Privacy Policy

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and this policy (together with our terms of use above and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act), Duncan Orr of Swindells Financial Planning is the data controller.

Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process the following data about you:

Information that you provide to us by filling in forms on our site or that you e-mail to us. This includes information provided when you submit your CV, subscribe and/or register for any service that we may provide via our site from time to time or when you report a problem with our site.

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.

We may also 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 site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data and the resources that you access.

IP addresses, cookies and web beacons

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration, to improve the structure and content of our site and to report aggregate information to our advertisers and our members. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

For these reasons we reserve the right to use cookies as an anonymous method of recording your usage of our site and would ask that if you do not wish to have cookies recorded on your machine, you amend the settings on your browser to prevent them from being created. The “Help” section in your browser should provide you with the necessary information to adjust your settings and control the creation and storage of cookies on your hard drive.

A cookie is a text-only string of information that a website transfers to the cookie file of the browser on your computer’s hard disk so that the website can remember who you are.

A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the “lifetime” of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number.

Two types of cookies are used by us on our site:

  • Session Cookies: which are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave the site; and
  • Persistent cookies: which remain in the cookie file of your browser for much longer (though how long will depend on the lifetime of the specific cookie).

Cookies can help a website to arrange content to match your preferred interests more quickly. Most major websites use cookies. Cookies cannot be used by themselves to identify you.

Session Cookies allow you to carry information across pages of our site and avoid having to re-enter information and to allow you to access stored information.

Persistent Cookies help us recognise you as a unique visitor (just a number) when you return to our website and to allow us to tailor content or advertisements to match your preferred interests or to avoid showing you the same adverts repeatedly.

If you alter your browser settings to refuse our cookies you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

Please note that our advertisers and our members may also use cookies, over which we have no control.

Our website may contain electronic images known as web beacons which allows us to count users who have visited those pages and deliver co-branded services. Web beacons are not used to access your personally identifiable information on our site. They are a technique to compile aggregated statistics about our website’s usage. Web beacons collect only a limited set of information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view and a description of the page on which the web beacon resides.

Use of cookies by Swindells Financial Planning

Essential cookies

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Purpose: These are essential to the operation of the website, blocking any of these will prevent access to the website. These cookies are deleted when you close your browser.

Google Analytics

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Purpose: These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where vistors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. Click here for an overview of privacy at Google

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the provision of support and administration services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. These agents have access to the personal information required in order to perform their functions but may not use it for any other purpose and we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a 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 site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

  • To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
  • Where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes, to provide you with information or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you.
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
  • To allow you to participate in any interactive features which may offer on our site from time to time, when you choose to do so.
  • To notify you about changes to our service.

We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we may provide them with aggregate information about our users (for example, we may inform them that 500 men aged under 30 have clicked on their advertisement on any given day). We may also use such aggregate information to help advertisers reach the kind of audience they want to target (for example, women in L1). We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertiser’s wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience.

We advertise details of job opportunities with our members on our website. If you apply for one of the positions we may ask you to provide further information about yourself so that we, and/or the relevant member, can contact you. These details together with any details you provide in a CV or application form will be treated as confidential and we will not allow employers to see any of your details without your prior consent.

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • If you have given your consent for us to do so for marketing or other specified purposes. 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 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 of use [Note: insert link] and other agreements; or to protect our rights or property and the safety of our customers or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by refusing your consent at the time of collection or at any other time by contacting us at Swindells Financial Planning.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our members, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Access to information

The Act gives you the right to access information held 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 our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to Swindells Financial Planning.