Hobsons PLC takes your privacy seriously. This privacy policy explains the steps we take to ensure information about you is kept secure and confidential.

Please read this privacy policy carefully, as once you use our website or our services you will be deemed to have read and accepted this privacy policy.

You must not use our website or our services if you do not accept this privacy policy.

1. The information we collect

We will only collect personal information about you and given by you when you register with us. We will always let you have a copy of all personal information we have about you should you request it. Contact data.protection@hobsons-get.co.uk to do this. You are able to update and amend your personal information at any time by visiting My GET.

2. Purposes for which we use information about our users

We collect information about our users for a variety of purposes. These include the following purposes:

• where users supply information to us pursuant to schemes and services which we offer (for example, to join My GET or to obtain information about jobs and courses), information will be processed by us to supply the information and material which we promise to supply members. Your information is held at Hobsons PLC in the UK, and maintained by a third party – Riverhall Systems Limited – as well as by Hobsons and yourself via www.get.hobsons.co.uk.
• so that we can inform our users of new offers, products and services which may be of interest to them.
• so that we can send you news items which are relevant to your interests.
• to help us improve and personalise our services and any services provided to you through our services.

3. Passing on information about you

We may disclose information obtained from you to third parties to enable us to perform services requested by you, together with aggregate – but not individual – statistics to potential advertisers, such as the number of users we have, their average age, location, etc. We will only pass on information about you as an individual (as opposed to aggregate information) to third parties with your prior consent. If you give your consent, third parties may then occasionally send communications to you to provide information, offers and services that may be of interest to you. The more we know about you, the more value we can offer you by way of a personalised service. We may store certain personal information and use this to offer you personalised services, information and offers through our services. Once you have given consent you can of course ask us and third parties to stop providing such services to you at any time by e-mailing abuse@hobsons-get.co.uk or by following the unsubscribe link in our email communications with you.

In certain circumstances we may need to disclose information about you if you breach this privacy policy. We may also disclose or access your account if required to do so by law or any other governmental body.

4. Security

Keeping information about you secure is very important to us. However, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information which you send to us, and you do so at your own risk.

Hobsons will take precautions to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of your user data under our control. Only authorised employees and subcontractors will be given access to the information you provide us. It is our policy that your data will only be forwarded to organizations such as employers and consumer organisations in accordance with the preferences expressed by you. Apart from this authorised disclosure, our systems are designed to ensure that your data can only be viewed online if your logon ID and password are correctly input. While we cannot guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration to data will not occur, we take many precautions aimed at preventing such occurrences.

You are ultimately responsible for the security of your logon ID and password. Please take care when using and storing them. We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. You should log out of your browser at the end of each computer session to ensure that others cannot access your personal information, especially if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place like a library or internet cafe.

5. Cookies

Most major websites use cookies to allow content to be arranged to match your preferred interests more quickly. Although some website operators use cookies to generate consumer profiling information to be sold or transferred to third parties, it is the policy of this site never to share information collected using cookies with third parties. This website makes use of both session and persistent cookies.

Session cookies are used to allow you to carry information across pages of this website and avoid having to re-enter information.

Our web analytics providers, HBX, serves cookies via this website for the purpose of providing aggregated statistics that allow us to understand how users use the website, helping us to improve its structure and content.

Disabling / enabling cookies
You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings in your browser. However, you may not be able to use all the interactive features of our sites if cookies are disabled. To find out how to disable / enable cookies or for more general information about cookies got to www.allaboutcookies.org.

6. Transferring your information abroad

Information supplied by you to us, whether submitted by you via this or other websites (or other communications, such as registration forms) will only be transferred abroad by us or our agents for the purpose of performing contractual obligations owed by us to you.

7. How can you access and update information which we hold about you?

• Access and update your information at My GET.
• Unsubscribe from Hobsons by following the unsubscribe link in our e-mail communication with you.
• Unsubscribe from Hobsons by e-mailing abuse@hobsons-get.co.uk.

8. Automated decisions taken by us about you

Assumptions are made about your interests depending on the campaign you respond to.

Assumptions are made about your interests depending on the courses you have studied.

Your sex is automatically determined by your title, eg Miss = female.

If you provide us with a university e-mail address we assume you are studying at that university unless you provide us with your university information.

We assume you speak certain languages based on your nationality. This assumption is very limited and for most nationalities there are no language assumptions made.

If you have any questions relating to this privacy policy or how we use the personal information we have about you, please e-mail data.protection@hobsons-get.co.uk.