PRIVACY POLICY
Date of last review – May 2024
WEBSITE PRIVACY & COOKIE POLICY
This policy describes how Ocean City Living will use your personal data.
It also describes your data protection rights, including a right to object to some of the processing which we may carry out. More information about your rights, and how to exercise them, is set out in the “What rights do I have?” section of this policy.
Ocean City Living is the current trading name. 24 Furzeacre Close, Plympton, PL7 5DZ
References to "Ocean City Living”, "we" or "us" in this policy describes the Company and the websites which you are visiting.
Summary of how we use your data
• Ocean City Living use your personal data to deliver services to you, to send you information about properties and property related services you may request of us or that we think will be of interest to you, also to conduct searches about your identity, your current and past residency addresses, and your right to live in the UK and credit history to meet applicable laws and to provide a recommendation to landlord clients, on your suitability as a tenant
• Information about you is shared with partners as described in this policy who have undertaken to hold your personal data in compliance with applicable laws.
• Where we and our Franchisees rely on your consent for direct marketing purposes, you can withdraw this consent at any time.
What information do we collect?
We collect and process personal data about you when you interact with us and our websites and when you register with us to receive our services. Other than the personal data which you give us (which will usually include, name, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth, credit history, previous addresses, identification) in response to requests from us or other parties to a transaction which you are participating in, information that we collect directly from you includes:
• technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; and
• information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); pages you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.
What information do we receive from third parties?
Sometimes we receive information about you from third parties. In particular:
• Social Media Companies including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Google+ when you interact with our brand through these platforms;
• Previous or current landlords for the purpose of referencing;
• Financial Advisors, mortgage brokers, lenders and solicitors/conveyancing agents through transactions relating to the service we and our Franchisees are providing; and
• Other agents/companies as and when required for purposes which will be disclosed.
How do we use this information, and what is the legal basis for this use?
We process this personal data for the following purposes:
• To fulfil a contract. This includes:
o providing our services including processing information in connection with a property's sale or letting, arrangements for the transfers of funds by or to third parties, end of contract arrangements;
o communicating with you.
• As required by us to conduct our business and pursue our respective legitimate interests, in particular:
o we will use your information to provide services to you before we have a contract with you (for instance sending potential buyers and tenants property details), and to respond to any comments or complaints you may send us;
o the Company monitors use of our websites and online services, and uses your information to help us monitor, improve and protect our products, content, services and websites, both online and offline, including as set out in our Cookie policy below;
o the Company uses information you provide to personalise our website, products or services for you, including as set out in our Cookie policy below;
o if you provide a credit or debit card as payment, we also use third parties to check the validity of the sort code, account number and card number you submit in order to prevent fraud (see data sharing below);
o we information you provide to investigate any complaints received from you or from others, about our services or the properties which we deal with;
o we will use data in connection with legal claims, compliance, regulatory and investigative purposes as necessary (including disclosure of such information in connection with legal process or litigation); and
o we use data of some individuals to invite them to take part in market research;
• Where you give us consent:
o we will send you direct marketing in relation to our relevant products and services, or other products and services provided by us, members of our group of companies and our partners such as:
Mortgage brokers we are partnered with for mortgage services and advice
Independent financial advisors for advice relating to your property and the services we offer
Solicitors and Conveyancing agents for legal advice relating to your property and the services we offer
o we place cookies and use similar technologies in accordance with our Cookies Policy and the information provided to you when those technologies are used; and
o on other occasions where we ask you for consent, we will use the data for the purpose which we explain at that time.
• For purposes which are required by law:
o to verify your identity; and
o In response to requests by government or law enforcement authorities conducting an investigation.
Withdrawing consent or otherwise objecting to direct marketing
Wherever we rely on your consent, you will always be able to withdraw that consent, although we may each have other legal grounds for processing your data for other purposes, such as those set out above. In some cases, we and our Franchisees are able to send you direct marketing without your consent, where we rely on our respective legitimate interests.
You have an absolute right to opt-out of direct marketing or profiling that we carry out for direct marketing, at any time. You can do this by following unsubscribe instructions contained in the communication, or by contacting us using the details set out below.
Who will we share this data with, where and when?
We will share your personal data with companies in the same group of companies as us for the purpose of providing a service to you and understanding your use of our products and services.
We may share your data with
• Mortgage brokers we are partnered with for mortgage services and advice;
• Independent financial advisors for advice relating to your property;
• Solicitors and conveyancing agents for legal advice relating to your property;
• Any other named party to a signed contract, such as your landlord or tenant;
• Third parties who provide services to the property for maintenance and repairs including plumbers/electricians/builders/carpenters-);
• Surveying companies for surveying services required for the sale/purchase of your property;
• Utilities companies where we are required to do so to adhere to a tenancy agreement;
• Referencing companies to obtain references for letting a property;
• Block managers where a let property is a leasehold property;
• Inventory companies who conduct check ins and check outs; and
• Insurance and warranty companies where you have decided to buy a product or service through us.
Personal data may be shared with government authorities and/or law enforcement officials if required for the purposes above, if mandated by law or if required for the legal protection of our legitimate interests in compliance with applicable laws.
Personal data will also be shared with third party service providers, who will process it on behalf of Ocean City Living to help us run this website and also to provide our services to you. Such third parties include providers of identity checking, referencing, database management, email communications and live chat services.
In the event that we sell or integrate our business with another business, your details will be disclosed to our advisers and any prospective purchaser’s adviser and will be passed to the new owners of the business.
How long will you retain my data?
Where we process personal data in connection with performing a contract, we keep the data for 7 years from your last interaction with us.
Where we process registration data, we do this for as long as you are an active user of our sites and for 7 years after this.
Where we process personal data for marketing purposes or with your consent, we process the data until you ask us to stop and for a short period after this (to allow us to implement your requests). We also keep a record of the fact that you have asked us not to send you direct marketing or to process your data indefinitely so that we can respect your request in future.
COOKIES AND SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES
What are they?
Cookies are small pieces of information sent by a web server to a web browser which allows the server to uniquely identify the browser on each page. Other tracking technologies are also used which are similar to cookies. This can include pixel tags and tracking URLs.
All these technologies are together referred to in this Policy as “Cookies”.
How do we use Cookies?
The types of Cookies that we use on our website, and the purposes for which they are used, are set out below:
• Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around our website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of our site. Without these cookies, any services on our website you wish to access cannot be provided.
• Analytical/performance cookies: These cookies collect information about how you and other visitors use our site, for instance which pages you go to most often, and if you get error messages from web pages. We use data from these cookies to help test designs and to ensure a consistent look and feel is maintained on your visit to the website. All information these cookies collect is aggregated. It is only used to improve how a website works.
o We use Google Analytics, for example, to anonymously track website usage and activity. Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address for Member States of the European Union as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA. On behalf of the website provider Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website provider. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. Furthermore, you can prevent Google’s collection and use of data (cookies and IP address) by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under https://tools.google.com/dlpag... You can refuse the use of Google Analytics by clicking on the following link. An opt-out cookie will be set on the computer, which prevents the future collection of your data when visiting this website:
Disable Google Analytics
o Further information concerning the terms and conditions of use and data privacy can be found at http://www.google.com/analytic... or at https://www.google.de/intl/en_uk/policies/. Please note that on this website, Google Analytics code is supplemented by “anonymizeIp” to ensure an anonymized collection of IP addresses (so called IP-masking).
• Functionality cookies: These cookies allow our site to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting. Additionally, these cookies can be used to allow an optional service to function such as offering a live chat session. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
• Targeting cookies: These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. These cookies are dropped only with your consent. You can give your consent either by closing the cookie banner displayed at the bottom of the landing page of our website or browsing the website outside the cookie banner and clicking on any of its item. Please note that we track your consent using a technical cookie; therefore, in the event you delete any cookies stored on your devices you see the cookie banner once again. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers. Quite often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organisation.
• Social media cookies: These cookies allow you to share what you’ve been doing on our Site on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. These cookies are not within our control. Please refer to the respective privacy policies for how their cookies work.
• Pixel tags: Also known as a clear GIF or web beacon. These are invisible tags placed on certain pages of our Site but not on your computer. When you access these pages, pixel tags generate a generic notice of that visit. They usually work in conjunction with cookies, registering when a particular device visits a particular page. If you turn off cookies, the pixel tag will simply detect an anonymous website visit.
• Tracking URLs: These are used to determine from which referring website the website is accessed.
If you do not want to allow Cookies at all, or only want to allow use of certain Cookies, please refer to your browser settings. You can also use your browser settings to withdraw your consent to our use of Cookies at any time and delete Cookies that have already been set. Please note that by deleting our cookies or disabling future Cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.
To find out more about Cookies please visit: www.allaboutcookies.org or see www.youronlinechoices.eu which contains further information about behavioural advertising and online privacy.
Changes to our Privacy Notice
Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our policy.
What rights do I have?
You have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal data; to correct, delete or restrict (stop any active) processing of your personal data; and to obtain the personal data you provide to us for a contract or with your consent in a structured, machine readable format, and to ask us to share (port) this data to another controller.
In addition, you can object to the processing of your personal data in some circumstances (in particular, where we don’t have to process the data to meet a contractual or other legal requirement, or where we are using the data for direct marketing).
These rights may be limited, for example if fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another person, or if you ask us to delete information which we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping.
To exercise any of these rights, you can get in touch with us using the details set out below. If you have unresolved concerns, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
How do I get in touch with you?
If you have any questions about this policy, or would like to opt out of direct marketing, you can get in touch with us via our contact page.