Carers Connect Int. Privacy Policy
At Carers Connect Int, we believe strongly in protecting the privacy of our Members' personal information. This is a legal document that sets out how Carers Connect Int handles data which identifies you. You should read it in conjunction with the Carers Connect Int Terms and Conditions, of which this Privacy Policy forms part.
1. Emails from Carers Connect Int.
You are probably most interested in how we will use your email address to communicate with you, so here's our email promise, in plain English:
Service Emails.
The team at Carers Connect Int hate spam and will never ever send you unsolicited emails. But there are some emails that we will need to send you to provide you with a good Carers Connect Int service. These include notifications that you have a message from other users, reminders about your membership expiring and guides on how to use the site. A full list of the types of emails you will receive to help you use the service most effectively (which we call Service Emails) are shown below:
- Validation email – the email we use to verify your email address when you first register
- Welcome emails - emails which explain how to use the site when you first join
- Payment receipt – this is sent if you upgrade to Full Membership
- Renewal notices – these remind you to renew your Full Membership
- Automatic Full Membership renewal alerts – if you have selected automatic renewal of your Full Membership, we will alert before this happens
- Key service messages – if we need to notify you about changes to the service
- New message notification and reminders – when you receive messages from old friends
- Notes/profile and photo approval notification
- Service suspension notices – if you break the house rules
As well as these Service Emails, you will also receive New People Alerts and (if you have opted to receive them) our occasional newsletters. These emails genuinely help you make the most of the website and let you know when there's new fun and interesting stuff to do. Here's a bit more about them ...
Newsletters
When registering, you are given the option to receive our occasional newsletter. We use this to notify you about new features on the site, ask your opinion, and tell you about services you might not be using yet.
We only send a newsletter when there is something worthwhile to tell you about, so your inbox will never be overflowing with guff from us. Generally you'll get a newsletter about once every six weeks.
If you decide you no longer want to receive these newsletters – or if you aren't currently receiving it and want to – all you need to do is change your email preferences. You'll find this in the “My details/profile” area once you're logged in.
2. The information we gather and track.
Information gathered on registration. When you register for the Carers Connect Int Service, you provide your name (including a previous name, where relevant), one or more category listings on the Carers Connect Int Service (area of care etc) your email address, and some optional notes about yourself ("Registration Information"). They are available to you, and capable of being changed, through the “My details/profile” page.
Cookies.
We use small files known as "cookies" to enhance Members' experience of the Carers Connect Int Service as follows:
- To hold Members' login information, so that your category listings are displayed when you visit the Carers Connect Int Service. This option can be turned off by switching the "Remember Your Password" option to "No" in "My details/profile"
- To facilitate optimal use of the Carers Connect Int Service by Members, by means of a temporary "session" cookie. These cookies disappear when the Member's browser session ends, or if the Member clicks the "logoff" text, which appears on the Carers Connect Int Service.
3. Sharing and use of information
The over-riding principles we apply are these:
- We, and (where relevant) our credit card processing agents, will not supply your personal data to a third party for commercial exploitation - thus, you can rest assured that we will not sell the lists of our Members' email addresses to a third party.
- The only circumstances in which we will provide any of your personal data to a third party for non-commercial purposes are those contained in this Privacy Policy.
Registration Information.
Once a Member selects an area of care or other category listing (workplace, street etc), , the Registration Information held for that Member, except for the email address, will be available to, and searchable by, users of the Carers Connect Int Service.
Advertising.
The Carers Connect Int Service may include interactive advertising for other businesses. We may use, and provide to third parties, anonymised demographic data provided by Members to target this advertising more appropriately.
Credit Card information.
There has been a lot of publicity about Credit Card security on the Internet so we use Paypal as our payment providers. Both operate a secure server, to process our credit card payments. They encrypt Members' credit or debit card information and authorise payment directly. This means that Members' full credit card details are never revealed to us. Paypal may transfer to, process and hold your credit card information in countries either within or outside the European Economic Area in connection with performing their duties.
Companies in the Carers Connect Int group.
We may share data supplied by you (or collected about you) with our subsidiaries and other companies in our group, but only for the purposes described in this policy.
Changes in Carers Connect Int's business.
If all of the assets which Carers Connect Int uses to operate its business (or substantially all of them) are acquired by a third party, we may transfer personal data we then hold to that party so that the acquirer can continue to provide the Carers Connect Int Service.
Place of processing.
The personal information held by us is held on and processed by computers situated in the United Kingdom .
4. Security.
We have security measures in place to protect our customer database and access to this database is restricted internally. However, it remains each Member's responsibility:
- To protect against unauthorised access to Your Details.
- To ensure no-one else uses the Carers Connect Int Service on that Member's machine while it is "logged on" to the Carers Connect Int Service.
- To log off or exit from the Carers Connect Int Service when not using it.
- To keep his/her password secret.
5. Disclosure for legal reasons.
We reserve the right to communicate such of a Member's personal information as we hold to third parties which seek the disclosure of it, and which make a legally-compliant request for its disclosure.
6. Data Retention Period.
We will retain your personal data only as long as is necessary for the purposes to which you consent under the Carers Connect Int Terms and Conditions and this Privacy Policy, or as is required by applicable law, and then we will delete it.
7. Contacting Carers Connect Int.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of the Carers Connect Int Service, or your dealings with Carers Connect Int, you can contact us here. You can also use this address if you wish to request from Carers Connect Int a copy of the personal data we hold about you or a description of that data. Please note that by law we are entitled to charge you a small sum for providing this information.
9. Links to third party sites.
The Carers Connect Int Service contains links to other sites. Carers Connect Int is not responsible for the privacy practices, or the content, of those web sites.
10. Data Protection Information.
You can obtain further information about data protection laws by visiting the Information Commissioner's website at www.dataprotection.gov.uk. You can search for our Data Protection Notification there, should you so wish.
11. Changes to this Privacy Policy.
If we change this Privacy Policy, we will notify you of the changed document in the same way as we notify changes to the Carers Connect Int Terms and Conditions.