (e.g. for upcoming content) within your TV services.

To the extent any special category data (for example, data concerning health) is processed within AdSmart, NOW relies on your consent for such processing.

If you don’t want your data to be processed for AdSmart & PromoSmart let us know using one of the methods in the “Managing Your Preferences” section below. You will still see adverts and promotions within your TV services, but they may be less relevant to you.

We also work with Virgin Media to enable AdSmart for their customers on their TV platforms. This works in the same way as AdSmart on Sky as described above. If you do not want to receive tailored advertising (including AdSmart) on Virgin Media's TV platforms, you need to manage your preferences with Virgin Media directly.

More information about how AdSmart can be used by advertisers can be found here.

How we share your information

Sharing with third parties

Sometimes we share information with suppliers and partners to provide our services and for the other purposes described above. We only share information with these companies where necessary or where we have a legitimate reason to do so and only where we are satisfied that they have appropriate security measures and controls in place to protect your personal data. When these companies act on our behalf, they will only process your personal data in accordance with our instructions and for the reasons set out in this notice.

Some of our suppliers and partners process personal data outside of the UK or EEA (as applicable). We ensure that these companies have measures in place to comply with their obligations under UK or Irish data protection law, and we will only transfer personal data to these companies where we can rely on an approved data transfer mechanism, such as a UK Government or EU Commission adequacy decision or by including the appropriate Standard Contractual Clauses in our contracts with these companies. NOW typically relies on the Standard Contractual Clauses available here, together with the ICO’s data transfer addendum (where appropriate).

You can see more information below about how we share your information with third parties.

Credit reference agencies (Experian, Equifax and CRIF) fraud and crime prevention agencies (CIFAS) and other communications providers and banks with whom we have a shared interest in combating fraud and piracy

Data brokers

Debt collection agencies

Payment service providers

Customer service centres

Couriers

Engineer services firms

Information technology companies and service providers

Communication providers

Loyalty / promotional partners

Marketing companies

Promotional and reward fulfilment partners

Third party partners

Other nominated individuals

Courts, law enforcement agencies, government bodies, regulators

Business successors

Sharing with Sky Group and Comcast Group Companies

We share personal data with other companies:

  • in the Sky Group (more information available here);
  • in the Comcast Group, specifically Comcast Corporation and Comcast Cable Communications LLC (“Comcast”); and
  • in the NBCUniversal Group, specifically Peacock TV Emea Ltd (“NBCU”)

We share such personal data where necessary to provide our services and for the other purposes described in this notice. Please also be aware that:

  • we share personal data with Comcast, to support the development, operation, performance and infrastructure of our products and services. This includes viewing data, product analytics data, telemetry data and voice data. Comcast companies may process this personal data in the USA and India; and
  • we share data showing how many customers have watched NBCUniversal or Peacock content on NOW with NBCU.

As with our suppliers and partners, we only transfer data to Comcast Group companies based in the US or other countries outside the UK or EEA where we can rely on an approved transfer mechanism. For these transfers, NOW typically relies on the appropriate Standard Contractual Clauses together with the ICO’s data transfer addendum.

Keeping your data up to date and your rights

Please contact us via My Account or via live chat on the NOW website to update, amend, correct your information. You also have the following rights:

  • to request access to, or erasure of, the personal data we hold about you (we explain more about this below)
  • to request us to restrict the processing of the personal data we hold about you
  • to object to us processing personal data relating to you
  • where you have given us consent to process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time
  • you have the right to obtain certain personal data from us in a format that can be transferred electronically to a third party (also called “data portability”).

Please note that some of these rights are not absolute. In some cases, for example, we may refuse a request to exercise particular rights if complying with it meant that we are no longer able to meet our contractual obligation to provide you with particular products and services, or if we had a legal obligation or right not to comply with the request. However, we will keep you informed as to the actions that we can take when you make your request.

If you are a NOW UK customer and wish to exercise your right of access, erasure or portability, please click here and follow the steps. If you are a NOW Ireland customer or wish to exercise your other rights, please contact NOW via live chat.

Managing your preferences

Direct marketing and tailored advertising

You can always choose not to receive direct marketing or tailored advertising (including AdSmart) from us in the following ways:

  • via the My Details page when you log into nowtv.com;
  • by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link or replying STOP in any SMS you receive from us; and
  • contacting NOW via live chat and explaining that you wish to opt out of direct marketing or tailored advertising (as appropriate).

When you make a request not to receive marketing, it can take us up to one month to process that request.

If you receive direct marketing from other Sky group companies or in relation to other Sky services (such as Sky TV, Sky Broadband, Sky Mobile, or Sky WiFi) you can choose not to by contacting them directly.

Tailored and personalised content recommendations

If you don’t want to receive recommendations for content based on your viewing history when you’re browsing NOW, you can opt out via the My Details page when you log into nowtv.com or one of the other methods above. This will switch off recommendations for both content within your membership and content you’d need an additional membership to watch.

Profiling

Through automated processing of data, we can get a good understanding of what our customers like, so we can match our products and services to your needs. If you’re opted into marketing, we sometimes send you tailored offers for products and services that we think you will like. If you’re opted into newsletters, we may also personalise these based on content you’ve watched or which we think you will enjoy. This also affects tailored TV advertising and sharing your data with the social media platforms you use (as explained in “How we share your information for online and digital advertising”).

You can choose to opt out of profiling by:

  • contacting NOW via live chat and explaining that you wish to opt out of profiling; and
  • emailing preferences@nowtv.com

Cookies Notice

Cookies are created when you visit a website or use an app. They are small files that are stored on your device and used to customise your experience.

When you access NOWTV.com for the first time you will be asked to set your cookie preferences for the site.

To help you make your choices this notice explains how we use cookies and similar technologies to collect information when you access our services and how we use that information. We also explain when and how you can manage your cookie preferences.

We use cookies to make your use of our sites and apps quicker, easier and more relevant to you. If you don’t turn these cookies on it may affect your browsing experience. To avoid impacting your browsing experience cookies need to be enabled in your browser settings.

What do we use cookies for?

Essential cookies

These cookies are needed to provide the content, product or service you have asked for. We use essential cookies for the following purposes:

  • Keeping you logged in during your visit or across multiple visits when you choose to stay signed in.
  • Enabling you to stream content properly.
  • Making sure that what you’ve added to your basket is still there when you get to the checkout and to personalise our ‘abandoned basket’ marketing (where we are permitted to send you marketing) described in our Privacy Notice above.
  • Make sure our website is working properly
  • Remembering if you've been to the site or app before.
  • Making content recommendations based on other content you have watched.
  • Enabling features of our service including Continue Watching, More Like This and Watchlists.

Performance cookies

We use cookies to help improve our products. For example:

  • To keep track of what pages, content and links are popular and which ones don't get used.
  • To see how users navigate through our sites and apps, when error messages appear and what caused them.
  • To see how effective our adverts are.

The information collected using these cookies is grouped with the information from everyone else so we can see overall patterns rather than individual activity. When given the option, we recommend you turn on cookies used for these purposes.

Advertising & marketing cookies

In addition, cookies are used for advertising and marketing purposes. These cookies are used to identify your interests by understanding how you interact with our sites and apps and your web browsing activity. We do this so that we and our trusted partners can:

  • Tailor the advertising you see on our and third party sites and apps to your interests (this is known as online behavioral advertising) whilst limiting the number of times you see the same advert.
  • Link to social networks who may use the information to target advertising to you on their platforms.
  • Tailor the advertising you see on our and third party sites and apps for our own Sky products.
  • Measure the effectiveness of adverts and content you’re shown, including where and how often they’re shown and any action you took in relation to them.

If you don’t turn these cookies on when given the option you will still see the same amount of advertising and marketing, but it is less likely to be of interest to you.

How long do our cookies stay on your device?

When you set your cookie preferences on NOWTV.com we will remember those preferences. We will ask you again to confirm your preferences after 180 days, unless we add new cookies or use non-essential cookies for different purposes in the meantime, in which case we will ask you to confirm your preferences again when we make those changes.

Managing your cookie preferences on NOWTV.com

We don’t give you the option to turn off essential cookies when you manage your cookie preferences because these cookies are necessary to make our sites and apps function properly.

For the other categories of cookies referred to above, you can control how they are used on NOWTV.com. After you have made your initial choice, you can change your preferences via the ‘Privacy options’ link in the footer of the site.

Other ways to manage your cookie preferences

Most browsers allow you to see what cookies you have on your device and to clear them all or individually. To find out how to do this, go to allaboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a variety of browsers.

Please remember that any settings you change will not just affect the cookies we use. The changes will apply to all websites you visit unless you choose to block cookies only from specific sites.

Deleting cookies means that settings you have made on a site or app will be lost. If you’ve set your preferences to opt out of cookies, this setting will be lost too if that information is stored in a cookie. Blocking all cookies means functionality on our sites and apps may be lost. Therefore, we don’t recommend turning all cookies off when using our sites and apps.

How long we keep your information

In this section, we explain the categories of personal data that we may keep, the periods applied and our reasons for keeping them.

These categories of data include member contact information, the addresses where we have provided services, account, account correspondence with notes and complaints, payment card and financial history. We keep this information for business, legal and regulatory purposes. Some of the legal reasons why we keep this data are: tax purposes, to enable us to defend potential legal claims under the statutory periods set out in the Limitation Act 1980 (for Sky UK Limited and other Sky companies based in England and Wales) or the Statute of Limitations, 1957 (as amended) (for Sky Ireland Limited). We will also need to keep some information to demonstrate compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018, for example, where we need to evidence compliance with suppression requests. This information is also helpful if we receive customer enquiries or complaints, and to verify your identity when you contact NOW.

These records are retained securely for 7 years after your account is cancelled. After this time they will either be securely deleted or anonymised. Some categories of data are deleted sooner where the data is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected. For example, call records are retained for 24 months and payment information is deleted 2 years after an account is closed or becomes inactive. For NOW Broadband, account closure occurs on the day your services cease, and for NOW , an account becomes inactive a year after you have last purchased a Now membership. Please read the ‘Keeping your data up to date and your rights’ above to understand how to get in touch to discuss a right to erasure request.

Complaints

If you wish to make a complaint about how we use your information, please Contact Us here and we will do our best to help. You may find our Customer Complaints Code of Practice helpful. If you are still unhappy, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office via their website or the Irish Data Protection Commissioner via their website.

Contacting NOW

If you have any queries or comments about this privacy and cookies notice, please contact Sky’s Data Protection Officer via dp.department@sky.uk.

Changes to this notice

We will occasionally update our privacy and cookies notice. We will post a notice of any material changes on our website prior to implementing the changes, and, where appropriate, notify you using any of the contact details we hold for you for this purpose. This may include phone, SMS, e-mail, post or interactive social media. We encourage you to periodically review our notice to be informed of how we use your information.

This privacy and cookies notice was last updated 22 February 2024