Privacy matters, but it can be confusing. This page explains our approach to privacy on our website and how it affects you.
Short version
- We collect anonymous statistics about your visit, like which of our pages you viewed.
- Some 3rd parties like Facebook and Twitter may know you visited this website if you use their services. We can’t control them but we don’t believe this knowledge poses any threat to you.
- If you sign up with us we take great care to keep your information safe and we’ll never share it with others without your express permission.
- We never share your data with 3rd parties except to help us deliver our own services.
These are just the key points. If you need detail, keep reading.
Measuring our visitors
We measure visitors to our website using Google Analytics. This records what pages you view within our site, how you arrived at our site and some basic information about your computer. All of that information is anonymous – so we don’t know who you are; just that somebody visited our site.
The information we collect from analytics helps us understand what parts of our sites are doing well, how people arrive at our site and so on. Like most websites, we use this information to make our website better.
You can learn more about Google Analytics or opt-out if you wish.
Facebook, Twitter and other social networks
These services provide social buttons and similar features which we use on our website – such as the “Like” and “Tweet” buttons.
To do so we embed the code that they provide and we do not control this ourselves. To function, their buttons generally know if you’re logged in; for example, Facebook use this to say “x of your friends like this”. We do not have any access to that information, nor can we control how those networks use it.
Social networks, therefore, could know that you’re viewing this website if you use their services (that isn’t to say they do, but their policies may change). As our website is about website design and business services we imagine this is not a concern for most users.
Discussion comments
To allow visitors to discuss our blog articles and some web pages we use a discussion system built in our Suite software.
The Suite software will know what you wrote on those comments. Of course, all comments you leave are also publicly visible on the Internet alongside your name, so we do not imagine this is a concern for many people.
If you sign up for a service
When you sign up for any of our services – paid or otherwise – we will record specific personal information about you, such as your name, email address and contact details. We use this information to communicate to you about your property requirements.
We will also collect and store information about your use of our services so as to improve them. For example, we keep a log of what features are being used at any time.
We also log account and transaction history for accounting purposes, and to monitor our business activities.
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information for the purposes of fulfilling our services to you to let or sell your property or, if you are a buyer or tenant, for the purposes of arranging a contract for sale or a lease for you.
If you are purchasing a property we are acting as estate agents for the sale of or selling a property through us we will share your personal information with your appointed solicitors and the solicitors acting for the other side of the deal as is necessary to facilitate the sale or purchase.
If you are renting a property we are acting as letting agents of, we will share your personal data with third party referencing agencies for the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime, fraud and/or money laundering and checking your suitability to rent that property.
Emails
We may send you email notifications regarding your service (such as invoices) or which you have specifically requested (such as newsletters or notifications when a report is completed amend to ‘when a new property is launched’). You have the ability to opt-out of any of this communication at any time.
Third Parties
We will never provide your personal information or email address to any third parties except where they are specifically employed to help deliver our own services, as detailed above.
We share your personal information with Constant Contact who provide our weekly video Vlogs/newsletters and Expert Agent who manages our Estate Agency Software and communicate updates on properties, as our data processors. You have the opportunity to opt-out of receiving this information at any time.
We use third-party service providers to use your personal details for screening or referencing for a property sale or letting, in order to comply with our regulatory and legal obligations. If this is required, we will notify you before doing so.
Security
We take many precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. These precautions include:
- Use of SSL encryption for sensitive data
- Hardware stored in secured datacentres behind firewalls
- All access to information restricted by password and/or secure key
- Restrictions to what information can be accessed via any location
Whilst we take great care to ensure any confidential information remains protected we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the Internet.
Of course, you are responsible for keeping your password and user details confidential. We will never ask you for your password(s). It is good advice not to trust anybody asking you for passwords.
Retention of your Personal Data
The period for which we will keep your personal information will depend on the type of service you have requested from us. The retention period may be longer than the period for which we are providing services to you where we have statutory or regulatory obligations to retain personal information for a longer period, or where we may need to retain the information in case of a legal claim.
Subject Access Requests
If you make a subject access request and if we do hold information about you, we will:
- Give you a description of it
- Provide the information free of charge
- Tell you why we are holding and processing it and how long we will keep it for
- Tell you who it has been, or will be, shared with
- Give you a copy of the information in an intelligible form
Complaints
We take any complaints about our collection and use of personal information very seriously.
If you think that our collection or use of personal information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate, or have any other concern about our data processing, please raise this with us directly in the first instance.
Our data protection officer is Deborah Richards available at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Or write to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Updates to this policy
We may update this privacy policy from time-to-time, particularly as technology changes. You can always check this page for the latest version. We may also notify you of changes to our privacy policy by email.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or your personal data, please contact us and we’ll be happy to explain further and answer any queries you have.