Privacy policy
THIS PRIVACY POLICY WILL APPLY TO YOU IF YOU USE THE WEBSITE AND/OR THE SERVICES AND/OR IF YOU HAVE BEEN ISSUED WITH A SIM CARD.
1. Definitions
The following words and expressions shall have the following meanings:
‘Associated Companies’ means in relation to a company any subsidiaries or holding companies of the company and any other companies sharing the same holding companies;
‘Blyk’ means Blyk Limited, a company incorporated in England with registration number 05778607, having its registered office at 41 Charlton Street, London, NW1 1JD and its Associated Companies. For the avoidance of doubt, ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ shall also mean Blyk;
‘Contract’ means the contract for the provision of the Services, which may be entered into between you and Blyk, which incorporates the Terms;
‘Eligibility Criteria’ means the eligibility criteria set out in the Terms;
‘IP address’ means the unique identifier for your computer or such other device through which you access the Website;
‘Location Data’ means the data that allows us to locate the position of your mobile telephone hand set, used solely to provide services specifically requested by Member with its consent;
‘Member’ means an individual who uses the website and/or the Services and/or has been issued with a SIM Card and ‘Members’ shall be interpreted accordingly, ‘you’ and ‘your’ shall also refer to a Member;
‘MMS’ means the Multimedia Messaging Service by which means Members send and receive messages that include multimedia content;
‘Mobile Content’ means content that can be downloaded onto or streamed to a Mobile Phone
‘Mobile Phone’ means a mobile telephone handset, as is more particularly described in the Terms;
‘Network’ means the electronic communications network used by Blyk to provide the Services;
‘Personal Data’ means all data that identifies you and that is processed by us, for example, your name, address, email address and any data that forms part of the Preferences Data, Location Data and/or Traffic Data that could be used to identify you;
‘Preferences Data’ means all data that we process regarding your preferences, which may include Sensitive Personal Data. This will include the preferences that you provide to us via the Website and the data that we collect through your responses to Promotional Messages. This may also include information we collect about you through your use of the Services, such as Location Data and Traffic Data;
‘Promotional Messages’ means promotional messages sent to Members, as are more particularly described in the Terms;
‘Sensitive Personal Data’ means all data that you choose to provide to us, if any, regarding such matters as your racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, political opinion, trade union membership, or health and sexual life;
‘Services’ means the mobile telephone services which may be provided to you by Blyk, as are more particularly described in the Terms;
‘SIM Card’ means the subscriber identity module issued by Blyk that when inserted into a Mobile Phone allows a Member to use the Services;
‘SMS’ means the Short Message Service by which means Members send and receive text messages;
‘Terms’ means the terms and conditions that govern the supply of Services by Blyk, as set out at www.blyk.co.uk/terms
‘Territory’ means the United Kingdom mainland;
‘Traffic Data’ means the data that we receive from the Network with respect to your use of the Services, for example the data relating to the number of text messages and duration of calls made by you;
‘Website’ means the website operated by Blyk located at the url blyk.co.uk, blyk.com and the WAP site operated by Blyk located at mobile.blyk.co.uk
2. Use of Personal Data
2.1 Your Personal Data are held by Blyk and kept confidential on our secure database. Members of the Blyk corporate group will from time to time process Personal Data on behalf of Blyk Limited, and that for the purposes of the policy “Blyk” refers to Blyk Limited AND the group companies.
Processing which is necessary to provide the Services.
2.2 It is necessary for Blyk to process certain types of data, which may contain your Personal Data, in order to provide you with the Services, including:
2.2.1 processing your Personal Data to ensure that you fall within the Eligibility Criteria;
2.2.2 processing Personal Data for administration and accounting and to respond to complaints;
2.2.3 processing Personal Data and Traffic Data to enable transmission of messages and for billing purposes; and
2.2.4 monitoring or recording your communications with us for quality control and training purposes.
2.3 Blyk may pass your Personal Data to third parties who will provide certain elements of the Services to you on Blyk’s behalf (for example, the company that verifies your identity, top-up partner’s activities,, the company that provides the SIM Card, the Network and/or a courier company who will deliver the SIM card to you), however all such third parties will be bound to provide the same level of protection for your Personal Data as we provide.
We will use a licensed credit reference agency to check the details of potential customers who wish to use the Services. The purpose of this check is to protect you from identity theft and us from fraudulent credit applications. Whilst you remain a Blyk customer, we may disclose to the credit reference agency account information relating to changes of address, payments received, account balances, payment defaults, disputes, queries and debts. This information will be retained by the credit reference agency and may be used by us and other organisations to help make decisions about other credit applications made by you or other members of your household to whom you are financially linked.
2.4 Other than as set out in paragraph 2.3, Blyk will never pass your Personal Data to a third party except where this is strictly necessary to carry out your instructions, for example:
2.4.1 If you access phone shop via the Website in order to purchase a Mobile Phone, Blyk will pass your Personal Data to Data Select Limited, a company managing Blyk Phone Shop, so that they can process your order; and
2.4.2 If you use Blyk’s services to purchase any Mobile Content, Blyk will pass your Personal Data to the relevant Mobile Content provider so that they can process your order.
By submitting a request for us to provide the Services to you, you give your express consent for Blyk to pass your Personal Data to such third parties.
2.5 If you instruct us in writing to do so, your SIM Card’s telephone number will be listed in any telephone directories maintained by or on behalf of Blyk. Unless you instruct us in writing not to do so, your SIM Card’s telephone number will be displayed on compatible receiving handsets when you make outgoing calls.
Processing for the purpose of tailoring the Services.
2.6 Blyk shall process your Personal Data, Preferences Data, Traffic Data and anonymous Location Data to ensure Promotional Messages and services that we offer are tailored to your interests. By entering into a Contract you expressly consent to Blyk using such data for the purpose of sending the Promotional Messages to you.
2.7 Blyk shall also process your Personal Data and Preferences Data to ensure that the content of the Website and the products and services that we offer are tailored to your needs and interests.
2.8 Occasionally, the Preferences Data may include Sensitive Personal Data. You are under no obligation to provide such Sensitive Personal Data to Blyk and we will never process such Sensitive Personal Data unless you have chosen to provide it to us. By providing us with Sensitive Personal Data, you expressly consent to our using such data for the specific purpose for which it was provided and also for the purpose set out in paragraph 2.6 and 2.7 above.
2.9 Please note: Blyk shall not provide any Preferences Data that identifies you to any third party without first anonymising such Preferences Data. Anonymous data means that such data contains no personal identification data.
Processing required by law.
2.10 We may provide Personal Data, Traffic Data and Location Data to the emergency services (including the Fire Service, Police, Ambulance Service and Coastguard) in the event that we receive a request from them for any reason. We may also provide location data to a third party where we are required to do so by law.
Transferring your information outside of the Europe
2.11 We may use service providers to provide services to us in relation to our provision of the Services to you. These service providers may operate or be located in countries outside the EU. The data protection laws outside the EU may not provide an equivalent level of protection to those in the UK, but we will abide by this Privacy Policy, as well as any applicable laws, when data is transferred. We will take steps to ensure that any service providers to whom we transfer data are made aware of this Privacy Policy and take action to preserve the confidentiality and security of your personal data.
By providing us with your personal information on our Website or in the course of using the Services, you consent to the transfer of your personal data to Blyk’s related group companies and authorised third parties outside the EU, for the purposes described above, and in accordance with, this Privacy Policy.
Further information and withdrawal of consent.
2.12 If you have any questions about how we use Your Personal Data, please contact us by email on privacy@blyk.com
2.13 You may withdraw your consent or object to any of the processing carried out in accordance with this Privacy Policy at any time, however, please note that if you do so this will result in withdrawal of the Services.
3. IP address and cookies
3.1 When you visit the Website, we may log your IP address.
3.2 We may store information about you in a cookie (a small file that is sent by our web server to your computer), which we can access when you make return visits to the Blyk Website. Sending cookies is usual practice for any web site that needs to remember what its users’ preferences are and we use cookies to keep track of your choices in this site (such as login or registration identification, login time, user preferences.). Please note that our third party brand partners or websites to which Blyk.co.uk links may also use cookies, over which Blyk has no control.
If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer or stop cookies being stored on your computer in the future, please refer to your browser’s privacy management settings. Further information about deleting or controlling cookies is available at www.aboutcookies.org.
4. Data Storage and Security
4.1 We take appropriate measures to ensure that Your Personal Data are kept secure and are kept for only so long as is necessary for the purpose for which they are used. We have implemented security measures to ensure the confidentiality of your Personal Data and to protect your Personal Data from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. The database on which your Personal Data will be held is protected, such that only authorised personnel of Blyk and its Associated Companies have access to your Personal Data. Our authorised personnel are also required to treat the Personal Data as confidential. The security measures in place will, from time to time, be reviewed in line with legal and technical developments.
4.2 If there is any change in the Personal Data that you have provided to us through the Website you must use the Website to update such Personal Data. In such event your Personal Data will be updated as soon as you submit the new Personal Data to us. If you provide updated Personal Data to us by any other method, we will amend our records within 30 days of receipt of such updated Personal Data.
4.3 We will store the Personal Data that you provide to us through the Website or otherwise for so long as you are a registered member. After you cease to be a registered member we will keep your Personal Data on our records for a period of 2 years to enable us to respond to any queries or complaints that you may have. After this time we will delete all of your Personal Data from our records, apart from any data that we are required to keep for legal reasons – for example we need to keep some financial data, which may include your Personal Data, for 7 years in order to comply with English tax rules.
4.4 We will store records containing your IP address, the Location Data, Traffic Data and Preferences Data for 2 years from the date on which the data was collected, after which such data will be deleted or anonymised.
5. Third Party Personal Data
5.1 If you have provided us with data about another person, you confirm that they consent to the processing of their Personal Data and that you have informed them of our identity and the purposes (as set out above) for which their Personal Data will be processed.
6. Third Party Websites and Advertisements
6.1 You can access a variety of other websites from our Website, we display advertisements from third parties on the Website and we transmit advertisements for third party products and services to your Mobile Phone by SMS and MMS message. We are not responsible for the privacy policies of these websites and third party advertisers, nor for the way in which information about their users is treated. In particular, unless expressly stated, we are not agents for these websites or advertisers.
7. Change to the Privacy Policy
7.1 Our website policies, content, information, promotions, disclosures, and features may be revised, modified, updated, and/or supplemented at any time and without prior notice at the sole and absolute discretion of Blyk. However if we change this Privacy Policy, will take steps to notify all users by a notice on our Website and will post the amended Privacy Policy on the Website.
8. Your Rights
8.1 You are entitled to ask for a copy of any Personal Data that we hold about you (for which we may charge a small fee) and to have any inaccuracies in your Personal Data corrected.
