Privacy policy

This privacy policy was last updated on 27 November 2019.

This notice describes how we use your information.

By clicking on the ‘Confirm’ button on sign up, by visiting www.ratedpeople.com or using our apps, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Notice.

  1. What Personal Information About Users Do We Gather?
  2. What About Cookies?
  3. Interest-Based Ads
  4. What About Use Of Your Personal Information To Prevent Or Detect Fraud?
  5. Does RPL Share The Information It Receives?
  6. How Secure Is The Information We Hold About You?
  7. What About Third-Party Advertisers And Links To Other Websites?
  8. What Information Can You Access?
  9. What Choices Do You Have?
  10. Does RPL Send Information It Holds About You Outside The UK Or European Union?
  11. Conditions Of Use, Notices, And Revisions
  12. Examples Of Information Collected And The Purposes For Which We Use Your Information

This Privacy Notice sets out the data processing practices carried out through the use of the Internet and any other electronic communications networks including apps and tablets (we use the term ‘Website’ to refer to any and all types of technology including websites that you use to access our content and services) by Rated People Limited (RPL). If you have any requests concerning your personal information or any queries with regard to these practices please contact us.

1. What Personal Information About Users Do We Gather?

Rated People Limited (“we”, “us”, or “RPL”) collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the Data Protection Laws which include the Data Protection Act 1998 and any replacement legislation, and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The Data Protection Laws apply across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those Laws. The information we gather about Users helps us personalise and continually improve your Rated People experience. Some Users of our Website will also be Members. You are a Member if you register on our Website as a Client or a Trade Business. Here are the types of information we gather.

  • Information You Give Us: We receive and store any information you enter on our Website or give us in any other way. By registering with RPL as a Member via our Website, you choose to accept the practices described in this Privacy Notice. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as set out in here. Please note that it is possible to authorise another individual to operate and manage your account on your behalf. However, if you have such an arrangement in place, you still remain primarily responsible for the use of your account, and any liability that may arise in connection with that use, including for any and all payments due under it or claims brought against you in respect of that use.
  • Automatically Collected Information: We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many websites, we use “cookies”, and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses our Website or advertisements and other content served by or on behalf of RPL on other websites.
  • Mobile/Tablet: When you download or use apps created by us or on our behalf, we may receive information about your location and your mobile device, including a unique identifier for your device.
  • E-mail Communications: To help us make e-mails more useful and interesting, we often receive a confirmation when you open e-mails from us if your computer or device supports such capabilities. We also compare our customer list to lists received from other companies, in an effort to avoid sending unnecessary messages to our Users. If you do not want to receive e-mail or other mail from us, please adjust your Contact Preferences.
  • Facebook and other Social media platforms: You may integrate your account with social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. By doing so you authorise us to collect your information, such as your username, encrypted access credentials, and other information, that may be available on or through your social media account. Such information may include your name, profile picture, country, hometown, e-mail address, date of birth, gender, friends’ names and profile pictures and networks. We may store this information and use it for the purposes explained in here and to verify your credentials with social media platforms.
  • Information From Other Sources: We might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information.

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2. What About Cookies?

  • Cookies are unique identifiers that we transfer to your device to enable our systems to recognize your device and to provide product features, personalised advertisements on other websites, and to remember your requests for services (if you are a Client) or job lead purchases (if you are a Trade Business) between visits.
  • The Help feature on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. Additionally, you can disable or delete similar data used by browser add-ons, such as Flash cookies, by changing the add-on’s settings or visiting the website of its manufacturer. Since cookies will allow you to take advantage of some of the Website’s product features, we recommend that you leave them turned on. For instance, if you block or otherwise reject our cookies, you may not be able to post requests for services or buy job leads, or use any of our online products and services that require you to sign in.
  • Please read our cookies policy for more information.

For information about the specific cookies used on this website, please see below:

Type of cookie What it does How to block
Cookies necessary for essential website purposes These cookies are essential to provide you with services available through our Website and to use some of its features, such as access to secure areas. These cookies are necessary for us to supply you with certain online features like transactional pages and secure login accounts. You may disable any of these cookies via your browser settings. If you do so, various functions of the Website may be unavailable to you or may not work the way you want them to.
Functionality Cookies Functionality cookies record information about choices you’ve made and allow us to tailor the Website to you. These cookies mean that when you continue to use or come back to the Website, we can provide you with our services as you have asked for them to be provided. For example, these cookies allow us to:

  • Save your location preferences;
  • Remember settings you have applied, such as layout, text size, preferences, and colours;
  • Show you when you are logged in; and
  • Store accessibility options.
 You may disable any of these cookies via your browser settings. If you do so, various functions of the Website may be unavailable to you or may not work the way you want them to.
Advertising Cookies (Interest- Based Ads) RPL displays interest-based advertising on its Website and on unaffiliated websites, using information that you make available to us when visiting the Website. Interest-based ads (also referred to as personalised or targeted ads) are displayed based on information from activities such as your visits and use of these websites. Information about the types of information that we gather is set out in the Automatically Collected Information section of this Privacy Policy. You may disable any of these cookies via your browser settings. If you do so, various functions of the Website may be unavailable to you or may not work the way you want them to.

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3. Interest-Based Ads

In addition to using cookies and interest-based ads (as discussed above), we also use web beacons (also known as action tags or single-pixel gifs) and other technologies (collectively, “tracking technologies”). Tracking technologies enable us to learn about what ads you see, what ads you click, and other actions you take on our Website and on other websites. This allows us to provide you with more useful and relevant ads. For example, if we know what ads you are shown we can be careful not to show you the same ones repeatedly. We do not associate your interaction with unaffiliated websites with your identity in providing you with interest-based ads.

In environments that do not support tracking technologies, like some mobile devices and applications, we may use other anonymous technologies for these purposes. To serve our ads in mobile applications we collect identifiers, such as Google Advertising ID or IDFA depending on the operating system of your mobile device. These identifiers consist in a string of anonymous and random characters singling out your device, that our partners may store using a non-reversible encrypting method.

Please note that we do not provide any personal information to advertisers or to third party websites that display our interest-based ads. However, advertisers and other third-parties (including the ad networks, ad-serving companies, and other service providers they may use) may assume that users who interact with or click on a personalized ad or content are part of the group that the ad or content has targeted. Some third parties may provide us with information about you (such as the websites where you have been shown ads or demographic information) from offline and online sources that we may use to provide you more relevant and useful advertising.

Advertisers or ad companies working on their behalf may use technology to serve the ads that appear on our Website directly to your browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use tracking technologies to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize ad content. We do not have access to or have any control over tracking technologies or other features that advertisers and third party websites may use, and the information practices of these advertisers and third party websites are not covered by this Privacy Notice. Please contact them directly or visit their websites for more information about their privacy practices.

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4. What About Use Of Your Personal Information To Prevent Or Detect Fraud?

When you apply through the Website to register with us, we may check our own and the following records about you and your business partners:

  • Those at fraud prevention agencies (FPAs);
  • If you are a director, we will seek confirmation from credit reference agencies (CRAs) that the residential address that you provide is the same as that shown on the restricted register of directors’ usual addresses at Companies House.

We work with a third party (iOvation) for fraud detection and prevention purposes, and to improve the experience of our Users who do not pose a fraud risk. iOvation maintains a central database of devices and internet users that pose a fraud threat to businesses and others on the web. This information is used to mitigate the risk and potential impact of fraudulent activity on our Website and the websites of other users of the iOvation platform. RPL use this service and if we detect potential or actual fraudulent activity then such activity and certain identifying data will be reported to the iOvation database.

We also share customer data with government bodies including the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). The NFI is an exercise that matches electronic data within and between public and private sector bodies to prevent and detect fraud.

In addition, if you give us false or inaccurate information and we suspect or identify fraud we will record this and may also pass this information to FPAs and other organisations involved in crime and fraud prevention.

We may also check your business records at CRAs. When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your business credit file that may be seen by lenders. CRAs supply to us public information (including information from the electoral register) and fraud prevention information. Where such checks are carried out by us, they are necessary for to enable us to enter into contractual arrangements with you as a Trade Business. If you fail a check carried out by us with a CRA, this will automatically disqualify your application. You will be informed if this is the case and may appeal to the us by contacting [email protected] when your application will be considered by an individual.

We will make checks including verifying identities to prevent and detect crime and money laundering. We may also make periodic searches at CRAs and FPAs to manage your account with us particularly if you are a Professional. In addition, if you apply to pay for our services in arrears, information on applications will be sent to CRAs and will be recorded by them. This will include information on your business and its proprietors and CRAs may create a record of the name and address of your business and its proprietors if there is not one already.

In order to process your application we will supply your personal information to credit reference agencies (CRAs) and they will give us information about you, such as about your financial history. We do this to assess creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace and recover debts and prevent criminal activity. We will also continue to exchange information about you with CRAs on an ongoing basis, including about your settled accounts and any debts not fully repaid on time. If you do not make the required payments to your account on time, this will be indicated on your credit rating. CRAs will share your information with other organisations. The identities of the CRAs, and the ways in which they use and share personal information, are explained in more detail here.

RPL and other organisations may access and use information recorded by fraud prevention agencies from other countries.

If you want to find out more, you can contact the CRAs currently operating in the UK. The information they hold may not be the same so it is worth contacting them all. They will charge you a small statutory fee.

  • CallCredit, Consumer Services Team, PO Box 491, Leeds, LS3 1WZ or call 0870 060 1414;
  • Equifax PLC, Credit File Advice Centre, PO Box 3001, Bradford, BD1 5US or call 0870 010 0583 or logon to equifax.co.uk/crain.
  • Experian, Consumer Help Service, PO Box 8000, Nottingham, NG80 7WF or call 0844 481 8000 or logon to experian.co.uk.

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5. Does RPL Share The Information It Receives?

Information about our Members is an important part of our business. We share Member information only as described below and with controls that either are subject to this Privacy Notice or follow practices at least as protective as those described in this Privacy Notice. We do not typically share personal information about Users who are not Members.

    • When You Post A Request For Services: We share Client information (full name, postcode, email address and phone number) with Trade Businesses that respond to a Client’s request for services. Trade Businesses must comply with the Trade Business Code of Conduct concerning how they deal with Clients and use Client information. Here we are using your information to fulfill our contractual obligations to you.
    • When You Respond To A Request For Services: We share Trade Business’s information (name, full address including postcode, email address and phone number) with Clients when they respond to a request for services. Here we are using your information to fulfill our contractual obligations to you. In pursuit of our interest in providing Clients with access to legitimate Trade Businesses and ensuring the positive reputation and user experience of the Website is upheld, in the event of a dispute between a Client and a Trade Business, we will make available any other personal information we hold on a Trade Business that is pertinent to that dispute and may, in our judgment assist in the fair and reasonable resolution of that dispute.
    • Affiliated And Other Businesses We Do Not Control: We work closely with other businesses. For instance, you may have the option to buy products and services from third parties through the Website. Click here for some examples of co-branded and joint offerings where we work in partnership with other businesses. You can tell when a third party is involved in your transactions, and we may share Member information with that third party in order to provide you with the services you have requested. We may share anonymous, aggregate information with third parties for their own research and marketing purposes but we will not share your personal information with such third parties without your consent. In providing these options we are pursuing our legitimate business interests having assessed these interests against the benefit to you of the additional products and services and the risks associated with the information we share.
    • Third-Party Service Providers: We appoint third party companies and individuals as data processors to perform functions on our behalf. We will provide your personal data to such data processors in order for them to assist us in providing you with services. In some circumstances we may need to share personal data with such data processors in advance of you requesting a specific service, for instance so that the data processor can contact you regarding services that are within your membership package but to which you may not have signed up. The information shared with data processors may include your RPL User ID, name, email address, phone number and postal address. Our data processors will only have access to personal data needed to allow them to make our services available to you and will only use your personal data for this purpose. Examples of services provided on our behalf by our third party service providers include operation and administration of our member benefits portal, removing repetitive information from User lists, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links), processing credit card payments, providing anti-fraud services and providing customer services. In sharing your information with these parties we are pursuing our legitimate business interests having assessed those interests against the benefits to you of the additional efficiencies gained by the use of third party suppliers, assured ourselves of the ability of those third party service providers to control and protect your information and taken account of the types of personal information we share.
    • Promotional Offers: Sometimes we run competitions or send offers available to all Members or selected groups of RPL Members jointly with or on behalf of other businesses. When we do this, we do not give that business your name and address unless you have consented. If you wish to change your ability to receive such offers, you can adjust your contact preferences at any time by following the link contained in any of our marketing communications or accessing the Website and following the instructions.
    • Business Transfers: As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy products, subsidiaries, or business units. In such transactions, User information generally is one of the transferred business assets but remains subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Notice (unless, of course, the User is notified otherwise). Also, in the event that we or our successor or substantially all of our assets are acquired, User information will of course be one of the transferred assets.
    • Protection Of The Website And Other Websites And Applications Operated By RPL: We disclose account and other personal information when we believe disclosure is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our User Agreement and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of our Website, our Users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction. We work with individual identity data providers to obtain information about Members from the Electoral Register and other sources to verify identity. We may ask you to provide physical forms of identity verification when you open or during the operation of your account. We may where we deem it necessary search credit reference agency files to assess a Client’s ability to fund extensive jobs or services requests or seek forms of identity verification. If we need to do so, we will seek each Client’s consent in advance.
    • With Your Consent: Other than as set out above, you will receive notice when information about you might go to third parties, and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information.
    • Sharing Information With Search Engines: To enable others to find you and find out more about the services Trade Businesses offer, your profile information on our Website may be included within search engine results. This includes but is not limited to your company name, profile picture, work area, services offered and reviews from homeowners.
    • Facebook And Other Social Media Services: We offer many ways for Users to find enjoy, and share content about Trade Businesses from a range of sectors. We enable and encourage users to explore who else is using our Website and their public profiles. Most of your information (apart from financial information) including job budgets and spending on services commissioned via our Website is publicly available to others. What may be shared or made visible on our Website includes your name and/or username, profile picture, tier of membership, details of users that you follow and your activity, including the designs and projects you like, social media applications that you link to your account and user content that you post on our Website. Your activity on our Website will automatically appear in the activity feed of friends and users who follow your profile on our Website.We may use your public information to promote RPL and/or the Website and to help others find and follow you and/or your profile (content on the Website) through social media services. Where we undertake this activity and that set out above relating to search engines and social media we are doing so in pursuit of our legitimate business interests having assessed these interests against the information we are using (much of which is publicly available) and any risks to Trade Businesses.We may also notify others via email or through social media services about your account activity if such activity is also of interest to your social media contacts or other users of our Website. Likewise, we may notify you about such activity of others.If you connect your account on the Website to a social media platform, the default setting may allow the Website to automatically share your activity with that social media platform including the information mentioned above. You understand that such information may be associated with, and published on, your social media account.You can also share information and content from your profile by using the share functionality on the Website. Please note that sharing such content on a social media platform means that the content may be posted as activity on the Website, regardless of your account settings. To share an individual item of content to a social media platform you will be prompted to enter your access credentials for that third party service. RPL may store your social media platform usernames and an access token obtained from the social media platform, so that you are able to share content on that social media platform without entering your access credentials again.You acknowledge and agree that the use of your information by any third party website or social media platform will be governed by their own privacy policies.While you can use your Marketing Preferences to choose what communications you receive from us, you can also manage your public information by changing your sharing preferences. However, please note that it may not be possible for Trade Businesses to make certain information private on our Website, including your name and/or username, profile picture, and other basic information, such as the users you follow on our Website. Such information which is set to “public” in your settings, such as projects you like, may be used, re-shared or linked to by others on our Website or across the web, so please use your profile carefully and manage your account settings regularly. Remember that if you make profile content private, others who already subscribe to or otherwise have the details of such content may still have access to it. Also keep in mind that images, comments you make and other content added to your profile may include personal information, such as username, which could enable other persons to find you on our Website or on Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms.To manage your sharing preferences on social media platforms, please visit your account settings on that social media platform.
    • Sharing Information With Facebook, Twitter And Other Social Media Platforms: To personalise your experience, we may share information we have collected about you with Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, such as high level geographic information, your design preferences, settings and technical data. However, we take precautions to prohibit Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms from attempting to identify you using the information we provide to them or by collecting additional information without your consent. Facebook, Twitter and other social media services may be able to identify you and associate the information previously provided by ratedpeople.com with you. You agree and understand that a social media provider’s privacy policy governs its use of your information that we provide to it or that it collects from you.
    • Payment Data: We will collect and process payment and financial data when you sign up to our subscription service or use our payment service to pay for services sourced through our Website. This information will be stored by third party payment processors. The third party payment processors will provide us with some payment information about you, including a unique token, your payment card type, the expiry date (in some instances the first 6 digits), and last four digits of the payment card. This information will enable you to make additional purchases through the Website using the card details which you have previously provided.If you choose to pay for the services by invoice, RPL will collect and transfer information, including your name, date of birth and phone number, to our invoicing marketplace provider to enable credit checks to be carried out and an invoice to be sent to you. The use of your data by our invoicing marketplace provider is subject to its own privacy policy.We may also collect additional information including your postal code, mobile number and details of your transaction history.

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    6. How Secure Is The Information We Hold About You?

    • We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information you input;
    • We reveal only the last four digits of your credit card numbers when confirming any payment transaction;
    • It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer.

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    7. What About Third-Party Advertisers And Links To Other Websites?

    Our Website, Apps, and any Electronic Media may include third-party advertising and links to other websites. If you access other websites using the advertising or links provided, the operators of those websites may collect information from you which will be used by them in accordance with their privacy notice which may differ from ours. For more information about third-party advertising on our Website, please read our Cookies policy.

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    8. What Information Can You Access?

    Our Website and other websites operated by RPL gives you access to a broad range of information about your account and your interactions with our Website for the limited purpose of viewing and, in certain cases, updating that information.

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    9. What Choices Do You Have?

      • As discussed above, you can always choose not to provide information, even though it might be required to take advantage of the Website’s features;
      • You can add or update certain information on the Website pages as mentioned in the ‘What Information Can I Access’ section. When you update information, we usually keep a copy of the prior version for our records;
      • If you do not want to receive e-mail or other mail from us, please adjust your Marketing Preferences. (However, legal notices from us, such as this Privacy Notice, govern your use of the Website, and it is your responsibility to review them for changes.)

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    10. Does RPL Send Information It Holds About You Outside The UK Or European Union?

    All countries in the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes the UK, have similar standards of legal protection for your personal information. We may analyse information you have given us and we may use third party suppliers to provide other services from centres outside the EEA (such as the USA and India) that do not have a similar standard of data protection laws to the UK. If so, we will require your personal information to be protected to at least UK standards.

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    11. Conditions Of Use, Notices, And Revisions

    If you choose to visit the Website, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Privacy Notice and our User Agreement, including limitations on damages, resolution of disputes, and application of English Law. If you have any concerns about privacy at RPL or in relation to the Website, please contact us with a thorough description, and we will try to resolve it. Our business changes constantly, and our Privacy Notice and the User Agreement will change also. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, but you should check our Website frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Notice applies to all information that we have about you and your account. We endeavour to never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of Member information collected in the past without having informed affected Members.

    12. Examples Of Information Collected And The Purposes For Which We Use Your Information

    Information You Give Us

    You provide information when you register as a Member, post a request for services, set parameters for the receipt of job leads, participate in a contest or questionnaire, use our chat feature or communicate with customer services. For example, you provide information when you place an order through the Website or through Professionals listed on our Website, provide information in Your Account, use our services, participate in Ask an Expert or other community features, provide ratings, and employ job lead alerts. As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as your name, address, and phone numbers, credit card information, people who have helped provide the service, where you work, content of reviews and e-mails to us, personal description and photograph in Your Profile.

    Why Do We Collect This Information?

        • To identify you as a Member of our Website, to address you, access your account, answer your questions and resolve your issues, to contact you and to let you know if you have won a prize in any competition or other promotion run by RPL;
        • To identify whether you have an account with us already or have had an account with us which we closed for, without limitation, violation of our User Agreement or applicable Code of Conduct;
        • To share your information with selected partners who may use or provide the information to other organisations for purposes including identity screening, credit checking, fraud prevention, customer management and debt collection;
        • To share your information with selected partners who may use or provide information to other organisations to send you information about products or services (but only with your permission);
        • To allow us to send you job leads;
        • To allow us to market your services as a subcontractor to other Members;
        • To enable us to provide services to you such as identifying the Trade Business best suited to undertake the work set out in a request for services or, if you are a Trade Business, enable us to identify the jobs best suited to you;
        • To enable Trade Businesses to respond to your queries;
        • To market our, or (where you have consented) selected partners’, services to you;
        • To provide a ratings service which informs our Members about the quality of service and delivery by our Trade Businesses, to facilitate payment for services, and to carry out analysis (usually through aggregating information) on the way our services are used and your quote success rate and profitability if you are a Professional.
        • To enable and promote RPL including the Website’s features, content products and services made available through the marketplace, such as sharing, user interactions, notification and suggestion as and integration with third party services.
        • Please note we will never ask you to confirm your password or payment details via email. If you receive an email that requests this information and appears to be sent from us, please treat it as fraudulent and do not reply or provide any information. In this instance we would ask you to get in touch via the contact us page on our website to provide us with further details.

    Automatically Collected Information

    Examples of the information we collect and analyse include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; e-mail address; password; computer and connection information such as browser type, version, and time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, and platform; purchase history, which we sometimes aggregate with similar information from other Users; the full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream to, through and from our Website, including date and time; cookie number; parts of the site you viewed or searched for; and the phone number you used to call our Customer Services. We may also use browser data such as cookies, Flash cookies (also known as Flash Local Shared Objects), or similar data on certain parts of our Website for fraud prevention and other purposes. During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page. We may also collect technical information to help us identify your device for fraud prevention and diagnostic purposes.

    Why Do We Collect This Information?

        • To understand the technology our Members are using and that we must design and build products for;
        • To understand the online behaviour of our Members;
        • To manage our exposure to and to prevent and detect fraud;
        • To aggregate this data with similar information from other Members to help inform product development;
        • Where your device is configured to allow it, we may also receive a confirmation that you’ve opened our communication (e.g. email) since we wish to ensure that our emails are interesting to our Members and that you receive relevant information from us.

    Mobile/Tablet

    Where you access our Website or services from a mobile or tablet device, we may receive information about your location and your device including a unique identifier for your device. Most mobile and tablet devices provide users with the ability to disable location services. Most likely, these controls are located in the device’s settings menu. For information about specific devices, please refer to your mobile’s user manual. If you have questions about how to disable your device’s location services, we recommend you contact your mobile service carrier or your device manufacturer.

    Why Do We Collect This Information?

    To provide you with location based services (where you give us permission) including job leads in your immediate vicinity.

    Information From Other Sources

    Examples of information we receive from other sources include whether you purchased co-branded or joint offerings from our partners, account information, information from Professionals about payments for your requests for services if you are a Client, information from Clients about your fulfilment of job leads if you are a Trade Business, and page-view information from some merchants with which we operate co-branded businesses, or advertising, or other services and credit history information from credit bureaus and other fraud prevention agencies, which we use to help prevent and detect fraud and to offer certain screening to our Trade Businesses in connection with requests for services.

    Why Do We Collect This Information?

        • To analyse on an aggregate and anonymous basis how much Members are spending through our Website and we may share this analysis with selected partners;
        • To analyse and manage our investment in online marketing;
        • To help prevent and detect fraud.
        • Your data may also be used for other purposes for which you give your specific permission or, in very limited circumstances, when required by law or where permitted under the terms of the Data Protection Laws.

    Co-branded And Joint Offerings

    Working with other businesses, we offer joint or co-branded products among other offerings. You should check the Privacy Notices for each of these businesses to understand how they use your personal information.

    Information You Can Access

    Examples of information you can access easily via our Website include up-to-date information regarding recent request for services postings or request for services purchases you have made; personal information (including name, e-mail, password, work area and communication settings); payment settings; ratings you have provided or received; your accounts; and your profile (including your rating). If you would like to access other information that we hold about you, please contact us.

    How long your personal information will be kept

    We will hold your personal information whilst we continuing to provide services to you and following the termination of our contractual relationship for any period we are required to do so by any applicable legislation (eg UK tax legislation requires us to hold information for a minimum of 6 years). Additionally, we will continue to hold such of your personal information as is necessary and proportionate to fulfil our legitimate interests. Specifically, we will retain information on Trade Businesses no longer using the Website necessary to retain the integrity of the Website by preventing Trade Businesses from using a different identity, re-listing on the Website following de-listing or manipulating ratings on the Website.

    Your rights

    Under the Data Protection Laws, you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

        • access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Notice is already designed to address
        • require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
        • require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
        • receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
        • object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
        • object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you
        • object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
        • otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances

    For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

    If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

        • email, call or write to:

    [email protected]

    0345 117 8000

    The Data Protection Officer, Rated People Limited, 30 Dukes Place, London, EC3A 7LP.

        • let us have enough information to identify you eg your name, address and an order number,
        • let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
        • let us know the information to which your request relates

    Keeping your personal information secure

    We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

    We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

    How to complain

    We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

    The Data Protection Laws also give you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at ico.org.uk or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

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