Privacy Notice

Last updated October 2008

www.improvemyreading.co.uk is a website owned by GL Assessment Limited ("We"). We know that you care how information about you is used and shared and we appreciate your trust in us to do that carefully and sensibly. This notice describes the privacy policy of GL Assessment. By visiting www.improvemyreading.co.uk you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Notice.

Controllers of Personal Information

Any personal information provided to or to be gathered via www.improvemyreading.co.uk is controlled primarily by GL Assessment Limited, The Chiswick Centre, 414 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5TF.

Collection and Use of Personal Information

The information we learn from users helps us personalise and continually improve users’ experience of www.improvemyreading.co.uk. We use the information to help administer your account, deliver products and services, process payments, communicate with you about orders, products, services and promotional offers, grant access to trials, update our records and generally maintain your accounts with us. We also use this information to improve our service, prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our website and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf.

Here are the types of information we gather.

Information you give us: we receive and store any information you enter on our website or give us in any other way, for example via email queries. You can choose not to provide certain information but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features.
Automatic information: we receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many websites, we use "cookies" and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses www.improvemyreading.co.uk. We also collect the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, login, e-mail address, password, computer and connection information such as browser type and version, your operating system and platform, purchase history.
E-mail communications: to help us make e-mails more useful and interesting, we often receive a confirmation when you open e-mail from www.improvemyreading.co.uk if your computer supports such capabilities.
Information from other sources: we might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information.

What About Cookies?

Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser to enable our systems to recognise your browser.
The Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies altogether. However, cookies help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and personalised service to you. If you set up your browser to reject cookies, you may not be able to access all areas of the site.

Do We share your Personal Information?

Information about our Users is an important part of our business and we are not in the business of selling it to others.

Agents: we employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mail, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments and providing customer service. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. Further, they must process the personal information in accordance with this Privacy Notice and as permitted by the UK's Data Protection Act.
Promotional offers: sometimes we send offers to selected groups of www.improvemyreading.co.uk customers on behalf of other businesses. When we do this, we do not give that business your name and address.
Business transfers: as we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy subsidiaries or business units. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets but remains subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Notice (unless, of course, the customer consents otherwise). Also, in the event that GL Assessment Ltd or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will, of course, be one of the transferred assets.
Protection of www.improvemyreading.co.uk: we release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with law, to enforce or apply our conditions of use and other agreements or to protect the rights, property or safety of www.improvemyreading.co.uk our users or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction. Obviously, however, this does not include selling, renting, sharing or otherwise disclosing personally identifiable information from customers for commercial purposes in a way that is contrary to the commitments made in this Privacy Notice.

Whenever we transfer personal information to countries outside of the European Economic Area in the course of sharing information as set out above, we will ensure that the information is transferred in accordance with this Privacy Notice and as permitted by the UK's Data Protection Act.

Anonymised Data

We process and store anonymised data about Users. This data will, for example, spot trends in results. We will share this data with various third parties but Users cannot be individually identified from such information.

How Secure Is Information About Me?

We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of personally identifiable customer information. Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.
It is important for you to protect against unauthorised access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer.

What Information Can I Access?

We give you access to a broad range of information about your account and your interactions with www.improvemyreading.co.uk. Examples of information you can currently access easily at www.improvemyreading.co.uk include personally identifiable information (including name, e-mail, password) and account status information. On request, any User whose personal information we hold may request a copy of that information. In addition, on request, we will remove or amend any personal information we hold on in relation to a User.

Conditions of Use, Notices and Revisions

Our business changes constantly and our Privacy Notice and the conditions of use will change also. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, unless you have instructed us not to, but you should check our website frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Notice applies to all information that we have about you and your account. We stand behind the promises we make, however, and will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of customer information collected in the past without the consent of affected customers.

Information from Other Sources

Examples of information we receive from other sources include updated delivery and address information from our carriers or other third parties, which we use to correct our records and deliver your next purchase or communication more easily, account information, purchase or redemption information and page-view information from some merchants with which we operate co-branded businesses for which we provide technical, fulfilment, advertising or other services and credit history information from credit bureaus, which we use to help prevent and detect fraud.