This privacy policy forms part of uSwitch.com’s terms and conditions. Once you have provided your personal details on this website you will be deemed to have read and accepted this privacy policy.
uSwitch.com is committed to protecting your privacy. We use the information that we collect about you to process your switch and to inform you about other services we provide.
The site is operated by uSwitch Limited; a company incorporated in England and Wales (registration number 03612689), the registered office of which is 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0SR ("uSwitch.com"). uSwitch.com complies with all applicable UK Data Protection legislation currently in force in relation to its treatment of personal information. This privacy statement sets out uSwitch.com's policy in relation to how it uses any personal information collected from you through your use of this site.
What personal information do we collect?
In order to process a switch, we collect your name, address and may collect payment details
and other details to process the switch. We also collect your email address and phone number. These details allow uSwitch.com and your
new supplier to contact you about the switch and any other information which uSwitch believes may interest you. If you abandon your switch,
we may email you to give you the opportunity to compare again and/or to provide feedback on our switching process.
You can opt-out of receiving information from us whenever you input personal data, or by sending an email to help@uswitch.com.
How do we use your personal information?
If you have requested to switch suppliers, we will use your personal information to process that switch. This will include passing your information to the new supplier. uSwitch.com may disclose and use personal information collected about you within its own organisation (including its representatives) for the purpose of internal business administration, analysis and marketing. uSwitch.com may also disclose personal information collected about you to third parties, for the purposes of completing any transaction you are undertaking with us, for providing any goods or services to you or for the purposes of associated administration or obtaining professional advice.
If you enter a contest or another promotion, we will use the data so that we can administer the contest and notify winners.
If you have requested to be kept informed of services that we offer, we will contact you with these details.
If during your visit to one of our insurance or energy calculators, you elected to continue by accepting the terms of our Privacy Policy, we may pass the details you submitted to our quote engine onto one of our representatives. By indicating that you have read and understood this privacy policy, you are agreeing to allow uSwitch to pass on your personal data to the relevant supplier. If necessary the supplier might contact you to discuss your insurance or energy quotes. Without clicking 'continue' or 'Find Suppliers' you will be unable to complete the car insurance or energy quotation process. Our representatives or suppliers contact individuals by phone that start the car insurance or energy quote process but do not buy a policy or switch, in order to offer them competitive quotes or further assistance. They are only authorised to help you with this particular quote and only within a limited amount of time after you have used our service. They have agreed not to use your details for any other purpose.
If while comparing loans with us you provide us with your phone number, name, address and postcode, we may pass these details - and the information you have submitted on the site - to one of our loans brokers. By entering this information you are agreeing for us to pass your personal data to our loans brokers and for them to contact you by phone or email to discuss your requirements. They will only contact you in relation to this enquiry for a limited time after you have used our service. They will not use your details for any other purpose.
If during your visit to our business energy service, you elected to continue by accepting the terms of our Privacy Policy, we may pass the details you submitted into our web form onto one of our representatives. By indicating you have read and understood this Privacy Policy you are agreeing for us to pass your personal data to one of these representatives and for them to contact you by phone or email to discuss your requirements and provide business energy quotations. Without clicking 'continue' you will be unable to complete the business energy web form process. The representatives will only contact you in relation to this enquiry for a limited time after you have used our service. They will not use your details for any other purpose.
If during your visit to the energy calculator you opted in for our marketing and told us the month of your home insurance renewal you will be called by one of our representatives in order to help you with your home insurance enquiry.
We monitor traffic patterns and site usage. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 we follow strict security procedures in the storage and disclosure of information which you have given us, to prevent unauthorised access.
For these purposes we may send your information internationally, including to countries outside the European Economic Association. Other countries offer differing levels of protection for personal information, not all of which will be as high as the levels of protection offered in the UK.
Accessing personal data
You can contact us to ask whether we are keeping personal data about you, by sending an email to dataprotection@uSwitch.com. Upon request, we will provide you with a readable copy of data which we hold about you. If you ask us to delete, correct or amend that personal data we will do so within a reasonable time.
If you have any queries relating to your personal data please contact us at:
Data Protection Officer
uSwitch
111 Buckingham Palace Road
London
SW1W 0SR
Your consent
By disclosing your personal information to uSwitch.com, you consent to the collection, storage and processing of your personal information in the manner set out in this privacy policy.
Use of cookies and third-party advertising technology
1. We use third-party advertising technology to serve ads when you visit our website and sites upon which we advertise. This technology uses information about your visits to this website and the sites upon which we advertise, to serve our ads to you. In the course of serving our advertisements to you, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser. In addition, we use Web beacons, provided by our third-party ad server, to help manage and optimize our online advertising. These Web beacons enable our ad server, on our behalf or on behalf of our agent, to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this site, and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website. Our third-party ad server is performing its functions on our behalf or on behalf of our agent, and we may, directly or indirectly, instruct such ad server to enable other service providers to receive information about our site related to our online advertising. To learn more about our third-party ad-serving partner, cookies, and how to “opt-out” please click here.
2. uSwitch.com collects information about your preferences in relation to this site by analysing site traffic, which includes the use of cookies. A cookie is text file which is stored on your computer and is sent by a web server to a web browser, which enables the server to collect information back from the browser. This enables us to identify if you have visited uSwitch.com before.
We use cookies to help us analyse traffic on our site and customer behaviour. Cookies may also be used by our partners to understand marketing and traffic patterns. During the course of any visit to uSwitch.com, the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your computer. Any information that is supplied by cookies can help us to provide you with a better service and assists us in analysing the profile of our visitors.
Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but normally you can alter your browser settings to prevent automatic acceptance, if you prefer. If you opt not to receive our cookies, we cannot guarantee that your experience with our website will be as quick or responsive as if you do receive cookies.
We do not store passwords or any other information about a visitor in a cookie that could identify them, their location, their preferences or their financial activity.
3. How to find and control your cookies
If you're using Internet Explorer 6.0 or 7.0:
- Choose Tools, then
- Internet Options
- Click the Privacy tab
- Click on the 'Advanced' button
- Check the 'Override automatic cookie handing' box and select Accept, Block or Prompt for action as appropriate.
If you're using Mozilla Firefox:
- Choose Tools, then
- Options...
- Privacy
- Cookies
- Set your options as required
If you're using Opera 8+:
- Choose Tools, then
- Preferences
- Advanced
- Select Cookies
- Select your settings using the available options
If you're using Safari:
- Choose Safari, then
- Preferences
- Security
- Select options by Accept Cookies as required.
4. How do you know which of the sites you've visited use cookies?
If you're using Internet Explorer:
- Choose Tools, then
- Internet Options
- Click the General tab
- Click Settings
- View Files.
If you're using Mozilla Firefox:
- Choose Tools, then
- Options...
- Privacy
- Cookies
- Click the Show Cookies button.
If you're using Opera 8+:
- Choose Tools, then
- Advanced
- Click Cookies.
If you're using Safari:
- Choose Safari, then
- Preferences
- Security
- Click Show Cookies button.
5. How to see your cookie code
Just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.