 |
Privacy policy
1. Introduction
We take the security and privacy of customer information
seriously, and we are committed to safeguarding your
privacy online. As a business, ntl is built on
the bedrock of building long term relationships with
customers.
If you leave, we have failed. So we make every effort
not to breech privacy and risk customer offence for
short-term financial gain. Your data is about you, ntl,
and how we work together. This guide describes how we
collect, use and safeguard the information you provide
us with when you use our online services.
Personal data is the information you supply that identifies
you, for example, your name and address. Anonymous data
is information that does not identify you personally,
for example, the average length of visit to one of our
sites is 10 minutes.
ntl:’s primary reason for collecting personal
data is to provide you with a more enjoyable and personalised
service. We also collect data so that we can understand
and identify our customers’ needs and habits, with the
aim of making each online experience a better one. Personalisation
is designed to save you time and effort, by providing
a service tailored to your individual requirements.
Understanding your needs means we are in a better position
to meet them, and we can do this by looking at how you
use our services.
Please take a moment to read our Privacy Policy, so
you know what choices you have about the information
we may ask you for. This policy may change from time
to time, so please check back periodically.
2. What Information Do We Hold and Where Do We Get
It From?
Information about your visits to our services:
ntl may gather data about what pages you visit
within the service, how long you stayed on a page, and
the route you took to navigate through the pages. This
information helps us monitor the accessibility of our
service, and what your needs might be. It also helps
us to develop and improve our service generally, in
direct response to customer requirements.
Purchase history:
ntl may collect information about your online
purchases, in order to suggest other products and services
which may be of interest.
Personal details:
When you register with ntl we collect personal
details from you, including information such as your
name and address. This helps us to build a customer
profile, from which we can provide a personalised service,
unique to you. The greater the information we have from
you, the more personalised service we can provide.
We may also ask you for personal details at other times,
for example, if we run a market research questionnaire,
competition, sweepstake or promotion. However, the majority
of this data collection, is not compulsory.
Your personal information may be obtained in any of
the following ways:
Online registration
Online forms from time to time
By telephone recording (Interactive Voice Response,
IVR)
By email or telephone
When dealing with an ntl customer services executive
Automatically by your internet browser
On Customer agreements
By post
Cookies:
Use of Cookies on our site
Like most major websites, ntl:home uses cookies to enhance
your browsing experience. Cookies allow ntl:home to
arrange content to match your preferred interests. The
following information explains how ntl:home uses cookies
on our websites.
What
is a cookie ?
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.
We use the following types of cookies on our websites.
Session
Cookies
These are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie
file of your browser until you leave the site. We use
these cookies:
· To allow information to carry across pages
of our site and avoid you having to re-enter information
· To allow you to maintain a shopping basket
· Within registration to allow you to access
stored information
Persistent
cookies
These cookies remain in the cookie file of your browser
for much longer (though how long will depend on the
lifetime of the specific cookie). Cookies cannot be
used by themselves to identify you. We use these cookies:
· To 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
· To compile anonymous, aggregated statistics
that allow us to understand how users use our site and
to help us improve the structure of our website. We
cannot identify you personally in this way.
Third
Party Cookies
We also allow third parties to serve cookies via this
site. These are used for the following purposes:
· To count the number of anonymous users of our
site and allow us to better understand user activity
· To tailor content to your preferences
· To serve advertisements on our site and track
whether these advertisements are clicked on by users
· To control how often you are shown a particular
advertisement
· To tailor content to your preferences
· To provide security within shopping baskets
or transactions
Advertising
Internet advertisements on the ntl:home web sites are
served through 24/7 Real Media Open AdStream technology.
24/7 Real Media does not collect personal identifiable
information (such as name, address, phone number and
email address) that may be used to identify ntl users.
Only anonymous information about your Internet browser
and Web surfing is collected and used to better determine
which ads to show you and to prevent repetitive ads
being delivered to the same user. 24/7 Real Media and
ntl are firmly committed to protecting the privacy of
Internet users and fostering consumer confidence in
the Internet, Internet advertising and direct marketing.
Web
Beacons
Some of our Web pages may contain electronic images
known as Web beacons (sometimes known as clear gifs)
that allow us to count users who have visited these
pages. Web beacons collect only limited information
which usually includes a cookie number, time and date
of a page view, and a description of the page on which
the Web beacon resides. We may also carry web beacons
placed by third party advertisers. These beacons do
not carry any personally identifiable information and
are only used to track the effectiveness of a particular
campaign.
Your
preferences / Disabling cookies
To ensure you get the best from our websites, we advise
that users keep cookies active on their machine whilst
visiting ntl:home websites. You can manually disable
and enable cookies on your PC. The process will depend
on your browser and is usually part of your ‘Security
Settings’. For further information about managing
and disabling cookies, you can refer to your browser’s
help section or user guide. Alternatively, the Interactive
Advertising Bureau has produced a series of web pages
(see www.allaboutcookies.org) which explain to users
how cookies work and can be managed.
What
happens if I use a link from this site to another site?
Please be aware that our site may provide access to
other web sites by linking to them. We are not responsible
for the data policies (including data protection and
cookies), content or security of these linked web sites.
Preferences:
ntl may ask you for information about your leisure
interests and lifestyle. Again this is in an effort
to provide a more personalised service for you, and
the greater the information we have, the more able we
are to do this.
3. What Does ntl: Do With Your Personal Information?
Your Personal Information:
ntl will combine the different types of data
held to create a membership profile for each customer.
This helps us to provide you with a personalised service,
most accurately suited to your needs. This is a continuing
process as you continue to use our services, and is
in direct response to the amount of information we are
supplied with by you. The more information we have,
the better service we can provide.
When you apply for ntl's products and services, ntl
may search the files of credit reference agencies which
may keep a record of that search. Details of how you
conduct your account may also be disclosed to such agencies.
We will check your details with fraud detection agencies
and if you give us false or inaccurate information and
we suspect fraud, we will record this. We and other
organisations may use and search these records to:-
help make decisions about credit and credit related
services, for you and other members of your household;
help make decisions on motor, household, credit, life
and other insurance proposals and insurance claims,
for you and other members of your household; trace debtors,
recover debt, prevent fraud, and to manage your accounts
or insurance policies; check your identity to prevent
money laundering, unless you furnish us with other satisfactory
proof of your identity.
ntl may use your personal information for the purposes
of administering your account, providing you with the
services you have requested and providing you with information
about these services. ntl may use your personal information
for training purposes. ntl may disclose your personal
information to other members of the ntl group of companies
and its sub-contractors for these purposes.
With your consent, we may wish to analyse your call,
billing, viewing and interactive data from time to time
to help us to identify and tell you of savings and services
most appropriate to you.
From time to time, ntl may also send you information,
including discounts and special offers on ntl products
and services. You can opt out receiving information
on ntl products and services by post or telephone by
contacting us. With your consent, we may send you this
information by email, text, picture messaging or automated
telephone messaging.
With your consent, we may occasionally send you information
about the products and services of other organisations
which we think may be of interest, or we may pass your
details on to carefully selected organisations so they
can contact you about their products and services (e.g.
by post, telephone, email, text, picture or automated
telephone messaging).
Anonymous aggregate reports:
ntl may provide reports to third parties, for
example content partners and advertisers, as well as
to ntl management to enhance the service. These
reports will be anonymous summaries used to monitor
the success of our content and advertising, and to help
us develop a service in line with customer need. From
our aggregate reports we can provide general information
about our service, for example, ‘10,000 people clicked
on an advertisement yesterday’, or ‘20% of our customers
are over 40 years old’.
4. Who Else Gets To See your information?
We won’t pass on personal information to third
parties unless we have your consent, or where we are
required by law to disclose that information..
With your consent, ntl may give your details
to third party organisations so they can contact you
with recommendations for products and services. ntl
may sometimes hold promotions with other companies.
In this case, some of the data collected at this time
would be shared with the sponsor. If so, you will be
told about this before your data is collected.
If you request additional information from an advertiser
or sponsor you will in effect be giving ntl consent
to provide them with the personal details needed for
them to fulfil your request.
We may offer you the choice of saving your credit card
details on a secure site, instead of providing them
every time you make a purchase online. This information
is encrypted and made secure, but may be accessed by
ntl, on behalf of ntl partners, when making
a secure transaction.
From time to time, ntl may also ask you questions
about your tastes and preferences. With your consent
we might pass this information to ntl partners
so they can customise their online services to meet
your needs.
5. What choices do you have?
You have the right to object to your personal details
being used to send you direct marketing by post and
to make telephone calls to you for these purposes. You
have the choice to consent to direct marketing being
sent to you by email, text, picture messaging or automated
telephone messaging. You may also consent to us analysing
your call, billing, viewing and interactive data from
time to time to help us to identify and tell you of
savings and services most appropriate to you. We will
only supply your personal data to third parties for
marketing purposes with your consent.
You can make these choices during the registration/application
process simply by ticking the relevant boxes provided,
or by contacting us at any time.
You may set your PC to refuse cookies or ask your browser
to show you when a cookie is being set up. Please refer
to section 2 for more details on cookies.
6. Protecting Children’s Privacy
Safeguarding the personal information of children is
very important to ntl.
Children should always ask a parent or guardian for
permission before sending personal information to anyone
online, and, at ntl, we encourage parents and guardians
to spend time online with their children. Where ntl
have reasons to believe that a user is under 18, we
try to collect the minimum amount of personal information
necessary for the effective operation of the service.
ntl also endeavours not to share with third parties
any personal information supplied by users believed
to be aged under 18.
In addition, ntl aims not to send direct email
offers to users who indicate they are aged under 18.
No information should be submitted to, or posted on,
ntl: services by visitors under the age of 18
without the consent of their parent or guardian.
7. Looking After Your Data
ntl: is committed to data security. We have implemented
technical, managerial, and operational security, rules,
procedures and measures, to ensure that your personal
information is held within operating environments that
are not available to the public. We take steps to guard
against unauthorised access, improper use, alteration,
destruction, and accidental loss of personal data. This
includes rules for all ntl staff with access
to the servers or databases that hold your personal
information. Although we make every effort to create
a secure environment for your personal information,
ntl cannot guarantee the safety of any personal
information you transmit to ntl online.
In any event, we will not ask you for your ntl
identification and authentication passwords or PIN numbers
in an unsolicited phone call or unsolicited email. You
should not disclose your password or PIN to anyone.
8. When does the ntl: privacy policy not apply?
Please note that this policy only applies to the collection
and use of data by ntl: and not to other companies,
individuals, and organisations to which we provide links
through our interactive services.
This privacy policy does not cover advertisers and content
partners within our service who may also collect your
personal details. These companies should have their
own privacy policies.
If you place any of your personal details on any services
we might develop for chat, bulletin boards, emails,
your personal home page or public profile page or any
other publicly accessible page, then under these circumstances
data will not be covered by this privacy policy.
ntl advises its customers to be cautious of providing
their personal information, such as contact information
like email address, postal address, telephone or name
to organisations on the open web. Customers are advised
always to read a web site’s privacy policy before submitting
personal information.
9. Contacting Us
If you have any questions or concerns about our use
of your personal information you should write in the
first instance to ntl’s Group Compliance Officer
at the address below or email us at privacy@ntl.com.
Please use this address to let us know of any experience
with privacy problems you may have with any of the sites
to which our services link.
Group Compliance Officer
ntl
Bartley Wood Business Park
Hook
Hampshire
RG27 9XA
Information Commissioner
If you want to learn more about your rights regarding
personal data you should contact the Data Protection
Commissioner’s office information line on 01625 545745
or visit their web site at
www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk
(Version: January 2004)
|
