Our Privacy Policy
Our privacy policy
1. What's in our policy?
Our policy details the following:
We tell you what information we might collect from you and how we may use it
When we may look to use your details to make contact
The type of information we may use to share with 3rd parties
The choices you can make with the personal information you give us
Our privacy policy explains how we collect, use, share and transfer your personal information on our site. We also explain how you can interact with us and what your data privacy rights are. This will include maintenance and service subscriptions, should that form part of the service we provide.
Your personal data is the information that is given to us, in which you can be identified or be identifiable. Such information typically includes:
Your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, phone number, financial details (payment cards or subscriptions)
Information about your device such as the devices IP Address (a numerical code that identifies your device, information about the country, region, or city that you are based)
Information on how you interact with our website
Sometimes our website may contain links to other sites and services that are not part of the company. These sites will contain their own privacy policies. We highly recommend that the privacy policies for those websites are read.
2. What does our policy cover?
The Smarter Home Company Limited (Address) controls your personal data that is disclosed on the website. This means we are responsible for deciding how we hold your personal data, but also, we use it too. Please, if you want to contact us directly, you can find our contact details in the ‘How to contact us’ section below.
What's not covered in this policy?
On some occasions, our services may link with our companies’ services. For example, this could include a from another service such as YouTube. Please remember those companies have their own privacy and cookies policies, so that information you give them will follow their rules, not ours.
3. The types of personal data we collect about you
We collect your personal data whenever you visit our website or when you subscribe to our service and maintenance plan. We only collect your personal data in line with the law. We collect your personal data in various ways:
Directly from you (for example, when they sign up to our service and maintenance plan)
Personal data that is generated about you (personal data that helps us to authenticate you). This can come in the form of your IP Address or your preferences for example.
Personal data we collect from third parties (data that helps us to combat issues, or information we collect with your permission when you connect with such sources such as social media accounts).
When you register an enquiry, we ask for your details, which typically includes:
your name
your email address
other details such as your residential address
some further limited data (the desired project, property size, budget spend etc)
Personal data we generate about you
When you make an enquiry on our website, we assign you with a unique ID number that we use to recognise you when you visit the website again, whether that is on the original device or another. When you visit our website again, we may collect other information that could include:
Your IP address - a numerical code to identify your device, together with the country, region or city where you are based
Your geolocation data – in some cases, we may use the information about the latitude, longitude, altitude of your device, its direction of travel, your GPS data and data about connection with local Wi-Fi equipment
Information on how you interreact with our services
Your browsing history of what you have visited on our website, even how you found our website
Even details of your computer, mobile, TV, tablet or any other devices. This can include the unique device ID, unique vendor or advertising ID and the browsers used to access your content.
We do not collect any specific private data that lies outside of the required information for our service. This can include your race, political opinions, religion, sexual orientations, unless you have decided to disclose such personal data.
Personal data when you post comments about The Smarter Home Company on other social media sites
If you have mentioned The Smarter Home Company in posts on social media sites, then we may collect your social media information. For example, when you mention The Smarter Home Company in an Instagram post, we may collect your Instagram handle.
When you post publicly (comments) on our sites
When you post on a discussion board or comment publicly on an article on one of our sites, the personal data you post, including your username and other information about yourself, are publicly accessible. This personal data can be viewed online and collected by other people. We are not responsible for the way these other people use this personal data. When contributing to a discussion, we strongly recommend you avoid sharing any personal details, including information that can be used to identify you directly such as your name, age, address and name of employer. We are not responsible for the privacy of any identifiable information that you post in our online community or other public pages of the site.
How we collect personal data
The data we collect from you can come from the following:
Register an interest or enquiry with The Smarter Home Company
Make an enquiry or secure a service and maintenance plan
Complete a survey within the website or externally
Sign up to marketing communications, newsletters or editorial emails
Attendance of any events held or external events
Use of our mobile devices to access content
Community projects
Through cookies and other similar technologies
When contacting us via email, social media, similar technologies or when you mention us on social media
How do you protect my personal information?
The protection of your personal information it paramount. We are strongly committed to keeping you and your family. We have designed our services to keep your safety throughout. Our team looks after personal details and privacy.
Please do bear in mind, no service can be completely secure. If you have any doubts, please contact us, for example when someone has found out your contact details or your password.
Where do we store your information?
Some of our suppliers provide services from outside the UK. We only operate with suppliers where we are satisfied with their security of information. Please bear in mind that when you give us personal information, it could be transferred, stored or even processed in a location outside the UK.
How we use your personal data
We only use personal data collected through our site when we have a valid reason and the legal grounds to do so. Our legal grounds are based on the purposes for which we have collected your personal data.
Standard legal grounds for using personal data
The legal ground may be one of the following:
Consent: We will only ask for your personal data with your consent. You can withdraw from this at any time. Examples can include:
Sending marketing emails, when we have asked for your permission
Placing non – essential cookies or other technologies on your device
Both examples can be withdrawn at any time.
Performance of a contact with you: We will use your personal data when you sign up to a service and maintenance plan. Where a contract is formed, we will need to use your contact details and payment information.
Compliance with law: In some cases, we may have a legal obligation to use or keep your personal data.
Our legitimate interests: It may be the case that your personal data is used legitimately, in a way that does not impact your rights or freedoms. It is in our legitimate interests for us to understand the users of our website. An example of this would include:
Analysing what content is viewed within the website so we can understand how it is used and how we can improve our content
Understand your interests and preferences so any marketing that is carried out, is relevant to you
To keep you informed in the business and the industry itself, if you have not opted out of receiving our communications
Inform you on any changes to our services, such as fee increases or changes to terms and conditions
Provide us with the ability to personalise your services
Enable you to share content with social media or over email
Contacting you directly via social media or email, to send emails, enter competitions or engage with us through the various means of contact
For security and fraud prevention
Where we rely on cookies to collect any personal data, please see our cookies policy for more information. You can also manage your cookie choices through your Privacy Settings.
Updating your personal data and your profile
When you register an account with The Smarter Home Company, you will always have access to go back into it.
Personal data that we receive about you from other organisations
Adding to or combining the personal data you provide to us
When you sign up to our services, we may add to your personal data you gave us to other personal data that is shared with us (by other trusted organisations). We may obtain your personal data from partners who’s offers may be included in some of our marketing communications. This is done to ensure we do not send you irrelevant marketing and make sure we are accurate on the information we hold.
Personal data shared by event partners
When you register or book an event through us or a third party in association to us, the registration data may be shared with us by the associated partner.
Using children’s personal data
We do not aim any of our products or services directly at children, but some questions may warrant some form of input from your child.
Security of your personal data
We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational controls to protect your personal data against unauthorised processing and against accidental loss, damage or destruction.
If we ask you for a password, you are responsible for creating that. You should also keep that confidential and you should choose a password that you do not use on any other site.
We will always do our best to protect your personal data with us, but we can never guarantee the security of any personal data sent to our site while still in transit, what you provide is done at your own risk.
When we share or sell your personal data
Within the company
We may share it in order to perform a contract with you, for administrative purposes, or when we have a legitimate interest in doing so. For example:
If you are going to one of our events hosted by an event partner, we may share your personal data with that partner for event administration purposes
We may share your data to understand how you interact across our partners or to tailor and offer relevant advertising to you.
Externally
We may share your personal data with other organisations that are not directly linked to us under certain circumstances. Service providers may share your data with other organisations that provide services for us. Examples of this include:
Companies that help deliver our services:
Online payments processors
Internet and cloud hosting services providers
Software service providers
Communications services providers
Error tracking software providers
Service providers that help provide us with insights and analytics that help us to improve our products and services for example, Google Analytics
Data management companies
Advertising partners
We may also share your data collected through our website with our advertising partner, as set out in our cookies policy. For example, we may use Google Ad Manager to assist us with the delivery of relevant advertising.
Agencies and authorities if required by law
If we ever require your personal data for any law enforcement via an agency, court, regulator, government, or in connection with any legal action, to meet a legal or regulatory obligation, we will provide such information where the request is proportionate, or otherwise to protect our rights or the rights of anyone else (for example, in response to valid and properly served legal process such as subpoena or warrant).
If we have your contact details, we will take reasonable steps to attempt to notify you prior to disclosing your data unless (i) prohibited by applicable law from doing so, or (ii) there are clear indications of unlawful conduct in connection with your use of our services.
Event sponsors and partners
We may share your personal data with any sponsored events and partners who we hold events with for marketing purposes, when you have given your permission.
Social media organisations
We may share your personal data with other organisations when our web pages use social plug-ins from these organisations. This typically includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google functions. These organisations may receive and use personal data about your visit to our site. If you browse our site, your personal data they collect may be connected to their site. In situations like this, please refer to their privacy policies.
Organisation/s that buy the company
Should the business be bought, we may share your personal data with the purchaser, to which we are likely to transfer the assets and the business. We will do our upmost to make sure your personal data is used in line with the existing privacy policy.
Any organisations which access your data in the course of providing services on our behalf will be governed by strict contractual restrictions to make sure that they protect your data and keep to all data privacy laws that apply.
We will do our best to independently audit these service providers to make sure that they meet our standards.
International data transfers
Data we collect may be transferred, stored or processed in any country or territory. While other countries or territories may not have the same standards of data protection as those in your home country, we will maintain continue to protect personal data that we transfer in line with this privacy policy.
We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been found to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
How long do we keep personal data for?
We keep your personal data for ‘only’ as long as we need to hold onto that information. Depending on what we are using the information for will determine how long we hold onto it for. For example, we need your personal information for accounting purposes when it comes to signing up to our service and maintenance service.
If we no longer need your data, we will delete it or make it anonymous by removing all details that identify you. If we have asked for your permission to process your personal data and we have no other lawful grounds to continue with that processing, and you withdraw your permission, we will delete your personal data.
How we may contact you
Service communications
You may receive communications in the form of our services. For example, we may inform you your service renew is coming up.
Marketing communications
You may receive marketing information from us in the form of newsletters or industry updates via emails. You will always have the opportunity to opt out. For example, you can decide not to receive these emails at any time and will be able to “unsubscribe” directly by clicking a link in the email or through your email preferences in the tab.
Market research
Sometimes we may contact you for market research. For example, for a survey. Again, you can opt out of this service, should you wish not to participate.
Responding to your queries or complaints
If a query is ever raised or even a complaint, we may contact you to answer or resolve the complaint.
Cookies and similar technologies
When you visit the website, we may collect personal data from you automatically using cookies or similar technologies.
This privacy policy includes our cookie policy, where more information can be found on our use of cookies.
Your privacy and data protection rights with regard to the personal data that we hold about you
You always have a number of rights with regard to your own personal data that we hold. You can contact us with regard to the following rights:
You have the right to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you
You have the right to correct the personal data we hold about you
Where applicable, you may also have a right to receive a machine-readable copy of your personal data
You also have the right to ask us to delete your personal data or restrict how it is used, consistent with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Where applicable, you have the right to object to processing of your personal data for certain purposes
Where you have provided us with consent to use your personal data, you can withdraw this at any time
If you do not want us to use your personal data for marketing analysis, you can request for this to change.
If you would like to exercise any of your rights specified above, please send us an email to info@thesmarterhomecompany.com or write to 5 Chiltern Business Centre, Amersham, Bucks, HP6 6AA.
We may need to request information from you to confirm your identity. Please understand, the difficulty of your request, will determine how long it takes for us to come back to you. You will not have to pay a fee to obtain a copy of your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.
Contact us for information about how we use your personal data
If you have any questions about how we use your personal data or if you have a concern about how your personal data is used, please contact us via email to info@thesmarterhomecompany.com or write to: 5 Chiltern Business Centre, Amersham, Bucks, HP6 6AA.
Changes to this privacy policy
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post the changes here. If the changes are significant, we may also choose to email all our registered users with the new details. If required by law, we will get your permission or give you the opportunity to opt out of any new uses of your data.
Changes to this privacy policy to date
The most recent changes to this privacy policy were made on:
6th January 2021
A list of all previous changes is available upon request.