1. Introduction

This Privacy Notice explains in detail the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we’ll store and handle that data, and keep it safe.

We want you to be fully informed about your rights, and how Placebuzz Limited uses your data;

We hope the following sections will answer any questions you have but if not, please do get in touch with us.

It’s likely that we’ll need to update this Privacy Notice from time to time. We’ll notify you of any significant changes, but you’re welcome to come back and check it whenever you wish.

When you are using the Placebuzz websites or apps, Placebuzz Limited is the data controller.

2. Explaining the legal bases we rely on

The law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which a company may collect and process your personal data, including:

Consent

In specific situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent. For example, when you tick a box to receive email newsletters.

When collecting your personal data, we’ll always make clear to you which data is necessary in connection with a particular service.

Contractual obligations

In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations.

For example, if you enquire about a property for rent or sale on our site, we’ll collect your details to send to the agents, and pass them to our partners who in turn send them onto the estate or letting agents.

Legal compliance

If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data.

For example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity affecting the company to law enforcement.

Legitimate interest

In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests.

For example, we will use your enquiry history to send you or make available similar properties or personalised offers.

We also combine the browsing and enquiry history of many customers to identify trends and ensure we can keep up with demand, or develop new products/services.

We may also use your address details to send you direct marketing information by post, telling you about products and services that we think might interest you.

3. When do we collect your personal data?

  • When you visit any of our websites.
  • When you make an enquiry about a property through our site.
  • When you request a valuation for your property.
  • When you create an account with us.
  • When you engage with us on social media.
  • When you download or install one of our apps.
  • When you contact us by any means with queries, complaints etc.
  • When you ask one of our Partners to email you information about a product or service.
  • When you enter prize draws or competitions.
  • When you book any kind of appointment with us or book to attend an event, for example booking a viewing for a property.
  • When you choose to complete any surveys we send you.
  • When you comment on or review our products and services.
  • Any individual may access personal data related to them, including opinions. So if your comment or review includes information about the Partner who provided that service, it may be passed on to them if requested.
  • When you’ve given a third party permission to share with us the information they hold about you.
  • We collect data from publicly-available sources (such as Land Registry) when you have given your consent to share information or where the information is made public as a matter of law.

4. What personal data do we collect?

Information you give us

We will collect the information that you give to us when using our Site. If you choose to access a particular search feature or to fill in a form on the Site, you may be asked to provide information about yourself, such as your name and contact details. We may also collect other information about you at the same time, such as details of the sort of property you are interested in, the cost and location of the property etc. We will also collect information that you provide to us when you register as a Rightmove user, request property email updates, participate in discussion boards or other social media functions on our Site or websites operated by associated third parties and enter into competitions, promotions or surveys. We will also collect information that you provide to us by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise.

Information we collect about you

This is different to "information you give us" because it relates to technical data that we collect. So for example, we may collect technical information that has the potential to identify you, such as the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform. We may also collect information about your visit, including the full uniform resource locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our Site (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number. We may also keep a record of the advertisers or partners you contact and the contents of the emails you send to them.

Information we receive about you from third parties

We may receive information about you if you use any of the other websites we operate or the other services we provide. In this case we will have informed you, when we collected that data, that it may be shared internally and combined with data collected on this Site. We are also working closely with third parties (including, for example, social media platforms, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers and credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.

5. How and why do we use your personal data?

We want to give you the best possible user experience. One way to achieve that is to get the richest picture we can of who you are by combining the data we have about you.

We then use this to offer you promotions, products and services that are most likely to interest you.

The data privacy law allows this as part of our legitimate interest in understanding our customers and providing the highest levels of service.

Of course, if you wish to change how we use your data, you’ll find details in the ‘What are my rights?’ section below.

Remember, if you choose not to share your personal data with us, or refuse certain contact permissions, we might not be able to provide some services you’ve asked for.

For example, if you’ve asked us to let you know when new properties are listed online, we can’t do that if you’ve withdrawn your general consent to hear from us.

Here’s how we’ll use your personal data and why:

  • To process any enquiries or requests that you make by using our websites or apps. If we don’t collect your personal data, we won’t be able to process your order and comply with our legal obligations. For example, your details may need to be passed to a third party to provide you with a service that you requested (e.g. Mortgage Advice), and we may keep your details for a reasonable period afterwards in order to fulfil any contractual obligations.
  • To respond to your queries, requests and complaints. Handling the information you sent enables us to respond. We may also keep a record of these to inform any future communication with us and to demonstrate how we communicated with you throughout. We do this on the basis of our contractual obligations to you, our legal obligations and our legitimate interests in providing you with the best service and understanding how we can improve our service based on your experience.
  • To protect our business and your account from fraud and other illegal activities. This includes using your personal data to maintain, update and safeguard your account. We’ll also monitor your browsing activity with us to quickly identify and resolve any problems and protect the integrity of our websites. We’ll do all of this as part of our legitimate interest. For example, by checking your password when you login and using automated monitoring of IP addresses to identify possible fraudulent log-ins from unexpected locations.
  • With your consent, we will use your personal data, preferences and details of your transactions to keep you informed by email, web, text, telephone and through our contact centres about relevant products and services including tailored special offers, discounts, promotions, events, competitions and so on. Of course, you are free to opt out of hearing from us by any of these channels at any time.
  • To send you communications required by law or which are necessary to inform you about our changes to the services we provide you. For example, updates to this Privacy Notice, product recall notices, and legally required information relating to your orders. These service messages will not include any promotional content and do not require prior consent when sent by email or text message. If we do not use your personal data for these purposes, we would be unable to comply with our legal obligations.
  • To display the most interesting content to you on our websites or apps, we’ll use data we hold about you. We do so on the basis of your consent to receive app notifications and/or for our website to place cookies or similar technology on your device. For example, we might display a list of properties you’ve recently looked at, or offer you recommendations based on your enquiry history and any other data you’ve shared with us.
  • To administer any of our prize draws or competitions which you enter, based on your consent given at the time of entering.
  • To develop, test and improve the systems, services and products we provide to you. We’ll do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests. For example, we’ll record your browser’s Session ID to help us understand more when you leave us online feedback about any problems you’re having
  • To comply with our contractual or legal obligations to share data with law enforcement. For example, when a court order is submitted to share data with law enforcement agencies or a court of law
  • To send you survey and feedback requests to help improve our services. These messages will not include any promotional content and do not require prior consent when sent by email or text message. We have a legitimate interest to do so as this helps make our products or services more relevant to you. Of course, you are free to opt out of receiving these requests from us at any time by updating your preferences in your online account.
  • To build a rich picture of who you are and what you like, and to inform our business decisions, we’ll combine data captured from our websites and apps, third parties and data from publicly-available lists as we have described in the section 'What Sort of Personal Data do we collect?' We’ll do this on the basis of our legitimate business interest. For example, by combining this data, this will help us personalise your experience and decide which inspiration or content to share with you. We also use anonymised data from customer enquiry histories to identify trends in different areas of the country. This may then guide how we sort listings in our search results.
  • To process your booking/appointment requests (for example about a property or with a mortgage adviser). Sometimes, we’ll need to share your details with a third party who is providing a service (such as delivery couriers or a fitter visiting your home). We do so to maintain our appointment with you. Without sharing your personal data, we’d be unable to fulfil your request.

6. Combining your data for personalised direct marketing

We want to bring you offers and promotions that are most relevant to your interests at particular times. To help us form a better, overall understanding of you as a customer, we combine your personal data gathered as described above. For this purpose we also combine the data that we collect directly from you with data that we obtain from third parties to whom you have given your consent to pass that data onto us – such as the Land Registry mentioned above.

7. How we protect your personal data

We know how much data security matters to all our customers. With this in mind we will treat your data with the utmost care and take all appropriate steps to protect it.

We secure access to all transactional areas of our websites and apps using ‘https’ technology.

Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data is secured and tokenised to ensure it is protected.

We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks, and we carry out testing to identify ways to further strengthen security.

8. How long will we keep your personal data?

Whenever we collect or process your personal data, we’ll only keep it for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected.

At the end of that retention period, your data will either be deleted completely or anonymised, for example by aggregation with other data so that it can be used in a non-identifiable way for statistical analysis and business planning. Some examples of customer data retention periods:

Enquiries

When you make an enquiry, we’ll keep the personal data you give us for five years so we can comply with our legal and contractual obligations.

9. Who do we share your personal data with?

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties. For example, partner mortgage advisers, to help us personalise our offers to you and so on. Here’s the policy we apply to those organisations to keep your data safe and protect your privacy:

We provide only the information they need to perform their specific services.

They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them.

We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times.

If we stop using their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous.

Examples of the kind of third parties we work with are:

  • IT companies who support our website and other business systems.
  • Direct marketing companies who help us manage our electronic communications with you.
  • Google/Facebook to show you products that might interest you while you’re browsing the internet. This is based on either your marketing consent or your acceptance of cookies on our websites. See our Cookies Notice for details.
  • Data insight companies to ensure your details are up to date and accurate.

Sharing your data with third parties for their own purposes:

We will only do this in very specific circumstances, for example:

  • With your consent, given at the time you supply your personal data, we may pass that data to a third party for their direct marketing purposes. For example, if you enter a holiday competition and tick a box agreeing that the travel company can send you promotional information directly. Or if we run a joint event with a restaurant, and you agree to receive direct communications from them.
  • For fraud management, we may share information about fraudulent or potentially fraudulent activity in our premises or systems. This may include sharing data about individuals with law enforcement bodies.
  • We may also be required to disclose your personal data to the police or other enforcement, regulatory or Government body, in your country of origin or elsewhere, upon a valid request to do so. These requests are assessed on a case-by-case basis and take the privacy of our customers into consideration.
  • We may, from time to time, expand, reduce or sell parts of our business and this may involve the transfer of divisions or the whole business to new owners. If this happens, your personal data will, where relevant, be transferred to the new owner or controlling party, under the terms of this Privacy Notice.
  • For further information please contact our Data Protection Officer.

10. Where your personal data may be processed

Sometimes we will need to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the European Economic Area (EEA), such as Australia or the USA.

Protecting your data outside the EEA

The EEA includes all EU Member countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. We may transfer personal data that we collect from you to third-party data processors in countries that are outside the EEA. For example, this might be required in order to fulfil your order, process your payment details or provide support services. If we do this, we have procedures in place to ensure your data receives the same protection as if it were being processed inside the EEA. For example, our contracts with third parties stipulate the standards they must follow at all times. If you wish for more information about these contracts please contact our Data Protection Officer.

Any transfer of your personal data will follow applicable laws and we will treat the information under the guiding principles of this Privacy Notice.

11. What are your rights over your personal data?

An overview of your different rights

You have the right to request:

  • Access to the personal data we hold about you, free of charge in most cases.
  • The correction of your personal data when incorrect, out of date or incomplete.
  • For example, when you withdraw consent, or object and we have no legitimate overriding interest, or once the purpose for which we hold the data has come to an end (such as the end of a warranty).
  • That we stop using your personal data for direct marketing (either through specific channels, or all channels).
  • That we stop any consent-based processing of your personal data after you withdraw that consent.
  • Review by a Partner of any decision made based solely on automatic processing of your data (i.e. where no human has yet reviewed the outcome and criteria for the decision).

You have the right to request a copy of any information about you that the Company holds at any time, and also to have that information corrected if it is inaccurate. To ask for your information, please contact Data Protection Officer, Placebuzz Limited, Building 3, 566 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5YA, or email DPO@placebuzz.com. To ask for your information to be amended, please update your online account, or contact our Customer Services team.

If we choose not to action your request we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal.

Your right to withdraw consent

Whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw that consent.

Where we rely on our legitimate interest

In cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can ask us to stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must then do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data.

Direct marketing

You have the right to stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing activity through all channels, or selected channels. We must always comply with your request.

Checking your identity

To protect the confidentiality of your information, we will ask you to verify your identity before proceeding with any request you make under this Privacy Notice. If you have authorised a third party to submit a request on your behalf, we will ask them to prove they have your permission to act.

12. Third Party Partners

We sell space on some of our websites to advertisers – they pay for the content you enjoy for free. As part of this, we allow several companies to collect information about your browsing behavior to help us and advertisers understand what adverts you might be interested in. In the following paragraph you will find information about these companies, their services, their data privacy statements and how to opt-out from their technology.
Partner: Nano Interactive GmbH
Data Privacy Policy: http://www.nanointeractive.com/privacy
Opt-Out: https://audiencemanager.de/public/opt-out

We also affiliate with other partners to provide added value services to our customers. In the following paragraph, you will find information about these companies and the services they provide:
Partner: UKCreditRatings.com
Data Privacy Policy: https://ukcreditratings.com/credit/privacy
UKCreditRatings.com is a trading name of RSDataTech Ltd (Registration No. 8282923): No data is shared, unless you request to review your credit file and supply your data willingly.

Search Services

Some of the web search services provided herein are provided by providers of third party web search services. For information on the web search services data collection, please visit the end user privacy statements of CodeFuel here and Bing here, both as updated from time to time and at any successor locations.

13. How can you stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing?

There are several ways you can stop direct marketing communications from us:

  • Click the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any email communication that we send you. We will then stop any further emails for that particular type of email.
  • If you have an account, log in, visit the ‘My Account’ area and change your preferences.
  • Write to Placebuzz, Building 3, 566 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5YA

Please note that you may continue to receive communications for a short period after changing your preferences while our systems are fully updated.

14. How our providers use your personal data

When you enquire about a property, request a valuation or apply for a product or service from one of our chosen partners, your data will be collected and used by them under the terms of their own separate privacy policies.

15. Contacting the Regulator

If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113.

Or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (opens in a new window; please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites)

If you are based outside the UK, you have the right to lodge your complaint with the relevant data protection regulator in your country of residence. Details can be found in Section 15.

16. If you live outside the UK

For all non-UK customers

By using our services or providing your personal data to us, you expressly consent to the processing of your personal data by us or on our behalf. Of course, you still have the right to ask us not to process your data in certain ways, and if you do so, we will respect your wishes. Sometimes we’ll need to transfer your personal data between countries to enable us to supply the services you’ve requested. In the ordinary course of business, we may transfer your personal data from your country of residence to ourselves and to third parties located in the UK.

By dealing with us, you are giving your consent to this overseas use, transfer and disclosure of your personal data outside your country of residence for our ordinary business purposes.

This may occur because our information technology storage facilities and servers are located outside your country of residence, and could include storage of your personal data on servers in the UK.

We’ll ensure that reasonable steps are taken to prevent third parties outside your country of residence using your personal data in any way that’s not set out in this Privacy Notice. We’ll also make sure we adequately protect the confidentiality and privacy of your personal data.

17. Any questions?

We hope this Privacy Notice has been helpful in setting out the way we handle your personal data and your rights to control it.

If you have any questions that haven’t been covered, please contact our Data Protection Officer who will be pleased to help you:

Email us at DPO@placebuzz.com

Or write to us at Data Protection Officer, Placebuzz Limited, Building 3, 566 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5YA This notice was last updated on 21/07/2020