Privacy Policy
This policy describes how PLINC collects, uses, shares and secures information on our owned and operated website, as well as the services we use to communicate with users and to facilitate communications between buyers and sellers. We recommend reading through the entire policy to completely understand but the following provides a summary of some of the more important aspects of our privacy practices:
- PLINC may use your personal information to provide you with listings, services and information including more relevant search results and advertising to make sharing much easier and quicker for the user.
- PLINC may share your personal information with third parties in some cases such as if such as if a company advertises through our website and you would like to communicate with them.
- PLINC takes reasonable measures to keep your sensitive information safe, but we cannot promise that your information will be kept secure in all circumstances.
What information do we collect?
The information we collect refers to your personal information and non-personal information we collect about you. Personal information refers to information which personally relates to you or can reasonably be linked to you by us. Personal information can either be sensitive or non-sensitive, sensitive personal information refers to information that is generally considered confidential such as precise location, social security number etc. Non-sensitive personal information refers to information that is generally not considered to be confidential such as your name, date of birth, email address etc. Non-personal information refers to information that does not specifically identify you or has been processed so as to effectively prevent your identification which may include data associated with a particular computer or device which you use but does not identify you personally.
How do we use information?
Our primary purpose in collecting information about you is to provide you with listings, services and advertisements that match your interests and/or preferences. For example we may use the information to send marketing, tailor listings and/or advertising, improve our website and marketing, conduct research, display content based on your interests and list you in our search and directory Services. This is done on behalf of ourselves and the companies who put their listings on the site. We may also use traffic data using our technologies, in conjunction with third-party demographic and interest-based data to provide services to our Customers such as tools to see how their listings are used.
How do we collect information?
PLINC collects information from you by asking that you provide it to us online through a device or other means which we may use to communicate with you. We also collect information when you choose to communicate with us or when you choose to utilise our Services to communicate with others who use our Site or who advertise with us. The information that we collect about you may include:
- Name, username, password, address, telephone number, mobile number, email address, country of residence, preferred language
- Type of service provided or products listed
- List of your contacts (this may include Facebook contacts, Linkedin contacts, Email contacts and other forms of social media)
- The content of the communications you have with us, other users or companies via PLINC this includes reviews you leave, messages, feedback, emails or other types of user generated content)
PLINC may also collect information from you automatically. The types of information we automatically collect from you could include the computer or wireless device that you’re using, the internet provider, browser you use, time and duration of your visits, search queries you enter, webpages or applications you view and how you interact with advertising. Without limitations we use the following technologies to collect information:
- “Cookies” are small data files placed onto your computer by the websites you visit and emails you read, they can be used to help recognise you when you return to a website or visit other websites. We or third party service providers may use cookies to (but not limited to), measure activity, personalise your experience, remember your viewing preferences or track your status or progress when accessing our site. For some purposes our cookies may be tied to personally-identifiable information. You can choose to have your browser reject cookies or you can delete them as you wish however this may cause some trouble when accessing some pages and features on our website, or something we put onto our website in the future. We do not operate any cookies or tracking technology used by our third party service providers.
- PLINC and our marketing partners, affiliates, analytics or service providers may use technologies such as cookies, beacons, scripts and tags. These are used in analysing trends, administering the website, tracking how you move on the site and gathering demographic information about our user base. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual and aggregated basis. Browsers may offer their own tools for removing these types of tracking technologies.
- “Unique Identifiers” these are unique strings of characters which are used to identify you, your computer or your mobile device. Such identifiers could be present on your computer or mobile device. We may use these identifiers to recognise you when visiting our site.
- “Local Shared Objects”, “LSO’s” or “Flash Cookies” are data files stored similar to how cookies work, except it stores more complex data. Third parties which we use to provide certain features on our website use Flash cookies to remember settings, preferences, and usage particularly for video, interactive gaming and similar services. Your browsers cookie management tools will not remove these.
- We use Local Storage such as HTML5 to store content information and preferences. Third parties may provide certain features on our website or to display advertising based upon your web browsing activity also use HTML5 to collect and store information. Browsers may offer their own tools to remove HTML5.
- “Web beacons” or “clear pixels” these are small graphic images on a webpage or in an e-mail that can be used for recording the pages and advertisements that are clicked by users or tracking how well email marketing campaigns do.
- “Web server log” is a record of activity, this is created by the computer that delivers the requested web pages to your browser. A web server log may record a search term you entered or the link you clicked to reach the webpage. The web server log could also record information about your browser which can include IP address and the cookies set on your browser by the server.
- “Widget” is a program that can be embedded in a webpage or mobile applications. Widgets can provide you with real-time information such as stock quotes or weather reports or take in information from you. Widgets are often provided and hosted by a third party and they could allow the third party to collect data about users viewing that page or interacting with that widget possibly subject to a different privacy policy other than PLINC’s. We also include social media features which allow you to share with others in your social media. In addition to information you fill in, these features may collect your IP address, which page you’re visiting and set cookies to enable proper functions.
- “sign-in services” these allow you to sign in using social media such as Facebook, this allows us to use some personally-identifiable information such as email and name.
- “Geo-location technologies” these allow us to determine your location. We may ask you to provide us with your location so that it shows on our website.
- We may also use automatic information from your web server or computer to determine general location information, such as the city you live in
In addition to the information we collect from you, we may collect information for third parties for purposes such as ad targeting, optimisation and reporting.
In certain circumstances we may share your information with third parties these circumstances are as follows.
- If you decide to communicate with a company that has placed their listings on our website for example if you get in contact with one of the companies your information such as name and telephone number may be shared with them so they can get back in contact with you.
- In the event that we all or part of our assets are acquired we may share all types of information with the acquiring company. We will notify you of this via email or notice on our website if there is any change of ownership or change in how your personal information is used, as well as any options you have regarding your information.
- In the event that we offer applications, tools or widgets on our website that are powered by a third party. We may share your non-sensitive personal information and any additional information you provide as part of the use with that third party. The way the third party uses the information is subject to their privacy policy.
- We may report to law enforcement agencies if any activities take place which we believe to be reasonably unlawful or we believe law enforcement may help us with our investigation. In addition to this we reserve the right to release all types of information to law enforcement agencies if we determine in our sole judgement that either you have violated our policies or releasing your information will protect the rights, property or safety of us or another person.
- We may share all types of information with others as required by or permitted by law. This may include sharing all forms of information with government entities or third parties in response to subpoenas, a court order, other legal process or as we believe is necessary to exercise our legal rights to defend against any legal claims that have been brought against us, or to defend legal claims which we feel in our sole discretion may be brought against us.
- We share different types of information with people and companies that provide us with a service. These services may include but are not limited to helping us create or maintain our database and a mapping service provider to provide a map of your location. We also require that services listing with us take reasonable measures to keep your personal information safe. You should always look for the “privacy policy” link on other pages before submitting any information to determine whether this privacy policy or the other company’s privacy policy governs.
- If in any case we share non-personal information with a party we haven’t described above we will de-identify the information so the third party cannot identify you, your computer or device you’re using.
- We may also share any information, including sensitive personal information with third parties that we have not described above if you give us consent to do so.
How do we secure information?
We are serious about keeping your personal information secure. Any sensitive information we take from you we protect during transmission and storage using encryption this includes but not limited to; your address, telephone number etc. For less sensitive information we take reasonable measures to prevent it from becoming disclosed to unauthorised individuals. It is important for you to protect against unauthorised access to your password and computer. No security measures are perfect and we cannot promise that all your information remains secure in all circumstances.
What privacy choices do you have?
If the information we use to personally identify you changes or you are no longer going to be using PLINC Services, you may correct, update or delete information about yourself. If you have previously agreed to us to using your location as we have outlined in the policy you may opt out to this as you want. We attempt to get back to you within 30 days. In some cases we may not be able to remove your information we will inform you if this is the case. We may share some of your information with behaviourally targeted advertising this is how we tailor advertising to your personal interests. We treat data of everyone who visits are site in accordance with this privacy policy whatever their Do Not Track setting is.
Some additional information
This Privacy Policy does not apply to websites which are linked with our website. We encourage you to read their privacy policies before you transmit any personally-identifiable information. If you start using PLINC in way which is not covered by this Privacy Policy then the terms of that particular service will apply to you. We may make changes to these privacy policy periodically to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any changes to the privacy policy the changes will be in effect from the same date. We encourage you to periodically check this page for the changes to our privacy policy. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us using our support@plinc.co.uk. If we need to contact you for any reason we will do so via email.
Communications policy
PLINC may contact you via email. These emails could include marketing emails or general emails which relate to PLINC’s Services. You may opt-out of receiving marketing emails but you may still receive emails from us which relate to PLINC Services. If you opt-out you may choose to opt back in to receive may choose to opt back in to receive emails regarding listing or services which could be of interest to you.