Privacy & cookie policy

Scope

This policy applies to personal information collected on websites owned or controlled by Compare Investments Group Ltd and its brand, Compare and Invest (collectively referred to in this policy as “we”, “us” or “our”). This policy also covers our social media accounts and marketing material.

We comply with UK data protection laws such as the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018. They regulate the processing of personal data relating to you and grant you various rights in respect of your personal data.

The aim of this policy is to tell you how we will use any personal information we collect or that you provide through our websites and social media accounts. Please read it carefully before you proceed. The data controller for this website is Compare Investments Group Ltd.

What personal Information do we collect?

You don’t have to give us any personal information to use most of this website and where you do, we don’t need to collect a lot of information, but we do need to know who you are, what you’ve asked for and how we can reply to you.

When you register on our site, we may request the following personal information from you: name, address, phone number and email address. In addition, we may automatically collect information about the website that you came from or are going to. We may also collect information about the pages of this website that you visit, IP addresses, the type of browser you use and the times you access this website. However, the information is aggregated and isn’t used to identify you.

If your account is inactive for more than 24 months, we will delete all your personal data from our systems.

How will your personal information be used and shared?

The personal information we collect allows us to:

  • provide the products and services you require
  • administer our website and provide customer services
  • meet legal, regulatory and compliance requirements
  • monitor and analyse the use of any account to prevent, investigate and/or report fraud, terrorism, misrepresentation, security incidents or crime
  • gather management information to form statistical and trend analysis
  • communicate with you
  • investigate any complaints about this website
  • personalise your experience of this website, and
  • contact you about our products and services that we think might be of interest to you (where we have the appropriate permissions to do so).
  • Sometimes we might use third-party service providers to help us in certain areas, such as website hosting, maintenance, and email hosting and in some cases, the third party may receive your information. However, we’ll always control and be responsible for the use of your information.

We may use aggregated information to administer and improve our website, analyse trends, gather broad demographic information, and detect suspicious or fraudulent transactions. We may be required to pass that information to third parties. We will never sell, gift or provide any of your details to companies outside of Compare Investments Group Ltd, unless there is a legal obligation to do so.

Marketing communications

Where you have given us the appropriate permissions during the registration process to the website/website services (as applicable), we may from time to time contact you by email, or post about our products and services (including from all our brands) that may be of interest to you.

If at any point, you’d like to opt out of receiving such marketing communications from us or would like to change the channels that we use to contact you, please click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any emails you receive, or email us at [email protected], stating your preferences.

Social media policy

Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn

We’re active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn and encourage you to ‘like’, share and comment. We encourage discussion from and between our followers, however, we may not be able to provide individual responses. Some queries may be diverted to our dedicated response channels, for example, Freedom of Information Act queries.

Discussions are monitored by our digital team and they may direct a query through existing communication channels where appropriate.

We do not encourage or endorse any commercial or third-party promotions that appear on any of our social media platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are operated and maintained by their own companies. Compare Investments Group Ltd accepts no responsibility for lack of or interruptions to service or other technical difficulties arising due to these platforms’ own downtime.

If you choose to connect via social media, we ask that you adhere to the etiquette below:

  • be respectful of other users
  • stay on topic and do not post content that is unrelated to the purpose
  • do not use language that is offensive, inflammatory or provocative
  • do not post material if you know or suspect that doing so may breach the law
  • do not impersonate or falsely claim to represent a person or an organisation
  • please provide truthful and accurate submissions (do not provide submissions where you are not sure of their truthfulness or factual accuracy)
  • do not make any commercial endorsement or promotion of any product, service or publication
  • Failure to adhere will result in your postings being removed and could result in your access to our pages being blocked.

Cookies and related tracking technologies

Use of cookies on our website

We use cookies to collect information about your online preference. Cookies are small pieces of information sent by a web server to a web browser which allows the server to uniquely identify the browser on each page.

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are essential to enable you to move around the website and use its features. Without these cookies, services you have asked for such as remembering your login details cannot be provided.

Performance cookies

These cookies collect anonymous information on how people use our website. For example, we use Google Analytics cookies to help us understand how customers arrive at our site, browse or use our site and highlight areas where we can improve areas such as navigation, and marketing campaigns. The data stored by these cookies never shows personal details from which your individual identity can be established.

Functionality cookies

These cookies remember choices you make such as the country you visit our website from, language and search. These can then be used to provide you with an experience more appropriate to your selections and to make the visits more tailored and pleasant. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

Targeting cookies or advertising cookies

These cookies collect information about your browsing habits to make advertising more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advert as well as help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. The cookies are usually placed by third party advertising networks. They remember the websites you visit, and that information is shared with other parties such as advertisers.

Social media cookies

These cookies allow you to share what you’ve been doing on the website on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. These cookies are not within our control. Please refer to the respective privacy policies for how their cookies work.

If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the help and support area on your internet browser for instructions on how to locate the file or directory that stores cookies.

Please note that by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site. To find out more about cookies please visit: www.allaboutcookies.org or see www.youronlinechoices.eu which contains further information about behavioural advertising and online privacy.

Use of web beacons

Some of our Web pages may contain electronic images known as web beacons (sometimes known as clear gifs) that allow us to count users who have visited these pages. Web beacons collect only limited information which including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the Web beacon resides. We may also carry web beacons placed by third party advertisers. These beacons do not carry any personally identifiable information and are only used to track the effectiveness of a campaign.

Links

Our sites contain links to other websites over which we have no control. We are not responsible for privacy policies or practices of other websites to which you choose to link from this site. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of those other websites, so you can understand how they collect, use and share your personal information.

Security

We have implemented reasonable technical and organisational measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorised access, use, alteration or disclosure. However, the Internet is an open system and we cannot guarantee that unauthorised third parties will never be able to defeat those measures or use your personal information for improper purposes.

Access to your personal information

You are entitled to see the personal information held about you. If you wish to do this, please contact us at [email protected]. We may require you to provide verification of your identity to provide a copy of the personal information we hold. Please note that in certain circumstances we may withhold access to your personal information where we have the right to do so under current data protection legislation.

Updating your personal information

You may review, correct, update or change your personal information at any time by contacting us at [email protected].

Changes to our privacy & cookies policy

If our Privacy & Cookies Policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page. Regularly reviewing this page ensures that you are always aware of what personal information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances if any, we will share it with other parties.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about this statement or your personal information, please contact us at [email protected].

This page was last updated July 2023