Privacy and Cookies
First of all thank you for visiting our site. Now that you are here, we may have transferred a “cookie” to your computer. A cookie is a small piece of information sent from this website to your internet browser for storage on your computer. If you want to know more about cookies there is an explanation on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website which can be accessed here.
Where do the cookies come from?
We use “Google Analytics” so that we can measure the popularity of our site, where people come from and other general statistics. This software may store cookies on your computer to track new and repeat visitors to our site. It does not have any detail about your name, email address, home address or any other personal data.
Can I delete cookies?
Yes, you can ask your browser to delete the cookies it stores in relation to our website. This should not cause any issues with your use of our website.
Is my information secure?
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
Other data we collect
Apart from “cookies” we do not collect any other information via our website unless you provide it to us. You might do this through one of two ways. 1. Information sent through our contact form – if you use our contact form (or our email address) to send us your personal details we will use this information to contact you. If we cannot contact you, or if we contact you but we do not provide you with any financial advice, we will delete your contact details. If we provide you with financial advice you will be provided with a copy of our full Privacy Statement. A copy of the information you send via our contact form will be emailed to us, which means it will be stored on our third-party email provider’s servers.
2. Information provided if you sign up to our mailing list – we offer the option to sign up to a mailing list, which we use to send an email newsletter once or twice per month. This newsletter will contain details about personal finance news or business finance news which we hope you will find interesting. If you choose to sign up to our mailing list your name, email address and IP address will be sent to a company called MailChimp. This company allows us to create email templates and send emails to people who have signed up to our mailing list. They take a copy of your IP address to see which country you live in and to ensure you are not using a “blocked” IP address (i.e. an IP address which MailChimp has banned from using its services). We will also receive a copy of your name, email address and IP address because MailChimp send us an email to notify us that you have signed up to our newsletter. After you sign up you will receive an email asking if you are sure you want to sign up for our newsletter. If you decide not to continue your personal details will not be added to our mailing list. If you choose to accept you will be added to our mailing list. Every email you receive from us via MailChimp will contain details about how to unsubscribe from our mailing list. If you choose to do this your personal details will be deleted from MailChimp’s servers and MailChimp will tell us that you have unsubscribed. We will still have a copy of your name, email address and IP address on our email account. If we have not provided you with any advice we will delete your personal information from our records. However if we have provided you with advice we will be required to keep a copy of your details.
3. Live Chat – We use a live chat service on our website provided by a third party called Chat Heroes. Their privacy policy is available here: http://chatheroes.com/privacy-policy The information collected by our live chat service is processed by Chat Heroes and their third party chat service provider, SnapEngage, the privacy policy of which is available here: https://snapengage.com/privacy-policy/ SnapEngage stores your information for 60 days. A transcript of your live chat is forwarded to us by SnapEngage via email and stored on our email provider’s servers. Our live chat service uses functional cookies to allow it to function properly. For further information on these cookies, please read the section on this page titled “Privacy and Cookies”. Legal basis for processing: Legitimate interests. We have a legitimate interest in collecting your IP address, browser information and device to better understand our customers as they access our website and live chat service. We have a legitimate interest in collecting your name, email address, phone number and any additional information you provide in order to be able to respond to your enquiry and messages you submit via our live chat service. We ask for your phone number and email address in case we are unable to reach you on one of those means and to ensure that we are able to respond to your enquiry as quickly and effectively as possible. We ask for your name so that we know who we will be contacting, to allow us to ensure we are contacting the correct person and for legal and evidential purposes so that we can identify what we have said to whom and when. Legal basis for processing: necessary to perform a contract or to take steps at your request. Where your message or enquiry relates to our goods and services, we will collect your information in order to enter into a contract with you or take steps to enter into a contract with you. This includes the collection of your name, email address and phone number so we know who we are contracting with and so that we can provide you with the information you need in order to be able to enter into a contract with you. Transfers of your information outside the European Economic Area: information you submit to us by email is transferred outside the EEA and stored on SnapEngage’s servers in the United States of America. This country is not subject to an adequacy decision by the European Commission. Safeguard(s) used: SnapEngage has self-certified its compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield which is available here: https://www.privacyshield.gov/ The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is an approved certification mechanism under Article 42 of the General Data Protection Regulation, which is permitted under Article 46(2)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation. You can access the European Commission decision on the adequacy of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/data-transfers-outside-eu/eu-us-privacy-shield_en
