Our Privacy Policy

We hate legalese, we really do, so we're not going to start spewing it at you. But we want you to know that we take your privacy and the security of your data seriously. So, there, we've said it. But it's not enough just to say it, here are some details:

Privacy

First and foremost, if you give us your data, we keep it to ourselves. The password you give us is encrypted, so even we don't know what it is (that's why we have to reset your password if you forget it). We don't share any data you give us with ANY third parties. However, any data you share with us for your public directory listing is, well, public. Obviously. So if it's on our public-facing Web site, we can't protect it from the World. So don't tell us about your Grandmother's secret chocolate chip cookie recipe, unless you're prepared to share it with everyone.

We are also pretty serious about how we treat email addresses. We do not publish email addresses for our business listings, instead we offer a sort of "throughway" service for visitors to email our listed companies through our servers. This way, we can stop the email addresses of our businesses being scooped up by spiders or bots and used for spam and other Internet nastiness. We follow an ethical policy regarding email (and, of course, in the UK, it's also the law). Simply put, we won't email marketing stuff to you if you tell us not to. But we do reserve the right to contact you by email on adminstrative matters regarding your account, and of course for visitors of our site trying to get in touch with you.

Cookies and Web Analytics

Speaking of cookies... Possibly the stupidest Internet term ever. But, there you have it. Cookies are little text files that Web sites stick information in and write to your local computer's hard drive. We use cookies as well, and our cookies store information about your last login, and whether or not you want us to remember your login - it saves all this information in an encrypted fashion that humans can't read. Cookies are essentially harmless, but you can read more about cookies here.

In addition, we use a technology called "Web analytics" to track how visitors are using our site. We can't identify anyone personally, but have aggregate statistics of which pages are popular, what searches are being made, where visitors are coming from (e.g. country, city), and other similar information. We use Web analytics to constantly improve our site, to make it better for the users, and therefore more effective for the businesses listed here and the advertisers as well.