a. The companies who work on our behalf
These are the companies that help us deliver our services to you or help us to carry out our activities. They include companies which distribute our marketing material and products and carry out marketing activities for us, who host and store information on our customers, who conduct research for us and those who process card payments on our behalf.
b. Information you give us
This is the information you provide us with when you purchase from us, contact us, register with us, write a review and comment on our other websites.
We will highlight to you the initial information which we require to perform the services, and information which is voluntary for you to provide.
c. Information we acquire from third parties
If we acquire information on you from another company, we will take sensible steps to assure ourselves that your information was collected legally.
d. Your use of this website
We, or the companies which work on our behalf, collect information about your use of our websites. This means what pages you have viewed, for how long and your website journey. This is done by cookies or other tracking technologies and will include your IP address, and if you have logged in, your log-in details.
See our Cookie and Tracking Technologies Policy for more information.
e. How you arrived at the website in the first place
We, and the companies which work on our behalf, collect information about how you arrived at our websites in the first place. This can include what links or adverts of ours you’ve viewed or clicked on to reach us, or any search terms you’ve used. If we understand how you look for us, we hope to make it easier to be found.
If you see an advert of ours elsewhere we – or the ad agencies that work on our behalf – will place a cookie on your browser. This is so that when you arrive at our website we can recognise that you’ve seen an advert of ours elsewhere.
See our Cookie and Tracking Technologies PolicyCookie and Tracking Technologies Policy for more information.
a. Unsubscribe
You can unsubscribe from our marketing communications at any time, and we will action your request promptly.
You can do so by:
b. Copy of your information
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. This is known as a subject access request. If you would like to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you please email or write to us.
We will not charge you for this information and we will do our best to respond to you as quickly as possible and in any event, within 40 days of receipt of your written request.
c. Correct the information we hold on you
We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. Please always let us know if you think it is not by contacting us.
You can amend your username, password and screen name by visiting Member Access.
d. Our web analytics provider
We use Google Analytics to better understand how our customers navigate to and through our websites, how long customers spend visiting our content items, how often they return to visit our websites and what demographic categories (age, gender, interests) they fall into. Google Analytics also helps us track the effectiveness of the money we spend on our digital marketing campaigns. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect this information and this information helps us to improve our websites. You may stop the transmission of information generated by the cookies about your use of our website to Google, by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on available here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Please see our Cookie and Tracking Technologies Policy and Google's privacy policy for further information.
e. Social networking sites
We have a social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tool to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend. Your interaction with this tool, or being on the same webpage whilst logged in to these services, will result in further cookies from these companies being placed on your system. See our Cookie and Tracking Technologies Policy for more information.
f. Third party ad companies
We engage in the following forms of advertising on our own website and on other websites which are part of the same ad network or affiliate network as we are:
Performance Advertising
We engage in a form of advertising which is called ‘performance advertising’ on other websites and on our own websites. This is a form of advertising where we only pay the advertiser when there are measurable results. We have a series of partner sites, or ‘affiliates’ who will host our adverts and links, and if you come to our website and decide to buy something from us via those adverts or links, then we will then pay them a small fee as a thank you. Cookies help us to do this – to find out more about our use of cookies, and the ad companies which help us do this, please see our Cookie and Tracking Technologies Policy. You can find out more about performance advertising at http://www.iab-performance-marketing-explained.net/the-online-performance-marketing-business/
Display/contextual advertising
We carry out display and contextual advertising on this website and on other websites. These are usually in the form of banner adverts that may run across the top of your computer screen, or it can be a piece of text. We work with an ad company who decides where it’s best to place our adverts, and we usually don’t know where our ads will appear. The ad company will place a cookie on your computer when you see the ad so they can monitor its effectiveness and not show you the same ad too many times again. Cookies help us do this – to find out more about our use of cookies, and the ad companies which help us do this, please see our Cookie and Tracking Technologies Policy.
Retargeting
We, and ad networks which work on our behalf, may show you adverts on other websites about things which you’ve previously shown an interest in on our website. The adverts may highlight other products or services which we think you’d be interested in too. Cookies help us to do this – to find out more about our use of cookies, and the ad companies which us do this, please see our Cookie and Tracking Technologies Policy
a. Controls and processes
We take the security of our customers’ data very seriously and use technical and organisational measures to keep your data secure.
Technical measures and controls include firewalls, devices to detect and prevent intrusion attempts and encryption systems.
Organisational measures include relevant policies and procedures and the training of our staff involved in handling your information.
When we do use companies which are based outside the European Economic Area to manage your information, we ensure that they meet our high standards and have passed our checks and controls.
b. Appropriate steps
We will do our very best to avoid a breach but sometimes events happen in spite of this. Our promise to you is that if they do happen, we will work to ensure that the impact on you is as minimal as it reasonably can be.
If we discover that your personal information has been breached and it could adversely affect you – and we have your contact details – we will contact you promptly with advice as to whether there are any steps you might want to consider taking as a result. We will provide you with details of who you can contact here if you have any queries, and details of the regulator – the Information Commissioner’s Office – should you want to speak to them.
a. The companies who work on our behalf
These are the companies that help us deliver our services to you or help us to carry out our activities. They include companies which distribute our marketing material and products and carry out marketing activities for us, who host and store information on our customers, who conduct research for us and those who process card payments on our behalf.
As we are fully responsible for the way in which they deal with your information, we ensure they pass our own checks and controls so we can be confident that they’ll keep your information safe.
b. Our company group
We will share your information with other members of our company group for the purposes of providing you with the products and services you purchase from us or if you’ve indicated to us that you’d like to hear about our other products and services or pledged your support for our campaigning work.
All companies within our group comply with similarly high standards in the treatment of your information.
Please click here for a full list of companies/brands within our company group
c. Government, law enforcement agencies, the courts and regulatory bodies;
We will disclose information on you to these bodies when we either have a legal obligation to do so, or when we believe our compliance with the request to be fair, reasonable and lawful.
Examples of when such requests may be made include:
d. Other specific companies where you have expressly consented
We will only share your information with other companies for marketing purposes where you have expressly consented for us to do so.
These might be companies we have a relationship with in relation to products and services provided to you or companies through which you have contacted Which?.
a. The companies who work on our behalf
These are the companies that help us deliver our services to you or help us to carry out our activities. They include companies which distribute our marketing material and products and carry out marketing activities for us, who host and store information on our customers, who conduct research for us and those who process card payments on our behalf.
b. Cookies and other tracking technologies
Cookies are small data files that are sent to your browser from a website you visit. They are stored on the device (such as your computer’s hard drive, your mobile phone or your tablet) which you are using to access the internet.
We use a variety of cookies, as they perform different functions, from remembering that you are logged in during visits to what your screen name is. They also help us to identify which of our web pages are the most popular and what type of journey a visitor has through our site. We also use cookies and web beacons to help us understand how you engage with our emails, and to tailor their content so that it is relevant to you. Cookies help us to arrange the content and layout of our site, and recognise computers that have been to our site before or have seen one of our adverts elsewhere. They therefore play an important role in helping us to enhance your experience when browsing our website.
More details is found in our Cookie and Tracking Technologies Policy
a. As long as we need to
We will only keep information about you for as long as we need to. We make sure that any companies that process your data on our behalf do the same. We have an internal retention policy where there are varying retention periods for different categories of information, depending on our legal obligations and whether there is a practical need to retain your information.
a. Record of any updates in the current year
Updated 8 July 2013 - revised privacy policy published
Updated 29 November 2013 - amendments for clarification to 'The companies who work on our behalf'
a. Contact us
Which Limited
Postal Address:
Customer service centre
Which?
Castlemead
Gascoyne Way
Hertford
SG14 1LH
Telephone number: 029 2267 0000
Email: support@which.co.uk
We take the quality of the service we provide seriously, and our calls are therefore recorded for monitoring and training purposes.