Privacy Policy

A. Introduction

The privacy of our website visitors is very important to us, and we are committed to safeguarding it. This policy explains what we will do with your personal information.

Consenting to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy when you first visit our website permits us to use cookies every time you visit our website.

B. Collecting personal information

The following types of personal information may be collected, stored, and used:

• Information about your computer including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, and operating system;
• Information about your visits to and use of this website including the referral source, length of visit, page views, and website navigation paths;
• Information, such as your email address, that you enter when you register with our website;
• Information that you enter when you create a profile on our website—for example, your name, profile pictures, gender, birthday, relationship status, interests and hobbies, educational details, and employment details;
• Information, such as your name and email address, that you enter in order to set up subscriptions to our emails and/or newsletters;
• Information that you enter while using the services on our website;
• Information that is generated while using our website, including when, how often, and under what circumstances you use it;
• Information relating to anything you purchase, services you use, or transactions you make through our website, which includes your name, address, telephone number, email address, and credit card details;
• Information that you post to our website with the intention of publishing it on the internet, which includes your username, profile pictures, and the content of your posts;
• Information contained in any communications that you send to us by email or through our website, including its communication content and metadata;
• Any other personal information that you send to us.

Before you disclose to us the personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with this policy

C. Using your personal information

Personal information submitted to us through our website will be used for the purposes specified in this policy or on the relevant pages of the website. We may use your personal information for the following:

• Administering our website and business;
• Personalizing our website for you;
• Enabling your use of the services available on our website;
• Sending you goods purchased through our website;
• Supplying services purchased through our website;
• Sending statements, invoices, and payment reminders to you, and collecting payments from you;
• Sending you non-marketing commercial communications;
• Sending you email notifications that you have specifically requested;
• Sending you our email newsletter, if you have requested it (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter);
• Sending you marketing communications relating to our business or the businesses of carefully-selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you, by post or, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications);
• Providing third parties with statistical information about our users (but those third parties will not be able to identify any individual user from that information);
• Dealing with inquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our website;
• Keeping our website secure and prevent fraud;
• Verifying compliance with the terms and conditions governing the use of our website (including monitoring private messages sent through our website private messaging service)
• And other uses…

If you submit personal information for publication on our website, we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the license you grant to us.

Your privacy settings can be used to limit the publication of your information on our website and can be adjusted using privacy controls on the website.

We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for their or any other third party’s direct marketing.

D. Disclosing personal information

We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, committee members, or subcontractors as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information:

• To the extent that we are required to do so by law;
• In connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;
• In order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
• To the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and
• To any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.

Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your personal information to third parties.

E. Security of your personal information

We will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information.

We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers.

All electronic financial transactions entered into through our website will be protected by encryption technology.

You acknowledge that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential; we will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our website).

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F. Amendments

We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you understand any changes to this policy. We may notify you of changes to this policy by email or through the private messaging system on our website.

G. Right of Access

You have the right to ask us whether or not we are using or storing your personal information. You can also ask us for copies of your personal information, verbally or in writing.

This is called the right of access and is commonly known as making a subject access request or SAR.

Provision of such information will be subject to the following:

• The payment of a £30 fee (For administrative costs); and
• The supply of appropriate evidence of your identity (Full name, and photocopy of passport)

We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.

In practice, you will usually either expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, or we will provide you with an opportunity to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.

H. Third party websites

Our website includes hyperlinks to, and details of, third party websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.

I. Updating information

Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

J. Cookies

We use cookies to help us provide you with a personalised service, and to help make our websites, applications and services better for you.
 
Our cookies may be session cookies (temporary cookies that identify and track users within our websites, applications or services  which are deleted when you close your browser or leave your session in the application or service) or persistent cookies (cookies which enable our websites, applications or services  to “remember” who you are and to remember your preferences within our websites, applications or services  and which will stay on your computer or device after you close your browser or leave your session in the application or service).

We use the following different types of cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies 

These are cookies which are needed for our websites, applications or services to function properly, for example, these cookies allow you to access secure areas of our website or to remember what you have put into your shopping basket.

Performance cookies and analytics technologies

These cookies collect information about how visitors and users use our websites, applications and services, for instance which functionality visitors use most often, and if they get error messages from areas of the websites, applications or services. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor or user. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. We only use these cookies to improve how our website, applications and services work.

Functionality cookies

These cookies allow our websites, applications and services to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

Targeting or advertising cookies

These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operators’ permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers. Quite often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organisation.

Web beacons and parameter tracking 

We also use cookies and similar software known as web beacons to count users who have visited our website after clicking through from one of our advertisements on another website or in emails and to collect details of any products or services purchased. These web beacons collect limited information which does not identify particular individuals. It is not possible to refuse the use of web beacons. However, because they are used in conjunction with cookies, you can effectively disable them by setting your browser to restrict or block cookies. 

IP Address and traffic data

We keep a record of traffic data which is logged automatically by our servers, such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address, device information, the website that you visited before ours and the website you visit after leaving our site. We also collect some site, application and service statistics such as access rates, page hits and page views. We are not able to identify any individual from traffic data or site statistics. 

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies—for example:

in Internet Explorer (version 10) you can block cookies using the cookie handling override settings available by clicking “Tools,” “Internet Options,” “Privacy,” and then “Advanced”;

in Firefox (version 24) you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools,” “Options,” “Privacy,” selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, and unticking “Accept cookies from sites”; and

in Chrome (version 29), you can block all cookies by accessing the “Customize and control” menu, and clicking “Settings,” “Show advanced settings,” and “Content settings,” and then selecting “Block sites from setting any data” under the “Cookies” heading.

Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.