Mayden House Ltd and its subsidiary companies including Mayden Health and the happi brand consider protection of your privacy to be of utmost importance and are committed to providing you with a personalised service that meets your requirements in a way that safeguards your privacy.

This policy explains how we may collect information about you and then use it in order to satisfy your particular requirements. It also outlines some of the security measures that we take in order to protect your privacy and gives certain assurances on things that we will not do.

When we first obtain personal information from you, or when you take a new service or product from us, we will not under any circumstances send you information without giving you the opportunity to indicate if you do not wish to receive information from us about other services or products (to "opt out"). Normally this is done by way of a tick boxes on an application form or contract. You may revise the choice that you have made at any time by writing to us to inform us of the change.

Some of the personal information we hold about you may be sensitive personal data within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 1998 - for example, information about your health or ethnic origin. We will not use sensitive personal data about you other than for the specific purpose for which you provide it.

Collection of information

1. We may collect personal information about you from a number of sources, including:
from you when you agree to take a service or product from us, in which case this may include your contact details, date of birth, payment method and possibly bank details;
from you when you contact us with an enquiry or in response to a communication from us, in which case this may tell us something about your preferences;
from publicly available sources, such as the electoral register.

Use of information

2. We may use personal information about you for a number of purposes, including:

• to help to identify you when you telephone us to make an enquiry - for example, by asking you for your telephone number - so that we can avoid disclosing information to a person who is not authorised by you to receive it;
• to write to you (including electronic mail) or to telephone you (including text messages) with information about other services or products. We will not use your information in this way if you have opted out or otherwise not consented.
• to help us to administer accounts, services and products which we offer;
• to help detect fraud or loss;
   
  Information we hold about you and your preferences will help us to make sure that we contact you about things likely to be of relevance and interest to you.

3. Whether or not you have opted out in relation to use of your information for direct marketing, it is our practice to search the Mailing, Telephone, Fax and Email Preference Services (as applicable) so that if you have registered your details with those services, you will not receive any unsolicited direct marketing material from us via that channel.

4. In some circumstances, we may do certain checks on your identity to ensure that you are who you say you are.

Disclosure of information

5. We will not pass any of your personal details to any organisation outside Mayden House Ltd for any purpose.

6. We do not sell mailing lists to third parties for their marketing purposes.

Protection of information

7. We maintain strict security measures in order to protect personal information. This includes following certain procedures, for example to check your identity when you telephone us, encrypting data on our websites and in order to ensure compliance with all applicable legal requirements.

The Internet

8. If you communicate with us via the Internet then we may occasionally use email to contact you about our services and products. When you first provide personal information to our website we will normally give you the opportunity to indicate whether you would prefer us not to use that information to contact you in this way. However, you can always send us an email at any time to change your preferences.

9. We may use "cookies" to monitor site user traffic patterns and site usage. This helps us to understand how our customers and potential customers use our website so that we can develop and improve the design, layout and functionality of the sites. A cookie is a piece of information that is stored on your computer's hard drive and which records your navigation of a website so that, when you revisit that website, it can present tailored options to you based upon the stored information about your last visit. You can normally alter the settings of your browser to prevent acceptance of cookies.

If you do not want us to deploy cookies in your browser, you can set your browser to reject cookies or to notify you when a web site tries to put a cookie on your computer. However, rejecting cookies may affect your ability to use some of the products and/or services at our Web site.

To turn off cookies in different browsers:
Internet Explorer
In Internet Explorer 5.0: From your browser menu, select "Tools", and then "Internet Options". This will bring up the "Internet Options" Dialogue Box. On the top of the dialogue box, select "Security", then "Custom Level". This will bring up the "Security Settings" box.
Scroll down using the scroll bar on the right hand side of the box, until you come to the section carrying the title "allow cookies to be stored on your computer". Of the options available, select "Disable", and then select the "OK" button on the bottom of the menu box.

In Internet Explorer 6.0: From your browser menu, select "Tools", and then "Internet Options". This will bring up the "Internet Options" Dialogue Box. On the top of the dialogue box, select "Privacy". This will bring up the "Privacy Settings" box.

On the Privacy tab, move the slider up for a higher level of privacy or down for a lower level of privacy. Move the slider to the top to block cookies from all Web sites.

Following these instructions will stop your computer from accepting cookies in future. You may reconfigure your computer to accept cookies again by following these instructions, but by selecting "Enable", and the "OK" button on the bottom of the menu box (Internet Explorer 5.0); or by selecting the "Default" button (Internet Explorer 6.0).

Netscape
In Netscape 4.7: First, on your top menu, select "Edit", and then "Preferences". This will bring up the "Preferences" menu box. From the options on the left hand side, select "Advanced" which will bring up another menu. Half way down, you will see a section on cookies, and if you wish to turn cookies off, you should select "Disable", and then the "OK" button on the bottom of the menu box.
You may reconfigure your computer to accept cookies again by following these instructions, but by selecting "Accept All Cookies," and then selecting the "OK" button on the bottom of the menu box.

In Netscape 6.0: First, on your top menu, select "Tasks", and then "Privacy & Security". From here you have the option to "block cookies from this site", "unblock cookies from this site" or view and remove and prevent cookies from being reaccepted from selected sites

Links

10. Websites operated by companies within Mayden Health may contain links to other sites. Please be aware that neither Mayden House Ltd nor its subsidiaries are responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by websites operated by companies within Mayden House Ltd.

Monitoring of calls

11. We may monitor and record communications we receive. This may be done to improve the service which we provide, to ensure compliance with our practices and procedures and where, for example, a contract is entered into by that means to provide evidence of the transaction.

Further information

12. If you would like any further information or have any comments on our Privacy Policy then please write to us or send us an email. We may amend this policy from time to time, in which case the amended version will be published on our website.
This policy applies to personal information held about individuals. It does not apply to information we hold about NHS institutions and other organisations.