We know that your privacy is very important to you.  We make it our business for it to be as important to us.

We aim to be as clear as possible about how and why we use information that we collect about you and this privacy policy explains how we collect, use, share and protect your information. If your questions are not fully answered by the information below, please contact us. We’ll be happy to help. Please see the section below headed “Maintaining the information we hold for you” for our contact details.

We may collect the following types of information about you:

• Your name, your email address and other contact details that you provide to us from time to time.
• Your company’s name, your position in the company, the company’s address and telephone number.
• Your payment information such as credit or debit details.
• Your use of our websites (please see the section below headed “Cookies”).
• Information that you provide when filling in forms, posting information on our website, or when you contact us directly.

The reasons that we collect information about you are:

• To provide you with services that you may request including but not limited to online services. Each service has different requirements. Therefore the information we need, and what it is needed for, can differ. For full details please refer to the terms and conditions for each service.
• To enhance or improve your experience on our website and/or with us generally. When you indicate your preferences through our registration forms or through your use of our website, we will use this information to personalise the website and/or our services to better meet your needs.
• To provide you with information about products and services that we, or third parties we have carefully selected, believe will be of interest to you (please see the sections below headed “Who sees your information” and “Important information about opting-in and opting-out”).
• To keep your information secure. To minimise the risk of unauthorised access to your information, we use some of your information to authenticate you when using the website and our customer service helpdesk.

We collect information from you in three ways:

• Directly from you. Sometimes we'll ask you for information about yourself, for example in our registration form or when you make a purchase on our website, or if you contact our customer service helpdesk.
• From third parties. We may ask for information about you from third parties, for example when we get authorisation for a payment you make using a credit or debit card or if we need to conduct fraud or credit checks.
• From how you use our website and our services.  This can show us, for example, which products you use most and least.  We will use this information to personalise the website and/or the services to better meet your needs and, where you have given us your consent by not opting-out on the registration form, to provide you with information about our products and services we believe will be of interest to you.

The information we collect will be used within the Royal Mail group of companies. Click here for a current list of those companies. Exactly who sees your information depends on the context in which you provided it and the purpose for which it is being used (please see the section above headed “Why we collect information about you”).

Sometimes we'll share your information with carefully selected third parties outside the Royal Mail group. We may do this for the following reasons:

• To provide you with a service. Some of our services are provided in conjunction with our business partners, and we'll need to disclose your information to them to provide you with the services. We make it clear in the terms and conditions for each service whether information will be passed to third parties or not. We may also share your information with certain third parties performing services for us where this will help us to provide services to you, or to improve the quality of the services that we provide to you.
• To provide you with information about special promotions and offers. If you have given your consent by choosing to opt in on the registration form, we may share some of your information with carefully selected third parties so that they can provide you with information about products and services that may be of interest to you.
• To protect the Royal Mail group or others. We may share your information with third parties when we believe it is necessary to comply with the law or protect our or another person’s  rights, property, or safety. This includes exchanging information with third parties to protect against fraud and to reduce payment risks.
• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets and if this happens we may disclose your information to the potential seller or buyer of such business or assets.

We will only deal with third parties that we trust to act in our customers’ best interests and who treat our customers’ information with the same stringent controls that we apply ourselves.

Generally we will store and process your information within the UK. However, the information that we collect about you may be processed in, transferred to, and/or stored at, a destination outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) where privacy laws may not provide the same level of protection as within the EEA. By registering to use our website, you agree to this processing, transfer and/or storage outside of the EEA. Please be aware that we will take all steps that are reasonably necessary to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy even when your information is processed in, transferred to, and/or stored at, a destination outside of the EEA.

How long we keep your information depends on the context in which you provided it and the purposes for which we use it. We will only retain information for as long as is necessary for such purposes.

In particular:

• We will keep your information that is necessary for us to provide you with a service you have requested or purchased for as long as it takes us to provide you with that service.
• We will keep your contact details for marketing purposes for as long as we have your consent for: (i) us to send you marketing information about our products and services by you not opting-out of receiving this marketing information; and/or (ii) third parties to provide you with information about products and services that may be of interest to by you opting-in to receiving this marketing information.
• We will keep records of any transactions you enter into for up to six years. This is so that we can respond to any complaints or disputes that arise in that period.
• We will keep other information about you if it is necessary for us to do so to comply with the law or to protect our own or other persons’ interests.

You can see the information you have provided to us through the website by accessing the Edit Your Profile page. You can also use this profile page to change or delete this information including the consents you have given us (please see the section below headed “Important information about opting-in and opting-out”) and we encourage you to do so in order to ensure that the information we hold about you is up-to-date.

You can be deleted from the website's databases by accessing the option for 'My profile' once you have logged on to the website. Here you can select the option for deregistration where you can cancel your registration with us. This will not delete your information that: (i) was not collected through the website and which is held on other Royal Mail databases; (ii) that which we need to continue to hold for the purposes specified above under the heading 'How long do we keep your information'; or (iii) is on third party databases.

You can request details of all the information Royal Mail holds about you, including on the website's databases, by contacting the Information Rights Team at Royal Mail. They will send you an application form which you should complete and return. The charge for this service is £10 for each request. To contact the team please write to:

Information Rights Team
(Data Protection Act)
Royal Mail Sheffield
Pond Street
Sheffield
S98 6HR
Tel: 0114 241 4217

You can allow us to provide you with information about products and services that we, or third parties we have carefully selected, believe will be of interest to you. We will only do this with your consent.

You give us your consent to receive marketing information from us about our products and services we believe will be of interest to you by choosing not to opt-out on your registration form.

You give us your consent to receiving marketing information from third parties about their products and services by choosing to opt-in on your registration form.

You can change your mind and remove or add your consent at any time through the Edit your profile page. We will endeavour to comply with your request as soon as we are reasonably able to do so. If your information has been passed to third parties with your consent you may need to contact them if you change your mind in relation to their continued use of your information. Please also note that the opt-ins and opt-outs on this website (unless specifically stated otherwise) cover all means of communicating with you, including by email, post, phone, SMS text message and other electronic means.

When you choose to opt-in or opt-out through the website, this opt-in or opt-out will only apply to the information stored about you on this website's databases. If you have provided information to a business in the Royal Mail group through another channel, the use of that information will not be affected by the opt-ins or opt-outs you select on the website.

There are some consents on this website that are specific to individual services and these will be identified to you. These are independent of the registration process and currently cannot be changed through the 'Edit your profile page'. We are actively looking into incorporating these into the ‘Edit your profile page’ mechanism.

We know that your privacy is very important to you and that you take the security of your information seriously.

We've implemented technology and security policies, rules and measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

Here are some of the ways we protect your information:

• Access to our online services is protected by something called SSL 128 bit session encryption. Encryption is the process through which sensitive information is scrambled before it is transmitted so that it remains private even if it is intercepted. 128-bit encryption is the strongest encryption currently used commercially. However, unless your Internet browser supports 128-bit encryption you will not be able to take advantage of this level of security (please see the section below headed 'How you can help keep your information secure').
• Off-line, your information is kept securely in our databases and offices. We only allow our employees and trusted contractors access to your information, and then only if they need it for a specific authorised task. The computers on which we store your information are kept in a secure environment.
• We do not store payment card details, except those collected through the SmartStamp® service for the purpose of regular payments.

There is a lot that you can do to help keep your information safe - not just on our website, but whenever you provide information online.

Here are some simple ways you can improve the security of your information.

Use a strong password
Read our advice on choosing a strong password. This will help you choose a password that will be difficult for other people to guess but easy for you to remember.

Use a secure password hint
Do not make your password hint the same as your password! Your password hint should not give away your password to someone you know well, for example 'my road' or 'my dog's name'.

Keep your password private and secure
Your password is a key to your personal information and online identity. Don't tell anyone your password or write it down. If you are concerned that somebody else knows your password, you can change it on our website by going to the Edit Your Profile page. We recommend that you change your password from time to time.

Use a secure browser
Modern browsers are more secure than older versions, so always keep your browser up to date. If you browse with Internet Explorer, set Windows to update itself automatically to keep your private data safe.

If you want to learn more about online security, visit our dedicated resource for online safety tips.

A cookie is a small text file that is saved to the hard drive of your computer when you use a website.

Our website uses both persistent and session cookies. Persistent cookies are cookies that stay on your computer permanently until you 'manually' delete them. Session cookies delete themselves automatically when you leave a website and go to another one or shut down your browser.

The table below explains the cookies our website uses and what they do.

Of these cookies, only the Website Analytic cookie can be deactivated through our website. For the other cookies you can change the preferences on your browser so that your computer doesn’t accept cookies from our website or allow them to be updated. Alternatively you can make your browser give you the option to accept or reject the cookies each time our website tries to create or update a cookie on your computer. Please note:

• Neither of these options will remove cookies that have already been placed on your computer or prevent them from being read. To delete existing cookies you will need to search your hard drive for the relevant cookie files and delete them. But please note that a deleted cookie will often be replaced the next time you visit the website that put it there.
• If your browser is set up to reject application session cookies, some applications on our website will not work.
• Because the cookie may contain or refer to some of your personal information we recommend you do not register for our website from a publicly available computer.
For more information about cookies, including how to change your browser settings and find and delete cookies on your hard drive, please visit www.aboutcookies.org (new window).

To opt-out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout (new window).

We use information collected through the Website Analytic cookie to personalise the website based on your previous activity and to provide you with information about our products and services that we believe will be of interest to you.

When you use the website, a Website Analytic cookie will be saved on your computer. Some pages of our website have web beacons - or 'tags' - coded into them, and when you visit those pages, register or enter into certain transactions, the Website Analytic cookie will record that you have done so. Over time the cookie will build up a history of the pages you visit and the applications you use on our website.

We use a marketing company called Omniture to log the information collected by the Website Analytic cookie. This information, together with similar information from other users, helps us learn things like what kinds of customers our website attracts, which of our products and applications most interest our customers, and what kinds of offers our customers like to see (called website analytics). This in turn helps us make our website more effective and useful and, where we have your consent (please see the section above headed “Important information about opting-in and opting-out”), we will also use this information to provide you with information about our products and services we believe will be of interest to you.

Although Omniture logs the information for us, it is only allowed to process the information according to our instructions. Nobody sees the information except us.

This website includes links to other sites. We make every effort to provide links to high quality, reputable sites but we're not responsible for their privacy practices or, site content, or the services they offer.

If you call any of our customer service telephone numbers, or use any of our 'Phone me' services, we may record your call. These recordings are used for training and quality control to ensure that we continuously monitor and improve our customer service standards.

If you are not happy with the way in which your personal information is being handled by any Royal Mail group company you can complain to the Information Commissioner at the following address:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wimslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Please review this privacy policy periodically as we may update it from time to time and if we do this we will notify you on our website. Please refer to the 'last updated' date to see if and when the policy changed.

Last updated: 8 August 2011