The Smart Exporter partner organisations are committed to protecting the privacy of our customers and web site visitors. Our relationship with you is valuable and we understand the importance you place on the privacy and security of information which personally identifies you.
In that respect, and whether you are a first time visitor to our web site or a regular user, we take your privacy seriously. Please read the following in order to learn more about our privacy policy and our information gathering and dissemination practices.
1. Why we require your information
The partner organisations involved in the Smart Exporter programme provide a variety of on-line offerings, including information about SDI and SCI products and services and business information. SDI and SCI collect personally identifiable information when you register with us and when you use our services. We ask you for personal data only when it is needed to provide goods or services you have enquired about or asked us to provide or to respond to your request for information. You do not need to provide us with personal data simply to browse our site.
The use of this information is also required in order to customise the content on our pages, to fulfil your request for certain products and services, to communicate with you generally and to contact you about new events and services.
2. What information do we collect?
We will collect information from you in the following circumstances:
Registration
Some areas of the Smart Exporter web site to include the Contact Us page and use of the Diagnostic Tool require you to provide personal or business information in order to obtain certain services. This process involves providing us with your name, company, address, telephone and e-mail address, and we may also request some optional information to provide you with the service you have requested or to answer your queries.
Events
Personal data is required in order to keep you informed of developments including new (or existing) events, seminars, workshops and training offerings. Where we offer on-line registration in particular cases we will require to obtain certain information about you such as contact details in order to process your registration and to follow up such registration. We may also approach you for feedback following our events.
Optional Information
We may request optional information from you on our registration forms. We request this optional information so that we may serve you better (e.g. to provide more tailored products and services to you) and so that we may understand our users better (e.g. through internal research, data analysis, market research and product research). If we request this additional information from you we will identify it as optional.
Cookies
There are various technologies, including one called "cookies" which can be used to provide you with tailored information from a web site. A cookie is a small data file that certain web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them. The only personal information a cookie can obtain is information a user supplies him or herself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Cookies, however, enhance our web site performance in a number of ways, including providing a secure way for us to verify your identity during your visit to our web site and personalising your experience on our site, making it more convenient for you. The Smart Exporter web site uses cookies so that we can serve you better. You can refuse cookies by turning them off on your web browser and you do not need to have cookies turned on to successfully use our service. Most browsers are defaulted to accept and maintain cookies and you can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it or not.
Web site Usage Data
With or without cookies, our web site keeps track of usage data, such as the source address that the page request is coming from (i.e. your computer IP address, domain name), date and time of the page request, the referring web site (if any) and other parameters in the URL (e.g. search criteria). We use this data to better understand web site usage so we know what areas of our web site users prefer. This information is stored in log files and is used for aggregated and statistical reporting, but is not attributed to you as an individual.
Security
We recognise industry standards and employ security safeguards to protect information from unauthorised access and misuse. We use the most accurate and current information you provide in order to process your request.
3. What information do we share?
There are times when we are required to share the information we learn from you with other parties. We do not sell or rent this information to others but will send personally identifiable information about you to other companies or people in the following situations:-
Agents
The Smart Exporter partner organistions will share your information with professional advisor's, strategic partners, survey and research organisations and other individuals and organisations with whom we employ to perform functions in certain situations on our behalf. Examples of these functions include sending postal mail, faxes and e-mail, providing marketing assistance in data analysis, providing services and following up on enquiries (including by phone, e-mail, post or fax). These agents have access to the personal information required in order to perform their functions but may not use it for any other purpose. This may also in certain circumstances involve the transfer of your information abroad.
Compliance with law
We will release personal information where we are required to by law or by the regulations and other rules (including auditing requirements) to which we are subject.
Consent
Other than in the above situations you will receive notice from us when your personal information might go to third parties and you will have the opportunity to decide not to share that information.
4. Changes to Privacy Policy
We may edit this policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes we will notify you by posting a prominent announcement on our web pages.
5. Questions or suggestions
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this policy, have any concerns about the practices of our web sites or believe we are not properly adhering to our privacy policy please contact us by calling our Helpline on 0800 019 1953.