The following statement explains our policy regarding the personal information we collect about you.
From time to time, you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (e.g. name and email address etc) in order to receive or use services on our website. Such services include newsletters, competitions, "Alert Email",live chats, message boards and alterindex.co.uk membership.
By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable Weboptimiser Limited and its service providers to provide you with the services you select. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy. Our services are designed to give you the information that you want to receive. Weboptimiser Limited will act in accordance with current legislation and aim to meet current Internet best practice.
During the course of any visit to alterindex.co.uk, the pages you see, along with something called a cookie, are downloaded to your computer (see point 3 for more on this). Most, if not all, websites do this, because cookies allow the website publisher to do useful things like find out whether the computer (and probably its user) has visited the site before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.
Any information that is supplied by cookies can help us to provide you with a better service and assists us to analyse the profile of our visitors. For example: if on a previous visit you went to, say, the loan pages, then we might find this out from your cookie and highlight new loan information on a second visit.
Our tracking systems, produced by independent measurement and research companies, gathers non-personal data regarding the visitors to our site on our behalf using cookies and code which is embedded in the site. Both the cookies and the embedded code provide non-personal statistical information about visits to pages on the site, the duration of individual page view, paths taken by visitors through the site, data on visitors' screen settings and other general information. Weboptimiser Limited uses this type of information, as with that obtained from other cookies used on the site, to help it improve the services to its users.
If you wish to reject our cookies, you can. Further information regarding cookies can be found at http://www.allaboutcookies.org (opens new window).
When you supply any personal information to alterindex.co.uk (e.g. for competitions, alterindex.co.uk Community services or alterindex.co.uk membership) we have legal obligations towards you in the way we deal with that data. We must collect the information fairly, that is, we must explain how we will use it (see the notices on particular webpages that let you know why we are requesting the information) and tell you if we want to pass the information on to anyone else. In general, any information you provide to Weboptimiser Limited will only be used within Weboptimiser Limited and by its service providers. It will never be supplied to anyone outside Weboptimiser Limited without first obtaining your consent, unless we are obliged or permitted by law to disclose it. Also, if you post or send offensive or inappropriate content anywhere on or to alterindex.co.uk or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on alterindex.co.uk, and Weboptimiser Limited considers such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, Weboptimiser Limited can use whatever information that is available to it about you to stop such behaviour. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school or e-mail provider about the content and your behaviour.
We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you use the service you have requested, and remove it in the event that the purpose has been met, or, in the case of alterindex.co.uk membership you no longer wish to continue your registration as a alterindex.co.uk member. For safety reasons, however, Weboptimiser Limited may store messaging transcript data (including message content, member names, times and dates) arising from the use of alterindex.co.uk. Where personal information is held for people who are not yet registered but have taken part in other alterindex.co.uk services (eg competitions), that information will be held only as long as necessary to ensure that the service is run smoothly. We will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.
If you are notified on a alterindex.co.uk site that your information may be used to allow Weboptimiser Limited to contact you for "service administration purposes", this means that Weboptimiser Limited may contact you for a number of purposes related to the service you have signed up for. For example, we may wish to provide you with password reminders or notify you that the particular service has been suspended for maintenance. We may also contact you for promotional purposes, such as notifying you of improvements to the service or new services on alterindex.co.uk unless you specifically agree not to be contacted for such purposes at the time you submit your information on the site, or at a later time if you so wish.
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information Weboptimiser Limited holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. (We charge £10 for information requests.) Please address requests to the Data Protection Officer, Weboptimiser Ltd, The Foundry, 156 Blackfriars Road, London, SE1 8EN (Email: ).
If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to Weboptimiser Limited's website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.