Privacy Policy

1. Introduction and General Terms

We are committed to protecting you, your company and/or your family's personal information when you are using our services. We want our services to be safe and enjoyable environments for our website and program users. This Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us through our website or programs. In order to provide you with our full range of services, we are sometimes required to collect information about you. This privacy policy explains the following:

what information we may collect about you;
how we will use information we collect about you;
when we may use your details to contact you;
whether we will disclose your details to anyone else;
your choices regarding the personal information you have provided to us;
the use of cookies on our website.

As set out above, we are committed to safeguarding your personal information. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Data Protection Act 1998 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the "data protection laws"). This website contains hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, including cookies, and we urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit or are collected by cookies whilst visiting these websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.

2. What information will you collect about me?

When you sign up to participate in or receive a service from our website, such as newsletters, competitions, live chats, programs or register an account with any of our programs registration systems, we may ask for personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone, fax or mobile number or date of birth. Different webpages or programs may ask for different personal information. By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable us and our service providers to provide you with the services you select. Please note that sometimes on particular webpages we may require you to provide additional personal information, and sometimes sensitive personal information. We also uses cookies and collect IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet at a specific time). We use analysis software to look at IP addresses and cookies for the purpose of enhancing your user experience. This information is used to provide us with a general profile of who uses the website and our programs. We do NOT retain financial information, such as credit / debit card information.

3. How will you use the information you collect about me?

We will use your personal information for a number of purposes including the following:

for "service administration purposes", which means that we may contact you for reasons related to the service you have signed up for (e.g. to provide you with password reminders or to notify you that a particular service has been suspended for maintenance);
to contact you about a submission you have made to the website, including any content you provide.
to personalise the way the website content is presented to you.
IP addresses are used to identify the location of users, the number of visits from different countries and also to block disruptive use; and
to analyse and improve the services offered our website or within our programs. e.g. to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience.

4. When will you contact me?

We may contact you:

in relation to the functioning of any service you have signed up for in order to ensure that we can deliver the services to you;
where you have opted to receive further correspondence;
in relation to any contribution you have made to our website; and
to invite you to participate in surveys about our services (participation is always voluntary)

Local pages will give you more information about how we will contact you in relation to specific services.

5. Will you share my personal information with anyone else?

We will keep your information confidential except where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies) or as described in paragraph 6 below. Generally, we will only use your information within our Company. However, sometimes we use third parties to process your information. We will require these third parties to comply strictly with our instructions and the we will require that they do not use your personal information for their own business purposes.

6. Offensive or inappropriate content on our website

If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on our website, or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on our website, we may use your personal information to stop such behaviour. Where we reasonably believe that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of England or Wales (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school e-mail/Internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

7. What if I am a user aged 16 or under?

If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to our website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.

8. How long will you keep my personal information?

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant service.

9. Can I find out what personal information you hold about me?

Under the Data Protection Act you have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. (We charge £10, €15 or $20 for information requests and will require you to prove your identity with 2 pieces of approved photographic identification.) We will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct or delete personal information about you on our files. Please contact us in writing with requests and questions about this or any other question about this Privacy Policy.

10. Changes to your Privacy Policy

This privacy policy may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to our website.

11. Cookies Policy - Information we collect from you

a. What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile phone (referred to here as a "device") browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive, internal or external memory. A website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites. Many sites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows. Cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor our website to your interests. Users have the opportunity to set their devices to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user and accordingly you may not be able to take full advantage of all of our websites features. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences. During the course of any visit to our website, the pages you see, along with a cookie, may be downloaded to your device. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the device (and probably its user) has visited the website before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

b. How do you use cookies?

Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse the profile of our visitors and help us to provide you with a better user experience. We may also use a number of independent measurement and research companies. They gather information regarding the visitors to our website on our behalf using cookies, log file data and code which is embedded on our website. We use this type of information to help improve the services and programs we provide to our users.

12. Contacting us about this Privacy Policy

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy please contact us!