Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you, and to provide you with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless you have opted not to receive such information. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us or if you provided us with your details when you entered a competition or registered for a promotion and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any company outside CarGuide for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the unsubscribe link in those marketing messages, by changing the marketing preferences in your account or by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not affect our processing of your personal data for other non-marketing purposes such as providing a product/service to you, product/service experience or other transactions, etc.

Cookies

We may use cookies on our websites. In certain applicable circumstances, you may set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see https://www.carguide.co.uk/cookie-policy/

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Third party payment processors

In some cases, third-party payment processing service providers may be utilised for handling payment processing in connection with the services or products we provide to you. In such cases, we do not store, collect, or process your payment card and/or financial details. That information is provided directly to the third-party payment processing service providers by you and the usage of your personal data by them is governed by their privacy policy. The payment processing service providers we partner with adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of payment and financial information.

The payment processors we partner with are:

• Stripe – Their privacy policy can be viewed at https://stripe.com/us/privacy

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.

External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. These third parties have access to your personal data only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.

6. International transfers

We do not transfer your VRM/VIN outside the UK, European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland except in accordance with the data protection law and where appropriate safeguards as approved by the data protection law has been put in place.

7. Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

CarGuide recognises the importance of secure online transactions, and we safeguard the privacy of information provided to us through online forms. We use a Digital Certificate to assure you of the validity of our site and for consumer requests submitted to us online, we use Secure Sockets Layer technology to provide strong encryption for the data you provide on the order form before transmission to CarGuide.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

8. Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our retention policy which you can request from us by contacting us.

More specifically, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, by law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for 7 years after they cease being customers for tax, financial auditing, and record keeping purposes.

In some applicable circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Please see Glossary below for a more detailed explanation about these rights:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction of your personal data;
• Request erasure of your personal data;
• Object to processing of your personal data;
• Request restriction of processing your personal data;
• Request transfer of your personal data;
• Right to withdraw consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us via the contact information set out above.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

10. Glossary

Lawful basis

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you and the market place the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

Third parties

External Third Parties

Service providers acting as processors based in the UK, Switzerland, and EEA who provide IT and system administration services.

Professional advisers, acting as processors or joint controllers, including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in the UK, Switzerland, and EEA who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.

HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities, acting as processors or joint controllers, based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing, financial, or transaction activities in certain circumstances.

Public authorities such as the police, acting as joint controllers, based in the United Kingdom who require personal data in certain circumstances to prevent or apprehend crime or fraud.

Business partners, acting as controllers, based in the UK and EEA who require VRM/VIN in certain circumstances for the legitimate interests of developing and enhancing innovative business solutions.

Data analytic and intelligence providers, acting as controllers, based in the UK and EEA who require VRM/VIN in certain circumstances to develop analytic and intelligence solutions aimed at streamlining the crash repair, claims handling, and underwriting processes.

Your legal rights

You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.