Privacy Policy

Account Creation.

 

To create an account, we will collect your email address and your chosen password and (if you choose to provide it) full name and telephone number. Once you have registered you can update your personal details in your account at any time and you can view your adverts, payment history and subscriptions with us. If you later provide your full name and telephone number, at the time of an online order on the Website, this personal information will be saved in your account. Where you log in via Facebook or another social media account, we may be provided with limited personal details (including your account ID and email address) to verify you are logged in.

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Legal basis: 

• Contract

• Legitimate Interest

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More Information

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We use your name and email address to register your account and send you service communications about how to access and manage your account. Where you have provided a telephone number, we may also use this to contact you about your account. You can access your account area at any time to update your details and can also change your options regarding marketing communications from Findercar and/or third parties that you have selected in this area.

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Where you make (or start) an online order on the Website, we may contact you regarding your online order, as described in the ‘Online Orders‘ section below.

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Once you are logged-in to our Website your data will be handled by us in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the Cookie Policy. We are not responsible for any use of your personal data by Facebook or any other social media site and you should review their privacy policies.

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Placing an advertisement.

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As part of the advert placement process on the Website, we collect your name, telephone number, email address and postcode, as well as details of the vehicle you wish to sell (including the vehicle registration number VRM) and device ID and IP address.

Legal basis: 

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• Contract

• Legitimate Interest

• Legal Obligation

 

Click here for an explanation regarding the legal basis.

 

More Information

 

We use your name and email address to register your account and your your advert, confirm that your advert has been published and send you service communications about how to access and manage your account and your advert. You can access your account area at any time to update your details and can also change your options regarding marketing communications from Findercar and/or third parties that you have selected in this area.

 

We use your postcode to provide a positioning of the vehicle you advertise within our database; this allows potential buyers to locate vehicles for sale within a set radius of their chosen location. Your postcode is not disclosed in your advert.

 

Vehicle Registration Numbers (VRM) are required to place an advert on the Website for regulatory and security purposes. The Vehicle Registration Number is displayed in photographs within your advert then these details will be visible to Website visitors who may use them without your authorisation.

 

We may share the Vehicle Registration Number with prospective buyers, and other third parties, in order to provide our services, such as where a prospective buyer requests a Vehicle Provenance Check or a quote for insurance.​

 

We will not share the Vehicle Registration Number unless we have an appropriate legal basis.

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If your advert expires we will contact you via phone or email to give you the option to rebook your advert.

 

We may also use the information you provide for internal business records and purposes, including to analyse and develop our products and services and the Website.

 

We use certain features in our advert placement process to protect the privacy of our customers when they are communicating with potential buyers via phone or email.

 

For customers placing a Private advert, we apply a Protect Your Number facility as a default on all adverts when customers provide their phone number. Protect Your Number enables you to keep your telephone number private by providing you with a substitute telephone number to use in your advert. You will need to contact our Customer Service team if you wish to remove this facility. Please be aware that if you opt out of using this facility, your telephone number will be visible within your advert.

 

For customers placing Private adverts, we also provide a customer to customer email service that allows Website visitors and potential buyers who view your advert to contact you via a link displayed on your advert, without disclosing your email address. We use this to disable any potential harmful links that may expose you to fraudulent activity. The use of the customer to customer email service is mandatory for us to maintain security of our Website. We reserve the right to monitor and retain all communications via the email service for security monitoring purposes.

 

You will also be required to supply payment card details to place your advert. We use third party payment providers to manage online card payment payment transactions. Payment card information is collected over a secure online payment gateway provided by:​​ WIX.com

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All payment transactions processed are encrypted. Your payment card information is used solely to process payment for your advert.

 

We retain no record of your payment card details.

 

Communicating with us.

 

When you communicate with us, you may provide personal data to us such as your name, address,contact details, organisation details, dietary requirements. We will use this in order to deal with your communication.

Legal basis: 

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• Consent

• Legitimate interest

• Contract

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More Information

 

You may provide your personal data to us for one of the following reasons:

 

• ​To request information about advertising with Findercar or about any of Findercar's services;

• To make a complaint;

• To provide feedback to us on your experience of using the Website and our services;

• To enquire about working with us whether the enquiry is made by you personally or on behalf of an organisation;

• To register for and/or attend an event;

• To enter a competition or prize draw, including via social media; and/or

• To respond to a survey.

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Using services on Findercar

 

When using services on Findercar you will need to provide certain personal information such as name, email address, telephone number and postcode and details regarding your vehicle (including vehicle registration number, mileage, make and model) to enable us or a third party to provide you with the services requested. Depending on the service, this information may be passed to a third party.

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Legal basis:

 

• Contract

• Consent

• Legitimate Interest

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More Information

 

Vehicle Search facility - You will need to supply your postcode in order to use our vehicle search facility. We will use this to present adverts matching your search criteria within the specified distance from your selected location (or which are available for delivery to your location).

 

Making an online enquiry about a vehicle - If you make an online enquiry about a vehicle through the Website you will need to provide your name, email address, postcode and/or postal address and telephone number which will be passed to the relevant dealer or other third party (such as the vehicle manufacturer). By submitting your request you are giving authorisation for your details to be passed to the relevant dealer or other party (such as the vehicle manufacturer) for them to contact you and action your request. The relevant dealer or other party (such as the vehicle manufacturer) will act as a data controller in their own right and will process your personal data in accordance with their own privacy notice. Please ask them for details.

 

Legal basis:

 

• Contract

• Consent

• Legal Obligation

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Chat Service - If you use the chat service, available on some dealer adverts, to communicate with dealers (“Chat Service”), you may disclose your name, email address and other personal information to a dealer while using the service. The Chat service is provided by Live Person Automotive or other third party provider chosen by the retailer, who may also have access to the content of your live chat messages (including any personal data contained in them). Please refer to the relevant Chat Service provider’s privacy policy for information about how they process your personal data.

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All conversations and email exchanges are recorded. Any personal information that you disclose during a live chat or via an online form will be accessible to and processed by the relevant Chat Service provider, the dealer with whom you communicate, and will be made available to Autotrader. Additionally, the Chat Service provider may use computer infrastructure which is situated outside of the EEA. By using the Chat Service, you acknowledge and agree that any personal data disclosed by you while using the Chat Service may be processed and stored by the Chat Service provider on its systems outside the EEA and will be protected by adequate safeguards

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Information we collect if you use our mobile applications

 

If you choose to download or use our Mobile Applications, or access one of our mobile optimised sites, we may receive information about your location and your mobile device, including a unique identifier for your device. We may use this information to provide you with location-based services, such as advertising, search results, and other personalised content.

Legal basis: 

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• Legitimate Interest

• Consent

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More Information

 

Most mobile devices allow you to control or disable location services within the mobile device’s settings. If you have questions about how to disable your device's location services, we recommend you contact your mobile service carrier or the manufacturer of your device.

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Administration, development and monitoring of the Website and services

 

To administer, maintain, develop and improve our Website and services, we use your contact details and details of your activity on the Website, visitor ID, use of our Services and interactions with us such as name, telephone number, email address and postcode, details of adverts you have published, details within the My Account section of the Website, your interactions with us.

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Legal basis: 

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• Legitimate Interest

• Consent

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More Information

 

We will use your contact details such as name, telephone number, email address and postcode, details of adverts you have published, details with the My Account section of the Website and details of your activity on the Website and your interactions with us in order to:

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• provide and administer the Website and related services and manage internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes, and to develop the Website and our products and services.

• generate an overall audience profile of visitors using the Website. We use this information to assist us in developing relevant content on the Website as well as encouraging automotive trade advertisers to place adverts for their stock or promotions on the Website.

• create a profile of you, which enables us to identify and personalise what you see on our Website and Apps and what vehicles and services we offer to you for marketing purposes (as further described in the section below).

• provide customers who have opted-in to receive marketing communications, with relevant and timely offers by email (including where customers have supplied their insurance renewal date information and/or vehicle ownership details).

• support our ‘Send to Mobile’ functionality. This allows visitors to our Website to send details of vehicles for sale to their mobile phone.

• provide a user-friendly online search experience. This includes the use of website analytics tools as described further in our Cookie Policy.

• identify the location of visitors, to block disruptive or fraudulent use, to establish the number of visits from different countries.

• where there is a legitimate interest in doing so, we may share information (i.e. visitor IDs and hashed email addresses) with social media, advertising and analytics partners, who may combine it with, or match it against, other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. Such third parties use this information in order to ensure that you are served relevant adverts on their platforms or elsewhere on the internet. The third party will only be able to identify you from the data that we provide if you have already registered or otherwise interacted with their services.

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Profiling and automated decision making

 

We may profile your activity on our Website and Apps to help us:

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• better understand the types of vehicles and services you may be interested in and what stage of the car buying process you are;

• customise your experience on our Website and Apps, for example, by suggesting vehicles and/or services that may be of interest to you;

• where you submit an online enquiry, deal or reservation, to help the relevant dealer provide a more personalised and efficient car buying experience to you, for example, by allowing them to suggest alternative vehicles that you may be interested in based on your previous searches on our Website and Apps;

• tailor our communications with you; and

• to identity opportunities to improve our products and services and those of the Autotrader Group.

 

We do not make automated decisions which will have a legal or similar effect on you.

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You can always object to profiling by emailing us at dataprotection@autotrader.co.uk

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Any profiling data that we hold about you will only be kept for as long as is necessary to meet the above objectives.

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Information shared with us by third parties

 

We may receive personal data about you from various third parties, including (without limitation) the following:

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• Dealers or vehicle manufacturers, where you have purchased a vehicle from them, which has been advertised on our Website;

• Companies that enable us to collect your reviews and comments, both online and offline;

• Companies that collect your reviews and comments on behalf of dealers;

• Vehicle manufacturers, finance service providers, insurance companies and other third parties who we partner with.

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Legal basis: 

• Consent

• Legitimate Interest

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Click here for an explanation regarding the legal basis.

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More Information

 

If you purchase a vehicle that has been advertised on our Website, the dealer or manufacturer who sold the vehicle to you may send us information about the sale. This may include the date of the sale, the VRM of the vehicle and your postcode. This allows us to track sales and make improvements to our Website and services.

 

We offer the ability for individuals to leave reviews of dealers on the Website. Some of our dealers use Feefo Holdings Limited (“Feefo”) to collect reviews (on the Website and also by direct emails to consumers) and the data Feefo receives is processed in accordance with their privacy policy:www.feefo.com/en/business/privacy-policy. Feefo shares the reviews with us (including any personal data disclosed by the reviewer as part of the review), which we publish on our Website. Feefo will also share the reviewer's name, age and location, where the reviewer has consented to this information being shared with us. If the reviewer does not give their consent, Feefo will only share the reviewer’s first name and surname initial, which will appear with the review on the Website.

 

Some dealers use different third party providers to collect reviews on their behalf and they share such reviews with us. Please refer to the relevant review provider’s privacy policy for information about how they process your personal data.

 

Some third party companies (including vehicle manufacturers, finance service providers and insurance companies), who we partner with, provide us with vehicle registration mark data (“VRM”). We does not, and are not able to, link the VRM to any other data in order to identify the registered owner of the vehicle. However, notwithstanding this, we treat the VRM data with the same protections as if it is personal data.

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The Legal Basis we rely on for processing your information

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Under data protection laws, we are required to have a legal basis to process your personal information. We have set out below the legal bases we rely on:

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• Contract: To perform a contract entered into with you and fulfil our contractual obligations to you or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract. This processing is necessary for us to provide the service you have requested, including: registering and managing your account, publishing your advert, administering and processing your online order, providing service updates, and our support services.

• Consent: To provide information and take actions in relation to services which you have opted-in to receive. This includes where you specifically request for your details to be passed onto a third party (e.g., where you make an enquiry regarding a test drive or a vehicle for sale) or where you opt-in to receive relevant marketing communications from us (e.g., industry news and offers). For further information regarding consent, please see below.

• Legal Obligation: Where processing is necessary to comply with our legal or statutory obligations. This may include cooperating with police in relation to their investigations.

• Legitimate interest: Where necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party. We rely on this basis in order to monitor and improve our Website, products, and services, understand how visitors and customers use our Website, products, and services, to carry out profiling and to personalise content provided to you, to deal with enquiries and complaints, undertake market research and inform our general marketing, to run our business, and maintain the security of our Website and services for you, us, and other Website visitors and customers.

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Consent

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Where consent is required for us or a dealer to process certain types of your personal data, it must be clearly given. You may give us your consent to receive our marketing communications and/or when you use the Website to request services provided by dealers.

 

Where you have given consent for Autotrader to process your personal data, you may withdraw consent at any time by emailing dataprotection@autotrader.co.uk. We will cease processing your data based on that consent, but this does not affect any processing we have undertaken at any time before withdrawal.

 

If you have given consent for your details to be passed to a dealer or other third party, your data may already have been used by them to respond to your request before we can action your consent withdrawal. In this event, you will need to contact them to withdraw your consent to their use of your personal data.

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Disclosure of your information

 

Findercar will not pass on your personal data to third parties except as set out in this Notice or with your consent. We may disclose your personal information to third parties for the following purpose(s) and in the following circumstances as part of our processing activities:

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•  We ensure that our shared IT infrastructure is subject to appropriate security measures and internal controls, to ensure that your personal data is kept secure and in accordance with Data Protection Legislation. Your data may be used and analysed in order to improve products and services across the Autotrader Group.

• We will send your personal information to our partners, dealers, vehicle manufacturers and other relevant third parties to enable them to provide you with the services and products that you have requested or consented to receive details of via the Website or the Apps. In certain circumstances, vehicle manufacturers (including, amongst others, Ford Motor Company Limited)  and other relevant third parties may subsequently transfer, process and store your personal information outside of the UK for their business and administration purposes, in accordance with their own privacy policies. If you have queries or require more information on how these third parties use information, including transfers outside of the UK, please read their privacy policies or contact them.

• Sometimes we may need to share and/or process your personal data outside the UK, for example where we use service providers who are based outside the UK. We will only share and/or process your personal data outside the UK where we have taken steps to fully comply with Data Protection Legislation and ensure that your personal data is fully protected.

• Some of our webpages use plugins from thirdparty platforms (such as the ‘Facebook Recommend‘ or ‘Facebook Gestures‘ function). Information about your visit to the Website may be collected by these third-party providers on these pages. If you browse these pages whilst still also logged in to your account on the third-party platform, information collected by the third party may be connected to your account on the third party platform. If you have queries or require more information on how these third parties use information, including transfers outside of the UK, please read their privacy policies or contact them.​

• Some dealers ask us to share their Feefo reviews and any connected personal data relating to the reviewer with a third party review company that the dealer works with, such as Reputation.com (who provide a review management platform and related services), to enable the dealer (and, in somecases, a vehicle manufacturer acting on the dealer’s behalf) to manage and reply to dealer’s reviews via the third party platform. Please speak to the dealer for further details and to review their privacy notice.

• Where there is a legitimate interest in doing so, we may share information (i.e. visitor IDs and hashed email addresses) with social media, advertising and analytics partners, who may combine it with, or match it against, other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. Such third parties use this information in order to ensure that you are served relevant adverts on their platforms or elsewhere on the internet.

• Where we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal information with a third party in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce our terms and conditions and any other agreements.

• If we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case Findercar may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.

• We may share any information that we collect with parties including: our legal and professional advisors, the police, other public or private sector agencies, governmental or representative bodies (which may include insurance companies, finance companies, automotive advertising companies and/or other agencies) in accordance with the relevant legislation for the purposes of the prevention or detection of offences, and/or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders.

• You acknowledge that we have a legitimate business interest in preventing the use of our platform or services in any manner that may facilitate fraudulent activity or deny consumers of their legal rights under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 or the Consumer Rights Act 2015. We may share any information that we collect about you or the vehicles that you advertise for sale on our platform with third parties or their legal representatives to the extent necessary to prevent fraud or any adverse effect to those third parties consumer rights.

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We are not responsible for any use of your personal data by these parties except where they act as our processor.

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Where we store your personal data

 

Findercar will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is is treated securely and in accordance with this Policy. All information you provide to us is stored securely within the UK or EEA, and not transferred outside the UK or EEA unless specifically detailed in this Policy.

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More Information

 

Payment card information, details you provide when requesting dealer or other third party services through the Website and information you provide when using the Chat Service is handled in accordance with the relevant service providers’ privacy policies and may be transferred and stored or processed by them outside of the UK and EEA in accordance with their privacy policies.

 

Where we transfer your data outside of the UK or EEA, we will ensure that safeguards are in place to provide similar degree of protection is available to protect it. This may include contractual protections in place with our service providers or transferring your data to countries or parties which are recognised as providing suitable protection by UK and the European Commission.

 

Certain parties to whom we disclose your personal data may transfer your data outside of the UK and EEA after we disclose it to them as their business and administration activities (see above, Disclosure of your information). We are not responsible for any use of your personal data by these parties except where they act as our processor. If you have queries or require more information on how these third parties use your information, including such transfers outside of the UK and EEA and please read their privacy policies or contact them.

Autotrader uses strict procedures and security features designed to prevent any unauthorised access to your data that we hold.

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How long we keep your data

 

Findercar will process personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose we collected it for, including the purpose of legal, accounting and reporting requirements, and for as long as necessary for the prevention and detection of criminal activity.

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More Information

 

The period for which we process and store the personal data for varies depending on the use you make of the Website and the products and/or services we offer. Where you register an account or place an advert we will retain your data for as long as your account and/or advert is live and a period after your account is closed or advert ends to enable us to satisfy our legal, accounting and reporting requirements.

 

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Right to be forgotten below for further information.

 

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

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Your rights as a data subject

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Under data protection law, you have the following rights:

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• Access

• Rectification

• Erasure/Right to be forgotten

• Restrict processing

• Portability

• Object to processing

• Complain

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Some of these rights may not always apply. You can read more about your rights below.

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More Information

 

You may be able to exercise the following rights:

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• Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. In the event that Autotrader refuses your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why

• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.

• Right or erasure/ to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.

• Right to restrict processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.

• Right of portability – in certain circumstances you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.

• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing, automated processing or profiling.

• Right to complain to the supervisory authority – you have the right to complain as outlined in Section 8 below.

 

Please email dataprotection@autotrader.co.uk if you have any queries regarding your rights. You can exercise your rights as set out above by emailing dataprotection@autotrader.co.uk. All of the above requests will be forwarded on should there be a third party involved (as set out in this Privacy Policy) in the processing of your personal data.

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Complaints

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If you wish to make a complaint about how your personal data is being processed by Autotrader (or third parties as described above), or how your complaint has been handled, in the first instance please email your concerns to dataprotection@autotrader.co.uk.

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You also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the UK supervisory authority which is the Information Commissioner’s Office and can be contacted via the details at www.ico.org.uk.