For further information about the Horizon IT Scandal, please visit our corporate website

How and why we use your personal information

A provider you can trust

Post Office is the UK’s largest retail network and largest financial services chain. We’ve more branches than all banks and building societies put together.

That’s a reach and responsibility we take very seriously. We’re committed to protecting any personal details we hold about you, being clear how and why they’re used, and respecting your privacy in everything we do.

  • What data we may collect about you

  • How we use it

  • Information about your rights

  • How you can get in touch with us

The policy covers:

  • Other ways we may use your data to help improve what we do

  • Using our main website

  • How we manage our direct marketing activities

  • What happens when you contact our customer care teams

  • Other ways we may use your data to help improve what we do

More about data use and privacy

  • Post Office Limited and Post Office Management Services Limited are registered in England and Wales. For more please refer to the full company information page.

  • You can request any personal details we hold about you any time from:

    Email

    data.protection@postoffice.co.uk

    Mail

    Post Office Data Protection Officer, 100 Wood Street, London, EC2V 7ER

    For more on our privacy practices and your rights, contact our Information Rights Team:

    Email 

    information.rights@postoffice.co.uk

    Mail

    Post Office Information Rights Team, 100 Wood Street, London, EC2V 7ER

  • When you submit an online form, request a quote or buy a product or service from Post Office or our partners, we collect your name and contact details. These could include your email, postal address and phone number.

    We may also collect opinions or other data you’ve shared in forms, surveys, correspondence with our customer care teams and on phone calls.

    If you apply for and use Post Office products and services, we’ll gather data to help you benefit from them. See the links to our product-specific privacy policies for how.

    When you visit this website, we record your IP address, when you visited, which pages you looked at, plus information about your device, operating system and browser. This data is gathered using commonly used tools such as cookies and web beacons.

    To enrich the data about you in our database, we compare it with external sources. This helps us tailor our communications with you and offer only products and services you may be interested in (if you’ve chosen to receive marketing).

    It also informs us of some changes, such as when email addresses are no longer valid or mail has been returned, so we can stop sending marketing.

  • There are lots of reasons we collect your personal details. Here are the most common.

    Our obligation to provide Post Office products and services (‘performance of a contract’)

    Personal details enable us to provide the products or services you buy from us. Please check the individual privacy policies for these products using the links provided below.

    If you give your permission (‘Consent’)

    We’ll contact you about offers and deals we think will be of interest in only the ways you let us. To change these permissions at any time, you can:

    If we have a justifiable reason (‘legitimate interests’)

    These reasons can include:

    • To enhance or improve your experience with us. This may mean learning your habits and preferences then tailoring our communications so they’re relevant to you (‘profiling’)
    • To combine your information with other customers’ data and external non-personal details so we better understand our market through analysis and segmentation, to keep offering competitive products and services and improve our website
    • To send you marketing materials where we can demonstrate a relationship with you and you’ve not told us you don’t want to receive these
    • To maintain our list of people who’ve asked not to receive our direct marketing material
    • To help keep our website safe and secure
    • To help prevent fraud and maintain security
    • To allow our internal business processes to function – like transacting with our partners, carrying out audits, producing management information and dealing with complaints
    • To do market research
    • To request feedback on our performance
    • To assist in training, quality assurance and compliance

    If we have to do something by law (‘legal obligation’)

    • To ensure your rights are met under the UK Data Protection Act
    • To meet our obligations with law enforcement agencies, courts and other organisations
    • To comply with anti-money laundering regulations

    In exceptional circumstances (‘vital interests’)

    We may use your information in rare situations to protect your vital interests or those of others. For example, to trace a missing person or if someone’s life could be in danger.

  • We do not sell your information to anyone. And we only pass it on to these trusted partners, service partners and regulators:  

    • Service providers that work for us, such as marketing agencies and survey sites, website hosts, printers and, in some cases, our postmasters and retail agency partners
    • Our subsidiary companies who work for us in providing services
    • Regulatory bodies, courts and law enforcement agencies
    • Partner companies that supply products or services, or for queries or complaints

    See the links to individual privacy policies below for more product-specific details.

  • The time we keep personal information for depends on why we have it and how we use it:

    • We keep records of your dealings with us or our partners for up to six years after the last contact, to respond to any complaints or disputes if they arise
    • We’ll keep other personal information about you if it’s necessary to comply with the law
    • Data collected when you use our website, like your IP address, is deleted after 28 days

    Please check our product-specific privacy policies for further details. You’ll find links below.

  • Your personal information may be processed outside the European Economic Area (EEA) where privacy laws may not provide protection to the same level as in the UK.

    Before any transfer takes place, we’ll take steps to make sure your personal information will be adequately protected, as required by the UK Data Protection Act, with safeguards such as standard contractual clauses are in place. For more information, please see the individual product or service privacy policies below or email us at data.protection@postoffice.co.uk.

    When you use this website, transact in our branches or submit queries, your information can be viewed by service providers in India and the Philippines who run the platform on our behalf. Contracts are in place (known as an ‘EU Model Clause’) to allow the data to be transferred and managed securely, to the standards required by the UK Data Protection Act.

    • You’re in control of the data we hold about you and how we use it.
    • Direct marketing: If you don’t want direct marketing from us, just tell us
    • Call 03457 22 33 44
    • Email pol_marketpermissions@response-service.co.uk
    • Write to Marketing Preference Team, 100 Wood Street, London, EC2V 7ER
    • Consent: If you’ve given us consent to use some personal details, you can withdraw it any time
    • Access: You can request a copy of all personal information we hold about you and other data relating to how we use it by contacting our Information Rights Team
    • Correction (‘Right to Rectification’): We always want to use the most up-to-date information about you, so please get in touch if you think we don’t have that
    • Deletion (‘Right to be Forgotten’): In some circumstances, including where we’re relying on your consent to use your data, you have a right to ask us to delete your information
    • ‘Right to Portability’: If we’ve collected your data because you’ve given us consent, or because we need it to provide you with a product or service (under a contract), you have the right to get the information you gave back in a ‘machine-readable’ format
    • ‘Right to Object’ and ‘Right to restriction of processing’: If we’re using your data for activities under the ‘legitimate interest’ justification and in other circumstances, you have the right to request restriction of processing and to object to that processing
    • Right to obtain human intervention: Where automated processing has taken place, where consent has been given or under a contract, and where the processing has a legal or similarly significant effect
    • Complain: If you think our use of your information doesn’t meet the law, you’ve the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

    Contact us
    For more information or to request any of these rights, please contact:

  • We take the security of your personal information seriously and will take all reasonable and proportionate steps to protect it.

    To safeguard all personal details under our control – both on and offline – from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss, we’ve put technology and security policies, rules and measures in place.

  • Cookies are small text files that are saved to the hard drive of any device you use to visit a website. At Post Office, we use them to improve and personalise your experience when you visit ours. Find out more, and see how you can manage their use, in our cookies policy.

  • Different Post Office products and services have additional privacy policies.

    You can check them here:

    Travel Insurance

    Drop & Go

    Post Office Identity Account

    Online Retail Shop

    Post Office Card Account

    Home Insurance

  • This privacy policy was last updated on 11, May 2018.

  • Our partner companies, which supply products or services on behalf of Post Office, have privacy policies of their own. These are the responsibility of the partners, not Post Office. You can check them here:

    Credit cards starting 5185

    Credit cards starting 5545 or 5425

    International payments

    Mortgages

    Personal Loans

    Savings

    Travel Money Card

    Travel Money

Privacy queries

For questions about our privacy policy, how we use your data or to request the details we hold about you

Send us a message

Email us at: data.protection@postoffice.co.uk

Other enquiries

For any other queries or comments about Post Office, our products and services please visit our contact us page.