4.2. We may collect personal information about you from a number of sources, including the following:
4.2.1. From you when you agree to take a service or product from us, in which case this may include your contact details, date of birth, how you will pay for the product or service and your bank details.
4.2.2. From you when you contact us with an enquiry or in response to a communication from us, in which case, this may tell us something about how you use our services.
4.2.3. From documents that are available to the public, such as the electoral register.
4.2.4. From third parties to whom you have provided information with your consent to pass it on to other organisations or persons – when we receive such information, we will let you know as soon as is reasonably practicable.
4.3. If you refuse to provide information requested, then if that information is necessary for a service we provide to you we may need to stop providing that service.
4.4. At the time of collecting information, by whichever method is used, we’ll endeavour to alert you and inform you about our purposes and legal basis for processing that information, as well as whether we intend to share the information with anyone else or send it outside of the European Economic Area. If at any point you think we’ve invited you to provide information without explaining why, feel free to object and ask for our reasons.
5. Using your personal information
5.1. Data protection, privacy and security are important to us, and we shall only use your personal information for specified purposes and shall not keep such personal information longer than is necessary to fulfil these purposes. The following are examples of such purposes. We have also indicated below which GDPR justification applies, however it will depend on the circumstances of each case. At the time of collecting, we will provide further information, and you may always ask for further information from us.
5.1.1. To help us to identify you when you contact us. This will normally be necessary for the performance our contract.
5.1.2. To help us to identify accounts, services and/or products which you could have from us or selected partners from time to time. We may do this by automatic means using a scoring system, which uses the personal information you’ve provided and/or any information we hold about you and personal information from third party agencies (including credit reference agencies). We will only use your information for this purpose if you agree to it.
5.1.3. To help us to administer and to contact you about improved administration of any accounts, services and products we have provided before, do provide now or will or may provide in the future. This will often be necessary, but sometimes the improvements will not be necessary in which case we will ask whether you agree.
5.1.4. To allow us to carry out marketing analysis and customer profiling (including with transactional information), conduct research, including creating statistical and testing information. This will sometimes require that you consent, but will sometimes be exempt as market research.
5.1.5. To help to prevent and detect fraud or loss. This will only be done in certain circumstances when we consider it necessary or the law requires it.
5.1.6. To allow us to contact you by written electronic means (such as email, text or multimedia messages) about products and services offered by us where:
5.1.6.1. these products are similar to those you have already purchased from us,
5.1.6.2. you were given the opportunity to opt out of being contacted by us at the time your personal information was originally collected by us and at the time of our subsequent communications with you, and
5.1.6.3. you have not opted out of us contacting you.
5.1.7. To allow us to contact you in any way (including mail, email, telephone, visit, text or multimedia messages) about products and services offered by us and selected partners where you have expressly consented to us doing so.
5.1.8. We may monitor and record communications with you (including phone conversations and emails) for quality assurance and compliance.
5.1.8.1. Before doing that, we will always tell you of our intentions and of the specific purpose in making the recording. Sometimes such recordings will be necessary to comply with the law. Alternatively, sometimes the recording will be necessary for our legitimate interest, but in that case we’ll only record the call if our interest outweighs yours. This will depend on all the circumstances, in particular the importance of the information and whether we can obtain the information another way that’s less intrusive.
5.1.8.2. If we think the recording would be useful for us but that it’s not necessary we’ll ask whether you consent to the recording, and will provide an option for you to tell us that you consent. In those situations, if you don’t consent, the call will either automatically end or will not be recorded.
5.1.9. When it’s required by law, we’ll check your details with fraud prevention agencies. If you provide false or inaccurate information and we suspect fraud, we intend to record this.
5.2. We will not disclose your personal information to any third party except in accordance with this Notice, and in particular in these circumstances:
5.2.1. They will be processing the data on our behalf as a data processor (where we’ll be the data controller). In that situation, we’ll always have a contract with the data processor as set out in the GDPR. This contract provides significant restrictions as to how the data processor operates so that you can be confident your data is protected to the same degree as provided in this Notice.
5.2.2. Sometimes it might be necessary to share data with another data controller. Before doing that we’ll always tell you. Note that if we receive information about you from a third party, then as soon as reasonably practicable afterwards we’ll let you know; that’s required by the GDPR.
5.2.3. Alternatively, sometimes we might consider it to be in your interest to send your information to a third party. If that’s the case, we’ll always ask whether you agree before sending.
5.3. Where you give us personal information on behalf of someone else, you confirm that you have provided them with the information set out in this Notice and that they have not objected to such use of their personal information.
5.4. In connection with any transaction which we enter into with you:
5.4.1. If you provide false or inaccurate information to us and we suspect fraud, we will record this and may share it with other people and organisations. We, and other credit and insurance organisations, may also use technology to detect and prevent fraud.
5.4.2. We may need to transmit the payment and delivery information provided by you during the order process for the purpose of obtaining authorisation from your bank.
5.5. We may allow other people and organisations to use personal information we hold about you in the following circumstances:
5.5.1. If we, or substantially all of our assets, are acquired or are in the process of being acquired by a third party, in which case personal information held by us, about our customers, will be one of the transferred assets.
5.5.2. If we have been legitimately asked to provide information for legal or regulatory purposes or as part of legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings.
5.5.3. We may employ companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf and we may disclose your personal information to these parties for the purposes set out above, for example, for fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and email, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links) and providing customer service. Those parties will be bound by strict contractual provisions with us and will only have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, and they may not use it for any other purpose. Further, they must process the personal information in accordance with this Notice and as permitted by the GDPR. From time to time, these other people and organisations to whom we may pass your personal information may be outside the European Economic Area. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this Notice and the GDPR.
6. Protecting information
6.1. We have strict security measures to protect personal information.
6.2. We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using appropriate technology to encrypt information you input.
6.3. We reveal only the last five digits of your credit card numbers when confirming an order. Of course, we transmit the entire credit card number to the appropriate credit card company during order processing.
6.4. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of personally identifiable customer information. Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.
6.5. It is important for you to protect against unauthorised access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer.
7. The internet
7.1. If you communicate with us using the internet, we may occasionally email you about our services and products. When you first give us personal information through the Website, we will normally give you the opportunity to say whether you would prefer that we don’t contact you by email. You can also always send us an email (at the address set out below) at any time if you change your mind.
7.2. Please remember that communications over the internet, such as emails and webmails (messages sent through a website), are not secure unless they have been encrypted. Your communications may go through a number of countries before they are delivered – this is the nature of the internet. We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that is beyond our control.
8. Cookies and other internet tracking technology
8.1. When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. This sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your computer, which is sent back to us at a later time. These are called ‘cookies’. These cookies are listed in the table at clause 8.5. Some websites don’t use cookies but use related technology for gaining information about website users such as JavaScript, web beacons (also known as action tags or single-pixel gifs), and other technologies to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalise advertising content. Multiple cookies may be found in a single file depending on which browser you use.
8.2. Where applicable, this section of the Notice also relates to that technology but the term ‘cookie’ is used throughout.
8.3. Some of these cookies are essential to services you’ve requested from us, whereas others are used to improve services for you, for example through:
8.3.1. Letting you navigate between pages efficiently
8.3.2. Enabling a service to recognise your computer so you don’t have to give the same information during one task
8.3.3. Recognising that you have already given a username and password so you don’t need to enter it for every web page requested
8.3.4. Measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and that there is enough capacity to ensure they are fast
8.4. To learn more about cookies, you may wish to visit: www.allaboutcookies.org,
www.youronlinechoices.eu or www.google.com/policies/technologies/