Welcome to the HelpHound Privacy Policy
Help Hound Limited ("HelpHound", "we") are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We will never give your information to third parties other than as permitted by this Privacy Policy.
Once we have received your information, we will protect it using Helphound's standard procedures and security features aimed at preventing unauthorised access. In particular, we employ user names and passwords on HelpHound's computer systems to ensure that access to HelpHound's systems is limited to those with proper authorisation.
This Policy sets out HelpHound's views and practices regarding your personal data and the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to HelpHound, will be processed by HelpHound. Please read it carefully.
For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act), the data controller is Help Hound Limited whose contact office is New Broad Street House, 35 New Broad Street, London EC2M 1NH.
HelpHound's nominated representative is John Williams who can be contacted by post at the above address or by e-mail at john.williams@helphound.com
The above postal and e-mail addresses are the HelpHound Contact Addresses.
MEMBER NAME AND ACTIVITIES
You may view the website at www.helphound.com ("Our Community") without registering as a member but cannot post contributions to Our Community unless you are a member. If you register as a member you will have disclosed personal information to HelpHound and we will be able to identify you from that information.
If you register with HelpHound, you will be asked to provide a user name and this user name will be displayed on Our Community, for example, on bulletin boards where you post contributions or on advertisements/listings which you post. Your user name will therefore be available to the public. We recommend that you choose an anonymous user name rather than a user name which allows third parties to identify you.
Unless you consent, we will not give your actual name, or contact details to other members. However, if you make this information publicly available, other members and third parties may use this information to contact you. We have no control over such contact.
Whilst we will make all reasonable endeavours to enable you to edit, amend or remove contributions, you should be aware that you may not be able to remove any contributions which you post to Our Community once they have been posted.
If you post a contribution other members may respond to that contribution. If you post a contribution about a third party, you will have the option, at the time you post your contribution, to provide that third party with your contact details, such as your email address, so that they may respond directly to your contribution. Once the third party has your contact details we will have no control over the contact they decide to make with you, or what they may do with your contact details. To protect your privacy you will be able to correspond with third parties through Our Community without disclosing your contact details.
INFORMATION WE MAY COLLECT FROM YOU
We may collect and process the following data about you:
- Information that you provide to HelpHound, for example by filling in forms on Our Community , by requesting information from HelpHound or from other HelpHound members or in requesting any goods or services.
- Information that you give HelpHound when you write to us (including by email).
- Information that you give HelpHound when we speak to you by telephone. We may make and keep a record of the information you share with us by this means.
- Information that you provide to HelpHound by completing surveys. We may ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
- Details of your visits to Our Community including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, information search requests and search results, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for HelpHound's own billing purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access.
- Details of transactions and communications you carry out through Our Community and of the fulfilment of any orders.
- Information obtained by HelpHound from third parties in accordance with the Act.
IP ADDRESSES AND COOKIES
To help HelpHound improve Our Community and to offer a better and more personalised service and for system administration purposes, we may collect information about your computer, IP address, operating system, browser type and information about your general usage of Our Community by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive and enable HelpHound, for example:
- to estimate our audience size and usage pattern;
- to store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise Our Community according to your individual interests;
- to speed up your searches; and
- to recognise you when you return to Our Community.
You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. If you do this you may be unable to access certain parts of Our Community. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, HelpHound's system may issue cookies when you log on to Our Community.
Please note that HelpHound's business members and other third parties whose own websites you may access using the links provided on Our Community may also use cookies, over which we have no control.
WHERE WE STORE AND PROCESS YOUR PERSONAL DATA
The data that HelpHound collects from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination inside or outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating inside or outside the EEA who work for HelpHound or HelpHound's suppliers where we instruct them to process the information in accordance with one of the permitted uses of information set out in this Privacy Policy (see below). We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
All information you provide to HelpHound via email or Our Community is stored on HelpHound's secure servers and any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology.
Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of Our Community, you are responsible for keeping the password confidential. We ask you not to share the password with anyone.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to Our Community; any transmission is at your own risk.
USES MADE OF THE INFORMATION
We use information held about you in the following ways:
- to ensure that content from Our Community is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
- to provide you with information, products or services that you request from HelpHound, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes;
- to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and HelpHound;
- to notify you about changes to HelpHound's products and services;
- to run competitions, surveys and incentive programmes;
- to rate individual members, to rate their feedback reviews and to rate Businesses and Public Services (more information: Weighted Rating);
- in order to enforce or apply HelpHound's Terms and Conditions of Website Use;
- We will only use your data to provide you with information about HelpHound's products and services which may be of interest to you where we have your prior permission to do so. We will not contact you by electronic means to provide you with information about products and services which may be of interest to you, unless you have consented to this;
- We will not pass your data to third parties to enable them to provide you with information about their products or services.
If you do not want HelpHound to use your data in one or more of the ways mentioned above, please let us know. We will not pass your data to third parties other than as permitted in this Policy.
Although we do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our business members, we may provide them with aggregate information about our members (ensuring that no individual is identified) for their marketing and strategic development purposes.
You should be aware that if you disclose personal information publicly anywhere on Our Community or on any other website accessed as a result of using Our Community that information could be collected and used by anyone else accessing that website and may result in unsolicited messages from other parties. We cannot be held responsible for such messages.
DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION
We may disclose your personal information to any member of the HelpHound group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 736 of the UK Companies Act 1985.
We may disclose your personal information to third parties:
- in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets;
- if Help Hound Limited itself or a substantial part of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its members will be one of the transferred assets;
- if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions of Website Use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of us, our members or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
YOUR RIGHTS
You have the right to ask HelpHound not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will inform you if we intend to use your data for such purposes. Additionally, you can exercise your right to prevent such processing by contacting HelpHound at any time at either of the HelpHound Contact Addresses above. Further, if at any stage you would like us to check, amend or remove any information held by HelpHound about you, please contact us at the same Addresses.
THIRD PARTY PRIVACY POLICIES
Our Community may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of HelpHound's suppliers, partner networks, business members, affiliates and other third parties.
If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites should have their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies or the content or operation of these websites. These websites are not covered by this Privacy Policy. If you access other websites by using any of the links provided, the operators of those websites may collect information from you which will be used in accordance with their own privacy policy and which may differ from ours. Please check these policies and the terms of the websites before you submit any personal data to these websites.
ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION
The Act gives you the right to access certain information held by HelpHound about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet HelpHound's costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.
CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
Any changes we may make to this Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on this page, and, where appropriate, may be notified to you by e-mail.
CONTACT
Questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Policy are welcomed and should be sent to either of the HelpHound Contact Addresses above.
This Privacy Policy was last updated on 15 May 2007