Privacy notice

Effective from: November 2023

Thank you for visiting our website. This Privacy Notice applies to the processing of personal data by Motors (“Motors”, “we”, “us” or “our”) which is owned and operated by Motors.co.uk Limited (“Motors”). We are a wholly owned subsidiary of Classifieds Group Limited (“Group”).

This Privacy Notice will inform you about the processing of personal data in connect with the services we offer at motors.co.uk, dealersdeservemore.co.uk, dealer.motors.co.uk, (our “Website”), our apps, services and tools (collectively referred to as “Application”), together collectively “Platform,” regardless of how you access or use them on your devices (e.g. mobile or laptop). We also use certain names and marks containing “eBay” under licence from eBay Inc.

You must be over 16 to register for an account or use our Platforms. Our Platforms are not intended for children, and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

1. Who is responsible for the processing of your personal data?

The data controller is:

Motors.co.uk Limited
27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX
Companies House registered number: 05975777
ICO Registration Number: Z1300702

2. Contact details of the Data Protection Officer

You can contact our data protection officer as follows:

Data Protection Officer
27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
[email protected]

3. What is Personal Information and how do we collect Personal Information from you?

Personal Information is information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (“Personal Information”). We do not consider Personal Information to include information that has been anonymised.

You may give us, and we collect Personal Information from you when you:

• create an account on one of our Platforms;
• update your details or provide additional Personal Information in your account;
• browse or use one of our Platforms e.g. post a photo of a car with its registration plate;
• complete a web form on one of our Platforms;
• sign up to our newsletters;
• request marketing to be sent to you;
• enter a competition, promotion, survey or other similar activity;
• correspond with us (e.g. for a complaint, data subject requests);
• make information publicly available (e.g. participate in chats and community discussions including on social media); or
• give us some feedback.

Please do not submit such Personal Information to us if you do not wish us to collect it.

Please note we do not consider Personal Information to include information that has been anonymised or aggregated so that it can no longer be used to identify a specific natural person, whether in combination with other information or otherwise. When you interact with our Platforms, we may collect, in accordance with data protection laws, technical information about your browsing actions, patterns, IP address and device. We collect this information by using cookies, tracking pixels and other similar technologies. Please see our Cookie Policy for further information.

4. What Personal Information do we collect?

Personal Information we collect about may include, but is not limited to, the following:

• Registration information: first name, last name, password;
• General identification and contact information: first name, last name, address, post code, email address, telephone number;
• Use of our services: Information you provide when posting an ad, responding to an ad or other transaction-based content that you generate or that is connected to your account as a result of a transaction you are involved in including Saved Searches and My Favourites;
• Device information: we collect this data from your devices and web browsers, when you use our Services including when you are not signed into your Motors account. This includes IP address, device type, operating system and version, browser type and settings, device ID, app ID, vendor ID and advertising ID, individual device token, cookie ID, referral URL, information on advertisements, data traffic to and from websites, access times, language settings, weblog information; 
• Cookies and similar technologies: we collect this data from your devices when you use our Services including data about the pages you visit, the access time, frequency and duration of visits, links on which you click and other actions you take in advertising and email content. See our Cookie Policy for more information;
• Marketing and communications preferences: we collect your preference to receive receiving marketing or not from us or our third parties and your communication method preferences (e.g. email, telephone call, SMS, WhatsApp message or other method);
• Information during marketing activities: we collect information if you attend an event, promotion or enter a contest, prize draw or other similar activity;
• Financial information: we collect bank account details for the payment of competition winners and other payments;
• Location information: we collect information about your location when you use our Platform to help you use our services and to offer additional features whilst using our products and services. Your location can be determined at a town or city level by your postcode, IP address, GPS or information about nearby Wi-Fi access points information;
• Individual customer communications: we collect information if you contact our customer services, provide feedback, respond to a voluntary customer satisfaction survey or other similar activity;
• Social media and other communications: we collect information made available by you via social media or commentary you provide by participating in community discussions or similar activities;
• Legal, identification or authentication information: we collect any data that we are required, or entitled, to verify your identity or comply with legal requirements;
• Data from data providers: we collect demographic data, interest-based data and online advertising related data; or
• Other people: If you give us personal information about someone else, you must do so only with that person’s authorization. You should inform them how we collect, use, disclose, and retain their personal information according to this Privacy Notice.

5. Our legal basis for processing your personal information

Whenever we process your personal information we have to have something called a “legal basis” for what we do. The different legal bases we rely on are:

• Consent: You have told us you are happy for us to process your Personal Information for a specific purpose(s). You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time;
• Legitimate interests: The processing is necessary for us to conduct our business, but not where our interests are overridden by your interests or rights;
• Performance of a contract: We must process your Personal Information in order to be able to provide you with one of our Services;
• Vital interests: The processing of your Personal Information is necessary to protect you or someone else’s life;
• Legal obligation: We are required to process your Personal Information by law.

6. How do we use your Personal Information?

We may use your Personal Information in the following ways:

• To provide our Services – we need to use your Personal Information to make our Services available to you. This includes posting and managing ads or other content, access to your internal messages and other features, to enforce our Terms of Use, this Privacy Notice, our Cookie Policy or other policies, applicable national laws, and any agreement we may have with you.
• To provide you with a personalised experience – we try to understand our customers so we can provide you with the best experience when using our Services. Understanding how you use and browse our Platforms, together with, where and when helps us to do this;
• For safety and security – we use your information to help provide a safe and secure environment and to help detect, prevent, mitigate and investigate fraud, spam, phishing, suspicious behaviour, security breaches and other potentially prohibited or illegal activities;
• Analytics and profiling – we use your Personal Information for statistical analysis and to help us understand more about our customers. This helps us to serve you better and to find ways to improve our Service and Platforms;
• Contacting you – we use your Personal Information to contact you. This may be in relation to a service update, an issue you have raised with us, to collect fees or monies owed, to conduct market research, contact you about public policy matters, or other current events (e.g. an invitation to join a petition, letter writing, call or other sort of public policy related campaigns) or to ask for your feedback;
• Marketing and advertising – we use your Personal Information to provide relevant marketing communications (including by email, phone, text or online advertising), relating to our Service. We may also measure information about how you interact with these channels to measure and improve the effectiveness of these campaigns and communications. As part of this, online advertising may be displayed on our Platforms and on other organisations’ websites and online media channels;
• Automated decision making – we may use technologies considered automated decision making or profiling. We will not make automated decisions about you that would significantly affect you, unless such a decision is necessary as part of a contract we have with you, we have your consent, or we are required by law to use such technology.

7. Who do we share your Personal Information with?

We will keep your information confidential but we may share it with third parties (who also have to keep it secure and confidential) in the following circumstances:

• Gumtree Group companies: we work closely with other businesses and companies in our Group. We may share certain information with other companies, for example, for marketing purposes, improvement of products and services, for internal reporting and where those companies provide services to us; 

• Service Providers and agents: for example, companies that help us to provide our Services, payment processing services, assist us in providing customised advertising and marketing, to assist us with the prevention, detection, mitigation, and investigation of potentially illegal acts, violation of our Terms of Use, fraud and other business operations;

• Partners: We share information with our Partners so that they can publish or advertise their content on our Platforms, their websites or other platforms. If we transfer the information this will be solely on the basis of an agreement limiting use by the third-party provider to processing necessary to fulfil their contract with us and obligating the third party provider to take security measures with regard to such data. Third party providers are not permitted to sell, lease or in any other way transfer the personal information to third parties;

• Providers of payment processing services: to help us process your payments, as well as other financial institutions that are involved in making payments, for example, Visa;

• Providers of financial products: Third parties with whom we partner to offer financial products to you, for them to provide joint content and services (such as, registration, transactions and customer support);

• Marketing and advertising companies: we share so they can display messages and marketing to you about our products and services in accordance with the law, for example, you have given your consent;

• Social media companies: we share so they can display messages and marketing to you about our products and services in accordance with the law, for example, you have given your consent;

• Our advisors: we share information with our accountants, lawyers and other professional advisors where deemed necessary to represent us and provide professional advice that is in our interest;

• Your advisors: we share information with accountants, lawyers and other professional advisors who you have authorised to represent you, or any other person you have authorised, for example, power of attorney. We generally provide this if they provide us with a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal basis, or we otherwise believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent suspected illegal activity, imminent physical harm or financial loss;

• UK regulators, law enforcement agencies and authorities: we share in order to comply with our legal requirements, enforce our Terms of Use, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone’s rights, property or safety;

• Fraud prevention agencies and other third parties: They will also allow other organisations in the UK or overseas, including law enforcement agencies, to use this information to prevent and detect fraud or other crimes;

• Credit agencies: we use these to obtain or share information on late or missed payments or other defaults on your account that may be reflected in your credit report or file.

We attempt to minimise the amount of Personal Information we disclose to what is directly relevant and necessary to accomplish the specified purpose. We do not sell, rent, or otherwise disclose your Personal Information to third parties for their marketing and advertising purposes without your consent.

Please note, this Privacy Notice only addresses our use and handling of the Personal Information we collect from you in connection with providing you our Services. If you disclose your information to a third party, or visit a third party website via a link from our Services, their privacy notices and practices will apply to any personal information you provide to them or they collect from you. We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your personal information once you provide it to a third party.

8. Rights of the data subject

Under data protection law, you have rights we need to make you aware of. These are set out below and we have one month to respond to you.

• Right of access
  You have the right to ask us for copies of your Personal Information.
• Right to rectification
  You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate and/or complete information you think is incomplete. You will need to give us details of what needs changing and why you believe it is not correct.
• Right to erasure
  You have the right to ask us to erase your Personal Information in certain circumstances. Please note we may refuse if the processing is necessary for reasons of freedom of expression and information, compliance with a legal obligation, reasons of public interest or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
• Right to restriction of processing
  You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.
• Right to object to processing
  You have the right to request that we stop using your personal data for:
  
  • direct marketing through all channels or selected channels;
  • any consent-based processing after you withdraw that consent; and
  • a decision made based solely on automatic processing, including profiling, which has legal effects for you or affects you in any other significant way.
• Right to data portability
  You have the right to receive your Personal Information and get us to send it to another controller. We must provide this in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.

If you would like to exercise any of your rights, you can send an email to [email protected] or contact us via our Contact Us page. Please be aware we might need some identification to check that you are who you say you are and there might be some rare occasions where we cannot fulfil a request. If we cannot help you, we will get back to you and explain the reasons why.

9. How long do we keep your personal information?

We keep your Personal Information for the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice and in accordance with our legal requirements. We never retain your Personal Information for longer than is necessary.
The following factors typically influence our retention periods: 

• How long is the Personal Information needed to provide our Services?
  This includes such things as maintaining and improving the performance of our products, keeping our systems secure, and maintaining appropriate business and financial records. This is the general rule that establishes the baseline for most of our data retention periods.
• Is the Personal Information sensitive?
  If so, a shortened retention time is generally appropriate.
• Have you provided consent for a longer retention period?
  If so, we will retain data in accordance with your consent.
• Are we subject to a legal, contractual, or similar obligation to retain your Personal Information?
  Examples can include mandatory data retention laws for taxation, orders to preserve data relevant to an investigation, or Personal Information retained for the purposes of litigation.

After it is no longer necessary for us to retain your Personal Information, we will dispose of it in a secure manner according to our Data Retention Policy.

10. International transfers of Personal Information

Our Platform is for UK residents. Most of the Personal Information we process and store is kept inside the United Kingdom (“UK”) and European Economic Area (“EEA”). However, due to the nature of technologies required, your Personal Information may be transferred to some of our suppliers and partners who process personal data outside of the UK and the EEA, that is, countries where there may be a lower level of data protections.

When we, or our permitted third parties, transfer your information outside the UK or EEA, we ensure that these companies have measures in place to comply with their obligations under UK data protection law, namely where:

• the UK government or European Commission has approved the country as having an adequate level of protection for Personal Information;
• the recipient signed up to a contract whereby they must comply with obligations to protection your Personal Information to protect your Personal Information to the standard required in the UK or EEA; or
• the recipient has subscribed to an international framework approved by the UK Government or European Commission to enable such data transfer.

11. Marketing

You will receive marketing messages from us if you have requested information from us or purchased good or services from us, and, in each case, have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

We may also market to you if we have received your consent to do so, including where we have collected your details in connection with a competition or other promotion.

You can stop receiving marketing messages from us at any time.

You can do this by:

• Clicking on the “unsubscribe” link within an email to unsubscribe from that specific email type; or
• our Contact Us page.

Please note, stopping marketing messages will not stop service communications.

12. Advertising

If you do not wish to participate in our advertising personalization programs, you can opt-out by following the directions provided within the applicable advertisement, or through the programs described in our Cookie Notice. If you opt-out of personalised advertising, Personal Information will still be collected as set out in this Privacy Notice.

We do not allow third parties to track or collect your personal information on our sites for their own advertising purposes, without your consent.

13. Online adverts

We engage in online advertising to help you see our products and services by showing you Motors banners and adverts when you are on other websites and applications. We do this by using advertising technologies (e.g pixels and web beacons), together with digital marketing networks, ad exchanges and specific services offered by social media and websites.

The banners and adverts you see will be based on information we hold about you or your previous use of our Platforms or previous adverts you have clicked on.

14. Right to lodge a complaint with the ICO

We welcome and encourage you to contact us at [email protected] or our Contact Us page, if you have any concerns about how we use your Personal Information.

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office which regulates and supervises the processing of personal information in the UK. You can do this at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or via their helpline 0303 123 1113.

15. Changes to this Policy

We review this Privacy Notice regularly and reserve the right to make changes at any time to take account of changes in our business and legal requirements. We will place updates on our website, or, where appropriate, notify you via email or our App.