Uswitch Privacy Policy

Information you provide to us

You may provide us with information in several ways, including when registering for a Uswitch account, filling in forms on our websites or on our apps or by corresponding with us by phone, email and live chat. This includes information you provide when you search for a price comparison or quote, enter into a contract for the supply of services, enter a competition, promotion or survey or report problems with our services.

The personal information that you provide may include your name, address, email address, phone number, meter number, energy usage, financial information and other information about you and your home to enable us to provide you with our price comparison, switching and other services (such as the Utrack Money Back scheme).

For some products, you may need to provide us or our trusted third-party suppliers with certain special category data to allow us to provide you with quotes and services. This includes information about motoring convictions (in connection with car insurance quotes), information about criminal convictions (in connection with home insurance quotes), and health (for an energy provider to assess whether you have any special requirements). When you provide this information to us, we or our trusted third-party suppliers will ask for your consent to use your special category data in accordance with this privacy policy. If you do not consent to that use, you may not be able to proceed with your quote.

Information we collect about you

When you use our websites or apps, we automatically collect information about your device, including your IP address, information about your visit (including how you got to our websites) and how you use our services. We may combine this information with other information you have provided to us or which we have received from other sources.

Information we receive from other sources

If you use any of the other websites or services provided by the ZPG Companies, we may receive information about you or your device in relation to that use, including your IP address, information about your visits, and how you use the services of the ZPG Companies.

We work closely with third parties (for example, business partners, advertising networks, analytics providers and search information providers) and may receive information about you or your household from them. This could include socio-demographic information, household energy consumption data and tariff, and information about your likely interests based on your previous web browsing and purchases. We may combine this information with other information you have provided to us or which we collected about you.

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• Providing our services to you and fulfilling your requests

  • Providing you with the information, products and services you request from us or another ZPG Company (including providing you with price comparison, switching, and other services). This includes creating an account for you so that you can retrieve details of your comparisons and switches, keep your information and preferences safe and up to date, and participate in the Utrack Money Back programme.

  • Providing insights based on your household energy use

  • Providing rewards / incentives Completing any transactions necessary with us or with another ZPG Company.

  • Securing our websites and apps.

Detecting fraud on behalf of ourselves and other parties, including energy suppliers, financial service providers, insurance providers, aggregators, fraud prevention agencies, and other ZPG Companies.

• Administering promotions or competitions that you enter with us or another ZPG Company.

• Allowing you to participate in our interactive features when you choose to do so.

• Aggregating information for reporting, analysis, and benchmarking, within and between ZPG brands.

• Sending any emails that are specific to the Uswitch products you have requested (e.g., comparison results and / or account statements).

• Providing customer service, assistance and support.

• Marketing and advertising

  • Providing you and others with information about goods and services that we or other ZPG Companies offer that we think may interest you or them, which may be based on inferences and basic profile about your or their likely interests based on your activity on websites operated by ZPG Companies or third parties.

  • Customising or enhancing your experience of our services, which may use inferences about your likely interests based on your activity on websites operated by ZPG Companies or third parties.

  • Delivering relevant advertising to you on websites operated by ZPG Companies or third parties or in direct communications from us, which may use inferences about your likely interests based on your activity on websites operated by ZPG Companies or third parties.

  • Measuring and understanding the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others.

• Service improvement and account management

  • Ensuring that our content is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device.

  • Administering our websites and apps and for internal business administration (for example, troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes).

  • Protecting our interests and those of third parties and as part of our efforts to keep our services safe and secure.

  • Creating, managing and operating your account with us, including sending associated service messages.

We derive aggregated data from the personal information we collect. Aggregated data is created by combining data (e.g., the total number of clicks on a particular website link), does not reveal information about you and is anonymous data.

Our legal basis for processing your personal information for the purposes described above will typically be one of the following:

• Contract

  It is necessary for us to process your personal information to perform a contract to which you are a party, or to take steps at your request prior to you entering into a contract.

• Consent

  You have consented to us using your personal information for this purpose (for example, when you agree to receive our email-based marketing or create an alert). You can withdraw your consent at any time by deleting the information from your account or updating your marketing preferences.

• Legitimate interests

  It is in our legitimate interests to use your personal information to operate, improve and promote our services (for example, when we create your Uswitch account to enable you to track your switch, customise your experience of our services, or use your information for analytics purposes) and to protect our business. Sometimes, we may process your personal information when it is in the legitimate interests of another company, such as another ZPG Company.

• Legal obligations

  It is necessary for us to use your personal information for us or another ZPG Company to comply with a legal obligation.

Where you provide us with special category data (for example, information about your health or any previous criminal convictions, such as driving offences), we will seek your consent to process this information.

• ZPG Companies

  We share IT infrastructure with other ZPG Companies, and so we may share your personal information with those ZPG Companies to help store your information efficiently and securely. Other ZPG Companies may access your personal information to help provide you with services that you request from those ZPG Companies (for example, to help you manage your home) and to provide you with relevant recommendations of other ZPG services and products. These recommendations may use inferences about your interests based on your activity on our websites and apps and on other websites and apps operated by other ZPG Companies.

We may also share your personal information with third parties in the following circumstances:

• Product suppliers: to obtain quotes and help you switch

  • We provide limited personal information to the suppliers whose products and services are listed on our websites and apps to help them provide quotes and to carry out your switch. When you buy products or services from these suppliers, their own privacy policies will apply to how they use your personal information. You can find these privacy policies on their websites and you should check that you are happy with them before completing your switch. Some of the suppliers on our websites and apps will search external sources (for example, the electoral roll, county court judgments, bankruptcy registers and credit reference agencies) to determine your suitability for particular products. Where these searches are conducted to provide quotes (e.g., our credit card smart search tool) they may be recorded by credit reference agencies but will not affect your credit rating. When you choose to apply for a product, or enter into a contract (e.g., with an energy supplier), the searches undertaken will typically be recorded by credit reference agencies and may affect your credit score.

We use some third parties to perform searches on our websites for insurance quotes and to provide eligibility checkers for some financial products. They will use your personal information in accordance with their own privacy policies. Details of these third parties and their privacy policies are set out below.

The eligibility checkers on our website will perform a soft credit check search before providing you with an indication of your eligibility for a product. These searches may be recorded by credit reference agencies, but will not affect your credit rating.

If you go on to apply for a financial product in relation to which you have done an eligibility check, the eligibility check provider may pass your information to the supplier to help you complete your application quicker.

When you apply for a motor or home insurance product through our website, a number of checks and searches are made through credit reference agencies, fraud prevention agencies, and other public or privately available sources of information. These checks can be conducted at any stage of a quote, policy renewal, or upon your request for an amendment to be made.

Soft credit checks are used to ensure providers can appropriately assess your insurance and financial profile, verify your identity, and to help prevent fraud and provide you with their best premium and fullest range of payment options.

• Product suppliers: for Insurance fraud prevention and detection purposes

  Insurance providers exchange information through various databases to help check information provided and to prevent fraudulent claims. Specifically, Insurance Database Services Limited (IDSL) hosts the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (CUE), which holds a record of incidents reported to insurance companies by policyholders and third-party claimants. Insurers may validate the information provided by you, both about yourself and about any other person named on the application, against the information held on CUE and against other databases hosted by IDSL. Insurers may use this information to consider whether to accept the risk.

Insurance providers may also use the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft Register, run by the Association of British Insurers (ABI). This is accessed by the police, the DVLA and DVLNI (Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agencies), as well as other insurers. Some insurers also participate in other data-sharing schemes.

When you get a motor insurance policy, including motorbike or van cover, your insurance cover details may also be added to the Motor Insurance Database, run by the Motor Insurers' Information Centre (MIIC). This has been set up to help identify uninsured drivers and may be searched by the police to help them confirm who's insured to drive. If there's an accident the database may be used by insurers, MIIC and the Motor Insurers' Bureau as well as those making a claim for a road traffic accident, to identify the relevant policy information.

The aim of all of this is to help Uswitch and our product providers decide if they can offer a product, offer a product on different terms and to prevent fraudulent claims. When we deal with your request for a quote, if applicable, the insurance provider or any intermediary or appointed representative may search these registers, databases and any other anti-fraud registers to provide such services. Under the conditions of your policy, you must tell us about any incident (such as accident, damage, loss or theft) which may or may not give rise to a claim. When you tell us about an incident we'll pass information relating to it, to the insurance provider, intermediary or appointed representative.

Failure to answer all questions honestly, accurately and to the best of your knowledge may result in any policy or product being invalid, receiving extra charges from your chosen provider, or seeing any future claim being affected. You may also be liable for any third party costs in the event of an accident.

• Our service providers: to help us run our business,perform services you request, and facilitate our incentive programmes

  We may provide your personal information to our business partners, suppliers and subcontractors who provide services to us or where necessary to perform a service that you have requested. This includes using address information to look up your property’s energy meter numbers and usage, smart meter data to operate our Utrack product, and putting our survey partners in touch with you so that we can find out what you thought about your experience on Uswitch.

• Advertisers and advertising networks: to serve relevant adverts to you and others

  We may provide your personal information to our partner advertisers and advertising networks that require that information to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others.

• Analytics and search engine providers: to help us improve our services

  We may provide information about your visit to analytics and search engine providers to help us improve and optimise our services. We generally only share this information in a form that does not directly identify you.

We may also share your personal information with third parties for the following reasons:

• If we sell or buy any business or assets

  If we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your personal information to the prospective seller or buyer of that business or those assets, along with its professional advisers. If Uswitch (or substantially all of its assets) is acquired, personal information held by it about its users will be one of the transferred assets.

• To obtain professional advice

  We may disclose your personal information to obtain professional advice (for example, from lawyers or financial advisors).

• To comply with a legal obligation

  We may disclose your personal information if required to do so by law or in response to a request from law enforcement or another regulatory authority. We may disclose your personal information to enforce our agreements with you or to protect the rights, property or safety of Uswitch, its users or others. This includes sharing personal information with other organisations for fraud prevention purposes.

We may transfer, store or process your personal information outside of the EEA. The laws in some countries may not provide as much legal protection for your personal information as in the EEA.By submitting your personal information, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. Where we use service providers outside the EEA, we rely on approved data transfer mechanisms (for example, Standard Contractual Clauses) to ensure that your personal information is adequately safeguarded in the recipient country.

Unfortunately, transmission of information over the internet is not completely secure. We will do our best to protect your personal information, but we cannot guarantee its security and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your personal information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access. We keep your personal information for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. These periods vary depending on the nature of the information and your interactions with us. You can delete your Uswitch account at any time using the account settings page.

We use cookies and other similar technologies to distinguish you from other users of our websites and apps (including when you browse third party websites). This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you use our services (for example, to remember your login details and improve our services). We also use cookies and similar technologies to show you more personalised advertising, including Uswitch ads on other websites. You may adjust the settings on your browser to refuse cookies but some of our services may not work if you do so. For detailed information on the cookies we use and why we use them, please read our Cookie Policy.

Opting out of collection of information by third party advertisers

Our third party advertisers and advertising network providers (“Ad Providers”) may provide you with ads on our websites and apps or on other websites. To make those ads more relevant and help measure their effectiveness, the Ad Providers may use cookies and similar technologies. They record your activity (including pages visited) and estimate what information interests you most. They use this information in accordance with their own privacy policies.

Right to withdraw consent: Where you have given us permission to process your personal information, you may withdraw your consent with effect for the future.

For instance, you can ask us not to process your personal information for marketing purposes. You can do this at any time by updating your email preferences in your Uswitch account or by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in any marketing email we send you. You can also opt out of marketing by emailing customerservices@uswitch.com.

Right to erasure: You have the right to request that we delete applicable personal information we process about you. We must comply with this request, unless processing is necessary:

• for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information;

• for compliance with a legal obligation which requires processing by UK law;

• for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes as authorised by UK law; or

• for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.

Right to rectification: You have the right to request rectification of incorrect or incomplete personal information concerning you. We make reasonable efforts to keep your personal information accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information available to us.

Right to restriction: In some circumstances, you may obtain from us restriction of processing of your personal information.

Right to portability: You have the right to request that we transmit your personal information (that you have provided to us) to another organisation (data portability), if:

• we process your personal information by automated means;

• we base the processing of your personal information on your consent, or our processing of your personal information are necessary for the execution or performance of a contract to which you are a party;

• your personal information are provided to us by you; and

• your right to portability does not adversely affect the rights and the freedoms of other persons.

Right to object: You may object to the processing of your personal information, when it is based on our legitimate interests or those of a third party. In this event we shall no longer process your personal data, unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds and an overriding interest for the processing or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.

Right to access your personal information: You may ask from us information regarding personal information that we hold about you. We will provide you with a copy of your personal information upon request, once we have sufficiently verified your identity (ID requirements will vary depending on the nature of the information we hold about you).

Right to lodge a complaint: You can lodge a complaint with the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office), the United Kingdom's data protection supervisory authority. However, we’d appreciate it if you first contact us to try and solve your problem – you can find our contact details below.

We have one calendar month to complete these requests, which may be extended in certain circumstances. To help you exercise your rights more quickly, we offer the ability to access, update and delete your Uswitch account information by logging into your Uswitch account. If you cannot fulfil your request using these tools, please email privacy@uswitch.com or contact us using the address below.

Our telephone based broadband comparison service is provided by Dixons Carphone PLC. Dixons Carphone PLC is registered in England and Wales (company number 07105905) and has its registered office at 1 Portal Way, London, United Kingdom, W3 6RS.

Certain broadband switches which are completed on the Uswitch domain (e.g., TalkTalk Fibre 35) are powered by Hazelnut London Ltd t/a ”Switchcraft”. Hazelnut London Ltd is registered in England and Wales (company number 10369814) and has its registered office at 14 Meredyth Road, London, England, SW13 0DY. By using Uswitch branded broadband switch forms, you agree to the Switchcraft terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Breakdown insurance

Our breakdown insurance comparison service is provided by Comparison Creator Limited which is an Appointed Representative of Moneyshake.com Limited. Moneyshake.com Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (522581). Comparison Creator Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 07336373) and has its registered office at Springboard Business Innovation Centre, Llantarnam Park, Cwmbran, NP44 3AW.

Car insurance

Our car insurance comparison service is provided by Confused.com (a trading name of Inspop.com Limited). Confused.com is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (310635). Confused.com is registered in England and Wales (company number 03857130) and has its registered office at Greyfriars House, Greyfriars Road, Cardiff, CF10 3AL. By using the car insurance comparison services, you agree to the Confused.com terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Caravan insurance

Our caravan insurance comparison service is provided by QuoteMeToday.co.uk Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (786619). QuoteMeToday.co.uk Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 04668665) and has its registered office at Office 2a, First Floor, 3 Jubilee Way, Whitstable Road, Faversham, Kent, ME13 8GD. By using the caravan insurance comparison service, you agree to the QuoteMeToday.co.uk Limited terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Gadget insurance

Our gadget insurance comparison service is provided by Comparison Creator Limited which is an Appointed Representative of Moneyshake.com Limited. Moneyshake.com Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (522581). Comparison Creator Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 07336373) and has its registered office at Springboard Business Innovation Centre, Llantarnam Park, Cwmbran, NP44 3AW.

Home insurance

Our home insurance comparison service is provided by Confused.com (a trading name of Inspop.com Limited). Confused.com is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (310635). Confused.com is registered in England and Wales (company number 03857130) and has its registered office at Greyfriars House, Greyfriars Road, Cardiff, CF10 3AL. By using the home insurance comparison services, you agree to the Confused.com terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Home emergency insurance

Our home emergency insurance comparison service is provided by Comparison Creator Limited which is an Appointed Representative of Moneyshake.com Limited. Moneyshake.com Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (522581). Comparison Creator Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 07336373) and has its registered office at Springboard Business Innovation Centre, Llantarnam Park, Cwmbran, NP44 3AW.

Health insurance

Our health insurance comparison service is provided by ActiveQuote Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (501109). ActiveQuote Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 06765845) and has its registered office at Global Reach, Dunleavy Drive, Cardiff, CF11 0SN. By using the health insurance comparison service, you agree to the ActiveQuote terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Income protection insurance

Our income protection insurance comparison service is provided by ActiveQuote Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (501109). ActiveQuote Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 06765845) and has its registered office at Global Reach, Dunleavy Drive, Cardiff, CF11 0SN. By using the income protection insurance comparison service, you agree to the ActiveQuote terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Life insurance

Our life insurance comparison service is provided by ActiveQuote Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (501109). ActiveQuote Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 06765845) and has its registered office at Global Reach, Dunleavy Drive, Cardiff, CF11 0SN. By using the life insurance service, you agree to the ActiveQuote terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Travel insurance

Our travel insurance comparison service is provided by theidol.com (a trading name of Investment Discounts Online Limited). theidol.com is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (197451). theidol.com is registered in England and Wales (company number 04231834) and has its registered office at One Coleman Street, London EC2R 5AA. By using the travel insurance insurance comparison service, you agree to theidol.com’s terms and conditions and privacy policy.