Who we are
We are compareinspain.com, are the owner and operator of www.compareinspain.com. Compareinspain.com (referred to as “we”, “us” and “our” in this privacy policy) is the controller responsible for personal information processed by it.
It is important that you read this privacy policy carefully so that you are fully aware of how and why we use your personal information. We do not knowingly collect personal information relating to children under the age of 16 and children under the age of 16 should not use this website.
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee our data protection and privacy practices.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or if you wish to exercise your legal rights set out in this privacy policy, please contact our DPO using the details below.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to amend or modify this privacy policy from time to time.
All amended versions of this privacy policy will be posted on our website.
What Do We Collect From You
Depending upon the way in which you use our website and the individual products and services you are looking to buy, we may obtain the following:
a. personal information so that we can identify who you are. For example, this information may include your name and date and place of birth;
b. personal information so that we can contact you. For example, this information may include your home address, your email address and your contact telephone numbers;
c. personal information so that we can help you find a product or service. For example, this information may include details about you and your financial situation, your work or profession or the risk you are looking to insure;
d. other more sensitive personal information so that we can help you find a product or service. For example, this information may include details about your health or criminal convictions and offences. This data is known as “special category data” and we will only collect this data if the law allows us to do so;
e. behavioural and/or technical personal information. For example, this information may include details about how you browse our website and the devices and technology you use to browse our website.
How We Collect your Information
We collect personal information from you when you interact or engage with our website including when you register an account with us or compare products or services via our website.
We may also collect personal information from you when you talk to us on the phone, by post or online including via email, social media and mobile device apps. We may also engage with you and hence collect personal information from you if you choose to provide feedback or take part in any of our other market research initiatives, customer surveys or competitions, prize draws or promotions.
Occasionally, we may also collect personal information about you from third parties or publicly available sources.
3rd Parties We May Exchange Your Infomation With
We may share personal information with or receive personal information from:
a. other members of our corporate group;
b. approved partners and third party product providers;
c. our approved third party data providers, including the Spanish Driving Licence Office if you give us your driving licence number;
d. our regulators and other regulatory bodies;
e. law enforcement and fraud prevention agencies;
f. third parties to whom we may sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or assets or third parties whose business or assets we may acquire; and
g. our third party suppliers (for example, IT software and service providers and marketing agencies).
LAST AMENDMENT : 15nd March 2024
How our third parties may use personal information
We impose strict restrictions on the things that third parties may do with personal information that we give to them. For example, such third parties may process personal information that we give to them in order to:
a. assess your eligibility for the products or services which you have expressed an interest in;
b. determine your identity and the amount of your premium and hence carry out checks:
i. with fraud prevention agencies in order to detect and prevent financial crime, including fraud;
ii. with credit reference agencies, which will appear as soft searches on your credit report and hence should not adversely affect your credit profile;
iii. with public and private higher education sources in order to verify your student or graduate status; and
iv. against information they already hold about you (for example, if you are an existing member of their loyalty schemes or otherwise already known to their corporate group); and
c. share personal information with their insurance underwriters, approved third parties (such as the DVLA if you give us your driving licence number) and relevant industry databases (such as the Claims and Underwriting Exchange which holds information about incidents reported to insurers that may or may not have resulted in a claim); and
d. conduct internal research (such as by analysing market trends and customer demographics) in order to develop the products and services which they offer.
If you intend to purchase products or services from any of our approved partners or third party product providers, you are strongly encouraged to read the terms of that partner’s or third party product provider’s own privacy policy in order satisfy yourself as to the purposes for which your chosen supplier will use your personal information.
When you leave our website, you are also strongly encouraged to read the privacy policy of every website that you visit in order to satisfy yourself as to the purposes for which those third party website owners and operators will use any personal information you give to them.
What We Will Communicate To You
The communications we send to our customers can be categorised broadly as “direct marketing communications” and “service communications”.
a. Direct marketing communications
We understand that some of our customers like to receive only certain types of direct marketing communications. For us, this means drawing a distinction between our renewal reminders and our general marketing which includes our newsletters and information about our latest offers, products and promotions.
Because we draw a distinction between renewal reminders and our general marketing, you can choose to receive renewal reminders but not our general marketing and vice versa. Similarly, if you tell us that you do not want to receive renewal reminders or general marketing from us, we will not send any direct marketing communications to you.
b. Service communications
Service communications broadly comprise of communications which:
i. we have a legal or regulatory obligation to send to you (such as communications which we are obliged by our regulator to send to you from time to time);
ii. we send in connection with the provision of our services to you (such as our “best price” email, which we send to you immediately following your use of our service in order to confirm the best price for a product or service which you have compared via our website); and
iii. we send so that we can provide services at your request (such as password reset emails, which you may ask us to send if you do not remember your login credentials but want to access our products and services).
How long we retain personal information
We may keep your personal information for up to five (5) years following the date on which you last use our website or after your last contract with our partnered service contractors has expired or only for as long as is reasonably necessary thereafter in order to:
a. respond fully to any questions or complaints;
b. evidence that we have treated customers fairly or satisfy some other legal, accounting, tax or reporting requirement; and
c. establish, exercise or defend legal claims in accordance with statutory limitation periods.
Data security
The security of personal information is extremely important to us and hence we have put in place appropriate security measures to protect personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way.
Your Rights To Access
a. Right of access
You have a right to know whether we are processing your personal information. If we are processing your personal information, you also have a right to request copies of your personal information that we are processing and certain further information, including the purposes of our processing and the recipients or categories of recipients to whom we have disclosed (or will disclose) your personal information.
b. Right to rectification
You have the right to require us to rectify or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information that we are holding about you.
c. Right to erasure
You have a right to ask us to erase your personal information. This is also known as the “right to be forgotten”. We must erase your personal information following your request except in limited circumstances prescribed by law, such as where we need to retain your personal information in order to comply with a legal obligation or in order to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. In these circumstances, we will restrict our processing of your personal information by putting it “beyond use”. This means that your personal information is deleted from our website and retained only in a separate and restricted database, where it will not be processed for any purpose other than as detailed above. Access to this database is managed by our DPO and is strictly limited.
d. Right to restriction of processing
You have a right to require us to restrict processing of your personal information where:-
i. you believe that the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate and we require reasonable time to verify the accuracy of that personal information;
ii. your personal information has been unlawfully processed by us but you do not want us to erase that personal information;
iii. it is no longer necessary for us to keep your personal information for the purposes for which they were collected by us but they are required by you for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; or
iv. you exercise your right to object to processing and we require reasonable time to verify whether there are any overriding grounds upon which we may rely in order to continue that processing.
e. Right to data portability
If we process your personal information with your consent or because it is necessary for us to do so in order to provide our service to you, you may require us to move, copy or transfer that personal information to you or another third party in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.
f. Right to object
You have a right to object to our processing of your personal information where we are processing that personal information on legitimate interest grounds. We will stop processing this personal information if you exercise your right to object unless there are overriding grounds upon which we may rely in order to continue that processing or unless that processing is necessary in order to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
You also have a right to object to our processing of your personal information for direct marketing purposes. You can object to our processing of your personal information for direct marketing purposes by unsubscribing here or via the unsubscribe hyperlink in any direct marketing messages which we may send to you. We will stop processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes if you request us to do so.
g. Right to withdraw consent
If we process your personal information with your consent, you have a right to withdraw your consent at any time. If you withdraw your consent, we may be unable to continue to provide certain services to you but we will inform you if that is the case.
