Mr Skill

This is the Privacy Policy for the http://www.Mr-Skill.co.uk Website valid as of 30th August 2010. An earlier version of the privacy policy can be found here (Privacy Policy from 24th February 2010) and here (Privacy Policy from 1st April 2008).

  1 Scope

  2 Collection and Storage

  3 Use of Your Information

  4 Disclosure of your Information

  5 User IDs and online Activities

  6 Cookies

  7 Account protection

  8 Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information

  9 Security

  10 Third Parties

  11 External Links

  12 Retention of Information

  13 Access to Information

  14 Changes

We have provided this Privacy Policy Statement to help you understand how we collect, use and protect your information when you use our services and to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. We think everyone should make informed decisions, so please take a few moments to read the full statement which discloses the information gathering and dissemnation practices for the Mr-Skill.co.uk Website.

1 Scope

This Privacy Policy describes how the Company ("we","us" or "our") collects, stores, uses and discloses your personal information in connection with the performance of the services that are made available to you through the Site.

By accepting the Membership Agreement during the process of signing up for a membership, you expressly consent to the collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal information by Mr-Skill Ltd described in this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy is valid from 16th August 2010 and effective upon acceptance of the Member Agreement. To view a copy of the Privacy Policy that was valid before 16th August 2010, please click here (Privacy Policy from 24th February 2010) or here (Privacy Policy from 1st April 2008)

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2 Collection and storage

You can browse the Site without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal information, you are no longer anonymous to us.

If you choose to provide us with personal information, you expressly consent to us transferring that information to, and storing it on, servers located in the United Kingdom.

We may collect and store the following personal information about you:

email address, physical address, telephone number and other contact information;

transactional information based on your activities on the Site (such as information on you bidding, job posting activities, membership profiles and other content you generate or information that relates to your account);

dispute resolution, any correspondence between members through the Site, correspondence sent to us and feedback;

computer sign-on data, statistics on page views, information and statistics on traffic to and from the Site (including the URL you just came from and the URL you go to next, whether they are URLs on the Site or not), advertising data, IP address, browser information and standard web log information; and

supplemental information from third parties (for example: (a) if the information you provide cannot be verified, we may ask you to send us additional information (such as a certified copy of your driver's licence and/or a recent utility bill or other information confirming your address), or to answer additional questions to help verify your information.).

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3 Use of your Information

Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience.

We may use the contact information you provide to contact you via email, fax, post or telephone regarding your registration, or any other matter that we consider relevant to your use of our Service.

We may also use your personal information to:

provide the services and customer support you request;

resolve disputes and troubleshoot problems;

prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and enforce the User Agreement;

customise, measure, and improve our services and the Site's content and layout;

tell you about our existing products and services, changes to our existing products and services, new products and services and promotional offers based on your notification preferences; and

compare information for accuracy and verify it with third parties

In the unlikely event that fees remain unpaid on a Trade Professional's account, we may pass your business information to a credit recovery company

If you do not wish to receive marketing communications from us, we encourage you to amend your notification preferences via the "Email Notifications" page in My account. You may make changes to your notification preferences at any time. Please note that you cannot opt out of receiving administrative information that you need to know in order for us to provide you with our services.

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4 Disclosure of your Information

Any ratings and comments you received from another Member are available for all Members and non-Members (Users) to see at any stage when browsing the Member's profiles.

The extent to which further user information is disclosed depends on the account type:

Customers (Job posters):If you use the Services of our Company to post the job your personal details may be disclosed in the following situations:

When you publish a job posting via the Services of our Company we publish anonymous details of your job posting (first part of your postcode and your Username) on our platform which can be viewed by the public

When you accept a quote through our platform your personal details will be permanently viewable to the Trade Professional you selected for the job

In the event that a Trade Professional is interested in your job posting and wishes to contact you directly (e.g. to arrange a site viewing, to get more info about the project, or to submit their quote in person) your contact information (your name, email address & phone number) is forwarded to the Trade Professional concerned.

In a situation where the job needs to be done urgently, or it needs to be done in a geographical area where our coverage of tradesmen is relatively low, or when we cannot find enough tradesmen within the first hour of posting your job, you understand that the Company may disclose details about the work to be performed and your contact details to ServiceMagic Ltd. ServiceMagic will also attempt to find a local tradesman to get in touch with you and quote for the work that needs to be done. If you do not wish for tradesmen to contact you directly or for your information to be shared with ServiceMagic, customers should not add their phone number to the job postings. In total, your full contact details (phone number & address) will not be passed on to more than 5 interested tradesmen.

Trade Professionals:If you use the Services of our Company as a Trade Professional your personal details may be disclosed in the following situations:

Every User who browses the website (including non-Members) can potentially see the information on your Tradesman profile. You can control most of the details on the profile apart from ratings and comments you received from other Members

Customers who have accepted your Quote on one of their job postings can permanently view your full contact details

Furthermore, we may disclose your personal information to:

service providers under contract who provide elements of our services, or that provide separate services that are complimentary to your use of the Site or otherwise help with our business operations (such as server management, fraud investigations, affiliate programmes, marketing activities);

other third parties to whom you explicitly ask us to send your information, or about whom you are otherwise explicitly notified and consent to when using a specific service;

law enforcement agencies, other governmental agencies or third parties in response to a request for information (such as a Section 29 (3) Data Protection Act 1998 form) relating to a criminal investigation, alleged illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you or any other Mr-Skill user to legal liability. The personal information we disclose may include your User ID and User ID history, name, city, county, telephone number, email address, fraud complaints and bidding and listing history or anything else that we deem relevant;

other business entities, should we plan to merge with, or be acquired by that business entity. Should such a combination occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this Privacy Policy with respect to your personal information. If your personal information will be used contrary to this Privacy Policy, you will receive prior notice.

Without limiting the above, in an effort to respect your privacy and our ability to keep the community free from users who attempt to carry out fraudulent or illegal activities on the Site, we will not otherwise disclose your personal information to other Mr-Skill users or third parties without a court order (or in circumstances where we are under a substantially similar legal obligation), except when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of such information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm, property damage or financial loss or to report or put a stop to suspected illegal activity.

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5 User IDs and online Activities

Your User ID is displayed throughout the Site and is therefore available to the public. All of your activities on the Site will be traceable to your User ID. Other people may see your bids, job that you have listed in the past, jobs currently listed, feedback ratings and associated comments, questions you have asked, answers you have given and so on. Notices are sent to other community members regarding suspicious activity and policy breaches on the Site and refer to User IDs and specific listings. Therefore, if you associate your name with your User ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name will be able to personally identify your Mr-Skill activities.

Furthermore, be aware that this site provides a Question & Answer available to its users. Please remember that any information that is disclosed in the Question & Answer system becomes public information available to all registered users and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information.

When you re-visit the Site from a computer that you have used to access the Site previously, certain information about you may be visible before you log in, such as your User ID or information relating to your activities on the page (for example, details of your currently running job listings, jobs that you are bidding on or simply jobs are are watching). In addition, reminders from Mr-Skill may also be visible. Therefore, if you access the Site from a shared computer or a computer in an internet caf, such information and reminders may also be visible to other individuals who use the computer after you.

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6 Cookies

We use "cookies" (small files placed on your computers hard drive) on certain pages of the Site to help analyse our web page flow, customise our services, measure promotional effectiveness, and promote trust and safety.

A few important things you should know about cookies are that:

we offer certain features that are only available through the use of cookies;

we use cookies to help identify you and maintain you signed-in

most cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session;

you are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although doing so may interfere with your use of the Site; and

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7 Account Protection

Your password is the key to your Membership account. Use unique numbers, letters, and special characters and do not disclose your password to anyone. If you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account, including actions that result in legal contracts being concluded. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately notify us via the online contact form or via e-mail at support@mr-skill.co.uk

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8 Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by going to My account and then navigating to Account details in the menu on the left. You must promptly update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from public view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed accounts in order to comply with legal obligations, prevent fraud, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce the User Agreement, and take other actions as permitted by law.

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9 Security

We use standard industry practices, including encryption, passwords and physical security, to protect your personal information against unauthorised access and disclosure. However, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Site. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.

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10 Third Parties

Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you disclose your information to third parties, whether they are clients or contractors on the Site or other websites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of your information. We do not control the privacy practices of such third parties and we encourage you to read their privacy policies and ask questions before you disclose your personal information to them.

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11 External Links

This site contains links to other sites. Mr-Skill.co.uk is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web sites.

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12 Retention of your information

We may retain your personal information as long as is necessary for the purposes to which you consent under this Privacy Policy, after which we will delete it from our systems.

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13 Access to information

Please contact us if you would like to know what information we are storing about you. We may ask for proof of identity before providing you with any information requested and reserve the right to refuse to provide information if identity is not established.

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14 Changes

We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on the Site. All amended terms shall take effect automatically 30 days after they are initially posted on the Site. In addition, we will post an announcement on our General Announcement Board.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us through our online form or by sending a mail to support@mr-skill.co.uk.

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