Our privacy policy

At the BBC, we are committed to protecting your privacy. We will keep the personal information you entrust to us safe and secure. We will not share your personal information with other people or businesses without your prior consent. We are registered under the Data Protection Act 1998 and will comply with the Act and related legislation.

How we collect and use information

We collect personal information on our customers in various ways, including competition entry forms and feedback, research or request forms.

From time to time, we may use your personal details for various purposes, including:

1. to tell you by telephone, post or e-mail about special offers and current or new products that you may be interested in;
2. to carry out audience research;
3. to enable other people or businesses to carry out our work on our behalf;
4. where you have given us your permission, to pass your information to carefully selected organisations to allow them to tell you about their special offers or products and services that may be of interest to you; and
5. to manage our competitions and contact the winners.

We may group together statistical information to understand more about our customers in order to improve our range of products and services and help manage our relationships with advertisers. When this is done, we only provide anonymous information and do not disclose personal details about any individuals.

To fulfil some of the above processes we may have to pass your information to other parts of the BBC group of companies which occasionally may be outside the European Union. They will, of course, treat your information with the same respect that we do.

How we apply our policy

In order to put our policy into practice, we follow seven guidelines:-

1. We will ensure our systems are secure to protect your personal information from misuse;
2. We will respect your privacy in the way that we contact you, whether by post, telephone, e-mail or text message;
3. We will not hold your personal information for longer than is necessary;
4. We will not sell, trade or rent your personal information to other people or businesses unless we have your consent. With your consent, we will only share your information with carefully chosen, reputable and trustworthy third parties.
5. We will comply promptly with any instructions from you to update your information or requests from you to see the information that we hold on you;
6. We will comply with lawful requests to disclose personal information to certain authorities (e.g. the police);
7. We may monitor and record any telephone calls to ensure we follow your instructions correctly and to improve our service.

Children

If you are under 16, you must have your parent or guardian's permission before you provide personal information to us. We do not wish to collect any personal information without this permission.

We do not wish to collect any personal information from children under 6. Where we find that a person is under 13, then we will immediately tell them not to provide any personal information to us.

Our websites

We may gather personal information from our own websites for use under this policy. We will comply with the BBC's Online Editorial Guidelines, available online at www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines.

Cookies

During the course of your visit to our websites your computer may be issued with a cookie. A cookie is a text file which identifies your computer to our server. Cookies do not in themselves identify the individual user, just the computer used. We will not collect and store personal information using the cookie, although we may use a cookie to monitor your visit and ensure that you are presented with appropriate information. If you wish, you can prevent acceptance of cookies by your internet browser, although this will impair your use of our site. Further information on cookies is available online at www.aboutcookies.org.

Links to other websites

Our websites may include links to other non-BBC web sites. These are outside our control and not covered by this policy. If you access those sites via the links, use of those sites will be in accordance with the privacy policy of those site operators, which may differ from ours.

Accuracy and access to your personal information

You can always change the personal information that we hold and it is free to do so. If you wish to change any details then please write to us at the address below; or if you are an internet customer through your online account.

You can request a copy of the personal information that we may hold by writing to us at the address below. Under the Data Protection Act, we may ask you to pay a £10 administration charge for this request).

Changes to this statement

We may change this policy to keep up to date with changes in legislation and best practice.

Further information

Further information about data protection is available online at the Information Commissioner's website.

If you wish to contact us about this policy, please write to

The Company Secretary, BBC Worldwide Limited, Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London, W12 0TT, UK