We encourage you to read this policy in full but please click on the links below for a shortcut to the following sections:
We are Gocompare.com Limited, the owner and operator of www.gocompare.com. At Gocompare.com Limited we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We work very hard to keep your information safe and we want our use of your data to be secure. We follow strict procedures on how personal information is stored and used, and we also limit who sees it to help stop any unauthorised person getting hold of it.
Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation 2021 (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and related laws, we have a legal duty to protect the personal information we collect from you. GDPR says that ‘personal data’ is any information relating to a living individual who can be identified, either directly or indirectly, from that information. This could include your name, email address, postal address or telephone number, or information collected online and used to identify you.
For the purposes of GDPR, Gocompare.com Limited (referred to as “we”, “us” and “our” in this privacy policy) is the controller responsible for personal information processed by it.
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 please contact our DPO using the details below.
Group companies
Gocompare.com Limited is part of Future Plc (“Future”). Any reference to the Group within this Policy includes all or any of GoCompare.com Limited’s direct or indirect parent or subsidiary undertakings, joint venture partners, and their related companies wherever located in the world as may exist from time to time.
Contact details
Our contact details are:
Gocompare.com Limited
4 Callaghan Square
Cardiff
Wales
CF10 5BT
If you have any questions or concerns about our use of data, please contact us online or email us at: customerservices@gocompare.com
Our DPO’s contact details are: dpo@gocompare.com
We review this privacy policy annually and may also amend it from time to time, so we encourage you to check it periodically. If we make material changes we will endeavour to provide you with appropriate notice before such changes take effect.
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:
| How might you use my personal information? | What lawful basis will you have to use my personal information in this way? | Why do you use my personal information in this way? |
|---|---|---|
| We may share your personal information with our approved partners and third party product providers so that they can return a quote to you via our website. For example, if you use our car insurance comparison service, we will send your personal information to our panel of approved motor insurers so that they can return car insurance quotes to you via our website. | This processing of your personal information is necessary so that we can provide our services to you in accordance with our website terms and conditions. If we process special category data for this purpose, we will do so only if the law allows us to and at all times strictly in accordance with the terms of our policy document. | Without processing your personal information in this way we would be unable to provide our services to you. |
| We may share your personal information with a limited number of approved third party data providers in return for further information about you and/or the risk you are looking to insure. We use this further information for data enrichment purposes and in order to auto-populate relevant fields within our website journeys to save you time and effort. For example, if you run a car insurance quote and provide us with your vehicle registration number, we may search the databases of our approved third party data providers in order to auto-populate information about your vehicle (including, but without limitation, information about your vehicle’s make, model and estimated value). | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information in this way. | It is in our legitimate interests to process your personal information in this way so that we can provide a more user-friendly, intuitive and enjoyable price and product comparison experience. We know that our customers’ time is valuable and hence we strive to save people everywhere time and money! |
| We may share the information you provide and other information held about you with our Group companies, for the purposes of this policy. For more information see Section 8 How we work with Group companies. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information this way as Future and its Group companies share the infrastructure, systems and technology needed to deliver our products and services to you. | By working together in this way we can better understand how you interact with the products and services as well as share insights to improve them. As a result we can improve the way we deliver content and the products and services we offer to you. |
| We may process your personal information for the purposes of providing you with our continuous savings services, such as our “auto-quote” service. For example, if you have previously used our car insurance comparison service then we may process your personal information in order to obtain a car insurance quote on your behalf. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for the purposes of providing you with our continuous savings services except where our provision of this service necessitates the processing of special category data. We will only process special category data for the purposes of providing our continuous savings services to you with your consent, if the law allows us to and at all times in accordance with the terms of our policy document. If you would like to view a copy of our policy document, click here. | Our continuous savings services, such as our "auto-quotes" service, means that we do all of the hard work of generating a quote for you whenever your insurance policy or other product is due for renewal. We generate "auto-quotes" early which often means that we secure a better price for you via our website than you might obtain yourself by generating a quote on a date which is closer to your renewal date. You can still come back to our website and run your own quotes or simply confirm that the details we hold about you for the purposes of your "auto-quote" remain correct and then purchase your insurance policy or other product directly via your "auto-quote" - thereby saving you time and money! |
| We may process your personal information for the purposes of providing quote and renewal reminders to you. For example, if you have recently used our website to compare prices we may send you follow-up marketing communications that would remind you of your most recent quotes and the benefits of buying through GoCompare. Alternatively, if you have previously used our website to compare car, van and home insurance, we may send you renewal reminders before your car, van and/or home insurance is due for renewal. In this instance, the renewal reminder will be sent in advance of the date on which we understand your renewal is due. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for the purpose of providing marketing reminders when you obtain a quote. Also for providing renewal reminders before your policy automatically renews or expires. | It is in our legitimate interest to send quote and renewal marketing reminders and process your personal information in this way, so that you will be given plenty of notice to return to our website and make sure you are getting a great deal before your most recent quote expires or your existing policy automatically renews or expires. |
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If you opt-in to receive general marketing from us, we may process your personal information for the purposes of providing our general marketing to you. For example, if you opt-in to receive our general marketing, we may send you newsletters, information about our latest offers, products and promotions and more. In addition, if you opt-in to receive marketing from our Group companies, you may receive emails deemed of interest to you from other brands within the Group. |
We will only process your personal information for the purposes of providing direct marketing to you with your consent. | All of our marketing is carefully drafted and intended always to be topical, relevant and useful for our customers. |
| If you opt-in to receive contact from us or our partners who provide you with the two cheapest quotes, we may provide your personal information to a third party supplier acting on our behalf or those partners, so that they can contact you in order to progress a sale. For example, if you opt-in to receive contact from our partners who provide you with the two cheapest quotes, one or both of those partners may contact you, for example by email or phone, after you have run a quote via our website. Those partners may contact you for the purpose of assisting you in purchasing a product or service from them. Those partners should not contact you on more than three occasions within ninety days following the date on which you obtain a quote via our website. | We will only share your personal information with a third party supplier acting on our behalf or our partners so that they can contact you in this way with your consent. | We understand that some of our customers prefer to speak to us or an insurer before purchasing an insurance policy. By opting-in to receive contact from our partners who provide you with the two cheapest quotes, you may save a lengthy call queue and still purchase your preferred product in your preferred way! |
| If you opt-in to receive contact from our third party product providers, we may provide your contact details to those providers so that they can contact you in order to progress a sale. For example, if you opt-in to receive contact from our third party product provider of business insurance in the course of completing a quote on one of our other insurance journeys, that provider may contact you after you have run a quote via our website. Those providers may contact you for the purpose of assisting you in purchasing a product or service from them. Those providers should not contact you on more than three occasions within ninety days following the date on which you obtain a quote via our website. They may share your personal data with any insurance providers they work with to provide you with a quote. | We will only share your personal information with our third party product providers so that they can contact you in this way with your consent. | We understand that some of our customers may be interested in other insurance policies whilst completing a particular journey on our website. For example, if you were to complete a quote for van insurance, some customers may also be interested in purchasing business insurance too.
By opting-in to receive contact from our third party providers who have access to a range of insurers, you may save having to complete another journey on our website and still purchase an additional insurance product relevant to you. |
| We may process your personal information in order to send you service communications including by email and SMS. | This processing of your personal information is necessary so that we can provide our services to you in accordance with our website terms and conditions. | Without processing your personal information in this way we would be unable to provide our services to you. |
| We may process your personal information in order to detect and prevent financial crime, including fraud. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for the purposes of detecting and preventing financial crime. | It is in our legitimate interests to process your personal information in this way because financial crime negatively impacts all of us. For insurance policyholders in particular, financial crime often means greater insurance premiums. We take our obligation to investigate, report and hence seek to prevent financial crime extremely seriously and we believe our work in this area benefits the overwhelming majority of our customers who use our website honestly. |
| We may process your personal information and share it with our approved partners and third party product providers in order to verify that a sale between you and one of our approved partners or third party product providers has taken place. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for sales validation and audit purposes. | It is in our legitimate interests to process your personal information in this way so that we can continue to provide our services to you free of charge. This means that when you buy a product or service from a third party via our website, that third party pays us a commission instead. In order to ensure that we are fairly and properly remunerated and able to continue to provide our services free of charge, it is imperative that we are able to audit our approved partners and third party product providers for sales validation purposes. |
| We may process your personal information in order to personalise or improve aspects of our service delivery and for troubleshooting and other quality control and testing purposes, including for the purposes of responding to any queries or complaints about our services raised by you or our approved partners and third party and product providers. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information in order to ensure that we are always able to provide an excellent quality of service. | It is in our legitimate interests to process your personal information in this way so that we can provide an excellent quality of service. To do this, we regularly monitor and seek to improve our interactions with you and our approved partners and third party product providers. This helps us to understand how we can better satisfy your needs and hence grow our business. Sometimes we may also need to access your personal information in order to resolve any queries or complaints which are made about our service. Our work in this area ensures that we can continue to provide the level of service which you have rightly come to expect from us. |
| We may process your personal information in order to obtain feedback and reviews for customer research purposes to help us improve and quality control our service this may include the use of trusted independent third parties. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information in order to ensure that we are always able to provide an excellent quality of service. | It is in our legitimate interests to process and share your personal information in this way so that we can provide an excellent quality of service. To do this, we regularly monitor and seek to improve our interactions with you and our approved partners and third-party product providers. This helps us to understand how we can better satisfy your needs and hence grow our business. Our work in this area ensures that we can continue to provide the level of service which you have rightly come to expect from us. |
| We may process your personal information in order to comply with any and all legal and/or regulatory obligations to which we are subject. | This processing of your personal information is necessary so that we can comply with legal obligations to which we are subject. | We operate within a heavily regulated environment and we are subject to numerous laws, rules and requirements. Sometimes it is necessary for us to process your personal information in order to obey the laws, rules and requirements to which we are subject. |
| We may share personal data with carefully selected partners or third parties for the purpose of price profile analysis, in order to offer the most competitive prices. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for the purposes of analysis, to help us assess and improve on the way we deliver content and the products and services we offer. | Processing information in this way enables us to improve the way we deliver content and products and services to you. |
| We may process your personal information to deliver relevant advertising, articles or other content to you, based on what you appear to be interested in. For example when you are searching for information or browsing other sites. | We will only process your personal information for the purposes of targeted advertising, articles or other content, with your consent. | Processing information in this way enables our customers to receive online advertising, articles and other content, which is relevant to them. |
| We may process your personal data to build and enrich profiles of users based upon, for example, product selection, application activity and online behaviour. | We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information to identify products and services you may be interested in. | Processing information in this way enables us to offer you tailored products and services and more relevant marketing. |
| After you have visited our site, we may use remarketing services provided by companies such as Facebook, Google, TikTok, Pinterest and Bing, to advertise on third party websites to you. | We will only process your personal information in this way with your consent. | Processing information in this way enables us to show you relevant advertising on the other sites you visit. |
| We may use your data to help find similar audiences through Facebook’s audience function and Google customer match. | We have a legitimate interest in finding ‘lookalike’ audiences to identify individuals who may be interested in our products and services. | Processing information in this way enables us to find people that display similar traits, so we can offer them tailored products and services and more relevant marketing. |
| We may share your personal data, for example emails of individuals who have consented to marketing (in hashed non-identifiable form) with, for example, Facebook or Google in order to show you advertising on those platforms. Alternatively, we may use this data to exclude you from seeing our advertising on those platforms. | It is in our legitimate interest to share this hashed non-identifiable data in order to identify individuals who may be interested in our products and services, or to exclude them from seeing our advertising on those platforms. | Processing your data in this way enables us to show you advertising with specific product offers that we believe are most relevant to you. It also enables us to exclude you from advertising, so you don’t see the same advertisement too often, for example. You can choose whether or not to allow this in your Facebook and Google settings. You can also unsubscribe from marketing at any time. |
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, as set out above.
We may share personal information with or receive personal information from:
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:
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 to 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.
As part of the Future Group, Go.Compare receives information from, and shares information with, other companies within the Future Group. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customise, support, and market our services and their offerings. This includes:
In addition, a key way we share data across systems and Group companies is for advertising and targeting purposes. This can be based on your online behaviour on our sites, for example:
The communications we send to our customers can be categorised broadly as “direct marketing communications” (which we send by email) and “service communications” (which we send by email and SMS).
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 quote and 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 quote and renewal reminders and our general marketing, you can choose to receive general marketing but not our quote and renewal reminders and vice versa. Similarly, if you tell us that you do not want to receive quote and renewal reminders or general marketing from us, we will not send any direct marketing communications to you.
You can notify us and stop receiving quote and renewal reminders and direct marketing communications at any time by following the unsubscribe instruction on the correspondence you receive or by emailing customerservices@gocompare.com, giving your email address and details of the information you no longer wish to receive.
This also applies if you have elected to receive marketing from Group companies.
Service communications may be sent by SMS and email. We do not rely on consent to send these messages since they broadly comprise of communications which:
Your personal data may be transferred to a country outside the UK or EEA if, for example, a provider is based outside the UK or EEA. If such a transfer requires us to apply additional safeguards to your personal information under UK or European data protection laws, we will do so. These steps may include implementing the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement clauses or European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, with additional UK-specific clauses for transfers of personal information to our service providers and business partners. To the extent applicable, we may rely on derogations as set forth in Article 49 of the GDPR for the transfer and onward transfer of personal information collected from individuals in the UK or EEA to the United States, and other countries that the EU views as not providing adequate data protection. Specifically, we may transfer such information to another party in accordance with our lawful basis for processing.
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. If, in the future, we collect personally identifiable information from children in connection with our products and services, we will do so in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations including, without limitation, obtaining parental consent where necessary.
We operate accounts on different social media platforms. If you visit one of our social media accounts we can usually only see information stored in your public profile on the social media platform, when you are logged in to your profile, while visiting our social media account; although we may process data that you provide to us when you contact us (for example: if you create a post, or send us a private message via Facebook).
If you visit one of our social media accounts, the operator of the social media platform also processes your data, regardless of whether you yourself have a profile on the platform. The social media platform also provides us with anonymous usage statistics, which we use to improve user experience. We do not have access to the usage data that the operator of the social media platform collects to create these statistics. For information on the social media platform operators and their privacy policies, click here;
In addition, some social media platforms, such as Facebook, use cookies that are stored on your terminal device when you visit our social media account, even if you do not have your own profile in the network or are not logged in. These cookies enable the social media platform to create user profiles based on your preferences and interests and to show you advertising tailored to these. For information on the cookies we use, please click here;
Your information is collected and stored on our secure systems, mainly based in the UK and European Economic Area (EEA). Where we use third party service providers to store data, we have appropriate agreements in place to ensure that your personal data is protected.
We hold personal data for a variety of different purposes and the length of time we keep your data will vary depending on the services or products we are providing and the purpose for which we are using your data.
We may keep your personal information for up to six (6) years following the date on which we last provided our products or services to you or only for as long as is reasonably necessary thereafter in order to:
Once the purpose for using your data has been fulfilled, we will securely delete that data or anonymise your information (so that we, or anyone else, can no longer tell that data relates to you) unless we are required to retain the data longer for legal, tax or accounting reasons.
If one of our partners processes your data in order to provide you with a quote they will be acting as data controller but they should only hold that data for so long as is reasonable in relation to providing you with that quote. If you purchase a product then the service provider will keep your personal information in accordance with their own retention periods and so you should check their own privacy policy for further information.
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.
In accordance with GDPR, we adopt appropriate technical and organisational measures to help prevent unauthorised access to your information and ensure data is held securely. We also require any third parties to whom we may transfer personal data to have appropriate security measures in place. We ask third parties to complete Data Security Questionnaires so we can be sure they are a safe place for your data.
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.
You have the right to require us to rectify or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information that we are holding about you.
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.
You have a right to require us to restrict processing of your personal information where:-
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.
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.
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.
If you wish to exercise any of your rights please contact:
By email: customerservices@gocompare.com
By post: Gocompare.com Limited, 4 Callaghan Square, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 5BT
Our DPO’s contact details are: dpo@gocompare.com
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). If you have authorised a third party to submit a request on your behalf, we will ask them to prove they have your permission to act. This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. If this is the case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
No fee usually required
You will not usually have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the rights), however, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. If we choose not to action your request we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal.
General information about data protection may be found at the Information Commissioner’s website: https://ico.org.uk/
For more information about cookies please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ and for more information about how to manage cookies please refer to our Cookies Policy.
Information about direct marketing may be found at the Direct Marketing Association’s website: https://dma.org.uk/
To unsubscribe from all emails contact: customerservices@gocompare.com
If you feel you need to, you also have the right to make a complaint to us or the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please do contact us in the first instance.
Last Updated: February 2023