This Privacy Policy has been prepared by AccountScore Limited, trading as AccountScore (also referred in this Privacy Policy by the words “Company”, “ AccountScore”, “we”, “us” and “our”), to meet the requirements of the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, (the "Act") and it only relates to the collection, protection, disclosure and use of personal data belonging to living individuals.
It does not relate to data which emanates from companies or other entities, although the general principles regarding our collection and use of data is broadly the same irrespective of whoever is the user of our website or our customer.
AccountScore is registered under the Act with registration number: ZA180426 and will act as the Data Controller.
This privacy policy (together with our Website Terms and Conditions of Use, available at https://www.accountscore.co.uk/Content/HTML/Terms.html and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data.
1.1 As part of our AccountScore service, you enter your internet banking details into our AccountScore Site, including your personal identification numbers (PIN) and security passwords (Internet Banking Credentials). Your Internet Banking Credentials are encrypted in transit and stored securely for a short period on our servers before being transferred to our agent and supplier Yodlee, Inc. (Yodlee). Your encrypted Internet Banking Credentials are then stored by Yodlee upon their servers in a secure environment.
1.2 You have designated and provided the details of your internet banking account (Bank Account), including your Internet Banking Credentials within AccountScore because you wish to enable AccountScore to report on your transaction history from your nominated internet banking account (Transaction Data) to the lender or other financial services provider to whom you have applied or may apply for a credit facility or financial product or service in order to enable such lender or other financial services provider to whom you have applied or may apply for a credit facility or financial product or service to carry out affordability checks and make a decision whether to offer you a loan or other financial product or service using your Transaction Data as reported on by AccountScore at the time of your application.
1.3 To provide the AccountScore Service to you, as your agent and nominated representative, you agree that AccountScore and its supplier Yodlee may and instruct us and Yodlee to access, retrieve, view, represent and use your Transaction Data for the purposes specified. The purposes include:
Save as provided above your raw Transaction Data is treated as confidential and will not be passed to any third parties other than members of our group (which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries in each case as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006), or our business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of services under any contract we enter into with them or you. Aggregated and/or anonymised Transaction Data will be used by us to enhance our product and service offerings, and will be shared with third parties.
1.4 For the avoidance of doubt, we will not pass your Internet Banking Credentials to any third parties other than to Yodlee in encrypted format.
1.5 In this Privacy Policy, where we refer to sharing information with third parties, we are not referring to sharing your Internet Banking Credentials or raw Transaction Data.
1.6 We may collect and process the following data about you:
1.6.1 Information that you may provide by filling in forms on www.accountscore.com (our "Site"). This includes your name, address, email address and telephone numbers along with any other information provided. It will also include your date of birth, residential status, time at address, employment details and financial information. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our Site.
1.6.2 Correspondence, or a record of it, if you should contact us or we contact you.
1.6.3 Surveys that we use for research purposes, which we have asked you to complete, although you do not have to respond to them.
1.6.4 Financial transactions seen in your Transaction Data.
1.6.5 Transaction history from your nominated internet banking account.
1.6.6 Credit reference and fraud prevention data pertaining to you and any financial associates.
1.6.7 Publicly available information including, but not limited to, electoral roll, county court judgements, bankruptcy and insolvency information.
1.6.8 Proof of identification or details required to confirm or verify your identity, address, bank account or payment card.
1.6.9 Details of your visits to our Site (including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise) and the resources that you access.
1.6.10 Information from third parties in respect of you which may include your employer, a referee or a person residing or working from another country.
1.6.11 Any other information you voluntarily provide.
1.7 For the avoidance of doubt, we will not, and cannot; control your Bank Account, make payments or transfer funds to third parties or otherwise operate any other functionality on your Bank Account.
1.8 You acknowledge and accept that your internet banking provider may not endorse or sponsor AccountScore or Yodlee or any associates or business partners.
2.1 We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and may report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.
2.2 A "cookie" is a small electronic file that collects information when someone visits a website. A cookie can identify the pages that are being viewed, and this can assist us to select the pages that the viewer sees. Some cookies only exist whilst viewers are online, but "persistent" cookies - which are not session-based - remain on the viewer's computer, so that he or she can be recognised as a previous visitor when he or she next visits our website. We may use persistent cookies to allow us to collect information about a viewer's browsing habits whilst on our site, so that we can monitor and improve our services.
2.3 Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EU Directive Regulations 2003 (as amended) we are required to get the consent of everyone who uses our Site to the use of cookies. By continuing to use our Site you agree to the use of cookies by us in the manner outlined in this Policy and a pop up will appear on the screen when you first access the Site to remind you of this.
2.4 We do not store sensitive information such as account numbers or passwords in "persistent" cookies, and cookies in themselves do not contain enough information to identify you. We will only acquire a personal identity in relation to your browsing habits after you have formally provided us with your personal data for the purposes outlined at section 4 below.
2.5 In addition to using cookies, we might also use web tools to collect information about your browsing activities whilst on our Site. In this respect the information that is provided is similar to the information supplied by cookies, and we use it for the same purposes.
2.6 Any information that we acquire about you using cookies or web tools is subject to the same restrictions and conditions as any other information we collect about you.
2.7 Some of our advertisers may also use cookies or web tools that are set by other people such as advertising agencies, or the businesses to which the advertisements in question relate. We do not have access to any information that might be collected in this way, and, if you are concerned, you should contact the advertiser for more information.
2.8 List Of Cookies
Cookie |
Summary |
Type |
Description |
| __utma | Google Analytics | Persistent | This cookie is part of Google Analytics and helps us improve our customer experience by anonymously tracking how users interact our website. It is specifically used to track the number of visits to our website. |
| __utmc | Google Analytics | Persistent | This cookie is part of Google Analytics and helps us improve our customer experience by anonymously tracking how users interact our website. It is specifically used to check approximately how long you stay on our website. |
| __utmz | Google Analytics | Persistent | This cookie is part of Google Analytics and helps us improve our customer experience by anonymously tracking how users interact our website. It is used specifically to track how you arrived at our website. |
| _vis_opt_exp* | Visual Website Optimizer | Persistent | This cookie is used to run content experiments so we can improve the effectiveness of our website. |
| AcceptCookies | Whether to display cookie message | Persistent | This cookie tells us whether this is your first visit to our website and if so to display our cookie policy banner. |
| ASP.NET_SessionId | ASP.NET Session ID | Session | This cookie is required to make our website work by setting an anonymous ID which is used when you navigate the website. |
2.9 Most browsers automatically accept cookies. You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site and we cannot guarantee that your experience with our Site will be as quick or responsive. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will automatically issue cookies when you log on to our Site.
2.10 You can find and control your cookie settings via your browser; your browser help function will tell you how. Please note, it is not possible for AccountScore to allow you to carry your settings with you between your browsers and devices so you will need to change these settings for each browser you use.
3.1 All information you provide to us is, as far as reasonably practicable, stored on our secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using industry standard 256-bit bank level encryption.
3.2 Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our Site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your personal data, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.
3.3 We will retain your information securely stored for a reasonable period or for as long as the law requires.
4.1 We use information held about you in the following ways:
4.1.1 to report on your Transaction Data to our client to enable them to assess your creditworthiness for the purpose of considering whether to provide you with a credit facility or other financial product or service;
4.1.2 to carry out our obligations to our client including categorising and presenting your Transaction Data to enable them to assess the affordability of any credit facility and the suitability of any other financial product or service and your ability to make payments or repayments thereunder;
4.1.3 to ensure that content from our Site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer and for potential lenders and providers of financial products and services to you;
4.1.4 for statistical analysis and trend monitoring; and
4.1.5 to notify you about changes to our service.
4.2 We may transfer your data outside of the EEA, but only to countries that have an adequate level of protection in line with the protection afforded to the data in the UK.
4.3 We may telephone you, if you discontinue an application part way through, to offer assistance in the application process.
4.4 Any information or statistics relating to our business that we disclose to others shall not identify you personally. We may, for example, perform statistical analyses of the behaviour of the users of our Site in order to measure interest in the various areas of our site and to inform advertisers as to how many consumers have seen or "clicked" their advertising banners. This information, and any other general information about our users that we share with advertisers and other partners, will not disclose personal information about you.
4.5 In addition to using the Transaction Data and other data you provide to undertake the analysis necessary to enable us to provide the AccountScore Service, AccountScore will use the information it holds about you to add it to its database to enhance and develop and further increase the value and usefulness of the databases it holds, in connection with the provision of the AccountScore Service and other services it provides.
5.1 We may disclose your personal information to third parties:
5.1.1 Who provide a service to us or are acting as our agents, to prepare or send any communications to you, or to assist us in connection with any of our administrative or business functions, or in the provision of any of our services to you, subject to contractual or other legal obligations to keep the information confidential, and to use your personal data only for the purpose of providing the service to us. If they are located in another country we will seek to ensure that they agree to apply equivalent levels of protection to those we are required to apply to information held in the UK.
5.1.2 If AccountScore Ltd or substantially all of its assets, are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.
5.1.3 If we transfer or may transfer our rights and duties to them.
5.1.4 If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Website Terms and Conditions of Use https://www.accountscore.co.uk/Content/HTML/Terms.html and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of AccountScore Ltd, our customers, or others, or if the law allows us to do so. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
5.2 We may share your personal information with members of our group (which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries in each case as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006) to enable them to develop and enhance their service offerings.
6.1 Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.
6.2 We will store and process your information on our computers and in any other way we consider appropriate. By "your information" we mean personal and financial information we (a) obtain from you or from third parties, such as credit reference agencies (who may search the Electoral Register), fraud prevention agencies or other organisations when you apply for an account or any other product or service or which you or they give to us at any other time or (b) learn from the way you use and manage your account(s), from your transactions and from the payments made to your account.
6.3 We will use your information to manage your account(s), give you statements and provide our services, for research, assessment and analysis (including credit and/or behaviour scoring, market and product analysis) and to develop and improve our services to you and other customers and protect our interests.
6.4 Section 7 of the Act gives you the right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act by sending us an email to customer.services@accountscore.co.uk or writing to us at AccountScore Ltd t/a AccountScore, PO Box 1515, High Wycombe, HP11 9JE. Any access request may be subject to a small statutory fee to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.
6.5 Calls between us may be recorded and/or monitored for customer service, training and general auditing purposes.
6.6 We may give information about you and how you manage your account to the following:
7.1 Our privacy policy will be reviewed and amended from time to time and you should check this page to see our most up to date version of the privacy policy. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page.
Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed at customer.services@accountscore.co.uk or AccountScore Ltd t/a AccountScore, PO Box 1515, High Wycombe, HP11 9JE. If you have any concerns about the information we hold you should contact the Data Protection Officer at AccountScore Ltd stating what you think the problem is and you will get a response within 15 working days. If you still feel dissatisfied, you can appeal to the Managing Director of AccountScore Limited or you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office Customer Services Team, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF.