Privacy
About Us
Reference Tree Limited, a company registered in England under number 6789536 with registered office at 26 High Street, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, WD3 1ER, England, (“we” or “us”) is the operator of the website at www.reference-tree.com (the “Website”).
In this Privacy Policy, references to “you” means any person submitting any data to us or to this Website about himself or herself or about any other living individual in respect of any use of the Website or the service available through the Website (the “Reference Tree Service”).
When you use different aspects of the Website, we may ask you to supply us with various information about you or anyone who you represent. This Privacy Policy sets out the way in which we may use such information.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about the way in which we use your personal information or if any of your personal information changes, please write to us at 34b York Way, London N1 9AB for the attention of Customer Services or email us at info@reference-tree.com.
Your privacy is very important to us. We shall therefore only use your name and other information which relates to you in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy. We will only use your personal information in a way that is fair to you. We will only collect information where it is necessary for us to do so and we will only collect information if it is relevant to our dealings with you.
We will only keep your information for as long as we are either required to by law or as is relevant for the purposes for which it was collected.
Data that we collect
We may collect and use various information, including some or all of the following relating to you or people you represent: the names, email addresses, postal addresses, telephone numbers, Website usernames, passwords, qualifications, work history, preferences, notes, thoughts, comments and opinions.
We may also collect information from third parties in order to verify any data that you have supplied to us (for example, university administration services to ascertain whether you are actually a student or tutor there).
We need information about you so that you can use the Reference Tree Service, including obtaining access to publications, using tools and functionality for the use of publications, uploading material onto the Website and entering into discussions and interaction with other users of the Website.
We need your email address and other contact details, in particular, for sending you essential information relating to the Reference Tree Service. This includes (without limitation) the following:
- To allow you to go ahead and register for the Reference Tree Service. This includes sending an email to you to confirm your details, to give you initial information about the Reference Tree Service, and to enable you to commence using the Reference Tree Service.
- To give you a link to enable you to reset a password if you tell us or the Website that you have forgotten it.
- To confirm when you have ordered access to a publication.
- To send you information generally relevant to the Reference Tree Service or Website. This may include informing you about developments or changes with the Reference Tree Service (including updates to the Terms and Conditions, changes to this Privacy Policy, or planned downtime for the Reference Tree Service).
- In case we have any queries concerning any aspect of your use of the Reference Tree Service or the Website.
- To respond to you over any queries you raise with us.
We also need to use your contact details and other information for any aspect of the Reference Tree Service or Website (including, but without limitation, providing customer support, preventing or investigating prohibited activity, enforcing the User Agreement and verifying information). We also use your information to detect any fraud or Website abuses.
We may further collect (or allocate to you and you may change) a username and password to use restricted parts of the Website. We use that to enable you or anyone you represent or who represents you to access your restricted parts on the Website.
We may maintain your purchase history (such as publications purchased, read and dates of licensing) for up to six years following purchase. We may enable you to view a history of the material that you have licensed and which has expired within the previous two years.
You must only submit to us or the Website information which is accurate and not misleading and you must keep it up-to-date and inform us of changes. By submitting data in respect of you and anyone else, you must ensure that you have full authority and consent to supply us with that data on their behalf and you warrant to us that you have that authority.
We do not collect or store any payment information from you (such as your payment card details) when you purchase particular aspects of the Reference Tree Service (including obtaining access to publications), as payment is indirectly obtained from you, through Sage Pay or another online payment service provider, and it is they rather than us who obtains your personal data regarding your payment details (such as your payment card). (If you have any queries about the way your payment card or other payment data is stored, you should initially check our Frequently Asked Questions page on the Website and then email us at info@reference-tree.com if you still have any queries and we will follow it up with the online payment service provider.)
Other uses of your personal information
We may also use your personal information for non-essential parts of the Reference Tree Service, for example to send you promotional or marketing information about us, promotions, events, our newsletters, anything relating to our business partners, or anything in which you show an interest. This usage of your information is on an opt-in basis. Each email that we send to you will be in accordance with your preferences that you set within your user account pages on the Reference Tree Service. Depending on your account preferences, we may also send you feedback forms to complete about us or any aspect of the Reference Tree Service.
Each email regarding the non-essential parts of the Reference Tree Service will provide you with an opportunity to opt out of receiving further emails from us regarding these non-essential communications or to manage your other communications preferences. Any changes to your communication preferences will be processed by us within two working days of our receipt of your instruction; however, you may still receive non-essential communications in the intervening time between your submission and when it is processed.
We may further anonymise data about users of the Website generally and use it for various purposes, including ascertaining the general location of our users and usage of publications on the Reference Tree Service (including feedback and annotations that users make about publications), and supplying that anonymised data to third parties such as publishers. However, that anonymised data will not be capable of identifying you personally.
Third Parties and Links
We may pass your details to our agents and subcontractors to help us with any of our uses of your data set out in our Privacy Policy. For example, we may use third parties to assist us with providing the administration for running the Website, to analyse data and to provide us with marketing or customer service assistance.
We may exchange information with third parties for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
We may transfer our databases containing your personal information if we sell our business or part of it.
We may also disclose your details as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy.
Other than as set out in this Privacy Policy, we shall NOT sell or disclose your personal data to third parties without obtaining your prior consent unless this is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy or unless we are required to do so by law.
The Website may contain advertising of third parties, dedicated pages operated by third parties and links to other Websites or frames of other Websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those third parties or other Websites, nor for any third party to whom we transfer your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Security
We have in place appropriate technical and security measures to prevent unauthorised or unlawful access to or accidental loss of or destruction or damage to your information.
We store your personal details on a secure server. We use firewalls on our servers. When you send your payment card details through to the online payment service provider, we require them to use encryption. Whilst we are unable to guarantee 100% security, this makes it hard for a hacker to decrypt your details.
We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of your information. Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.
You are responsible for protecting against unauthorised access to your password and to your computer.
Cookies
The Website uses cookies. Cookies are tiny text files which identify your computer to our server as a unique user when you visit certain pages on the Website and they are stored by your Internet browser on your computer’s hard drive. Cookies can be used to recognise your Internet Protocol address, saving you time while you are on, or want to enter, the Website. We only use cookies for your convenience in using the Website (for example to remember who you are without you having to re-enter your username and password) and not for obtaining or using any other information about you (for example targeted advertising). Your browser can be set to not accept cookies, but this would restrict your use of the Website. If you want to find out more information about cookies, go to http://www.allaboutcookies.org or to find out about removing them from your browser, go to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html.
Changes
We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any amended Privacy Policy will be posted on the Website. The amended Privacy Policy will apply immediately for new users and 30 days (or such other timeframe as we say when posting) after first posting for all existing users. Each time you enter the Website, use the Reference Tree Service, or upload material onto the Website, you agree that the Privacy Policy current at that time shall apply to all information which we hold about you.
Consent
By submitting data to us and using the Website, you consent to our use of your data and of anyone you represent in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy (as amended from time to time, as described above) and you are responsible for ensuring that you have authority to consent on behalf of anyone about whom you submit data to us.
Version
This Privacy Policy was most recently updated on 23 April 2010.
