At samename.com, we believe strongly in protecting the privacy of our Members' personal information. This is a legal document that sets out how samename.com handles data which identifies you. You should read it in conjunction with the samename.com’s Terms and Conditions, of which this Privacy Policy forms part.

1. Emails from samename.com

You are probably most interested in how we will use your email address to communicate with you, so here's our email promise, in plain English:

Service Emails: We hate spam and will never ever send you unsolicited emails. But there are some emails that we will need to send you to provide you with a good samename.com service. These include notifications that some one who has the samename as you, reminders about your membership expiring and guides on how to use the site. A full list of the types of emails you will receive to help you use the service most effectively (which we call Service Emails) are shown below:

• Validation email – the email we use to verify your email address when you first register
• Welcome emails - emails which explain how to use the site when you first join
• Payment receipt – this is sent if you upgrade to Full Membership
• Renewal notices – these remind you to renew your Full Membership
• Key service messages – if we need to notify you about changes to the service
• Notes/profile and photo approval notification
• Service suspension notices – if you break the house rules

As well as these Service Emails, you will also receive Alerts letting you know when some one has joined who has the same name as you. These emails genuinely help you make the most of the website. Here's a bit more about them…

Samename Alerts: We automatically send you our samename Alerts. They are an essential part of the samename.com service because they tell you when your names sake have joined the site or have added more information. The good thing about this email is it lets you know when you should pop back to the site. Without it you would never know there was new stuff to read.

If at anytime you decide you don't want to receive the samename Alert, all you need to do is uncheck the “samename Alert” box in your email preferences.

You'll find this in the “My details/profile” page which can be accessed from the link on the website once you're logged in. Instructions on this can be found at the bottom of every samename Alert.

2. The information we gather and track

Information gathered on registration. When you register for the samename.com Service, you provide your name, one or more category listings on thesamename.com (home town, workplace etc) your email address, and some optional notes about yourself. They are available to you, and capable of being changed, through the “My details/profile” page.

3. Sharing and use of information

The over-riding principles we apply are these:

• We, and (where relevant) our credit card processing agents, will not supply your personal data to a third party for commercial exploitation - thus, you can rest assured that we will not sell the lists of our Members' email addresses to a third party; and
• The only circumstances in which we will provide any of your personal data to a third party for non-commercial purposes are those contained in this Privacy Policy.
• Registration Information. Once a Member registers their name, the Registration Information held for that Member, except for the email address, will be available to, and searchable by, users of the samename.com Service.
• Emailing through the samename.com Service. We do not directly make your email address available to anyone on any screen of thesamename.com Service. The only legitimate way of making contact with a samename member found on the samename.com Service is for a Full Member to enter a message that we will send on the Member's behalf. We will notify the addressee Member, using the email address he/she has provided to us, that samename.com is holding an email for him/her, and the Member can collect the email when logged in to the samename.com Service. Members may check and (if required) change the email address we hold for them at any time through “My details/profile”. Members' personal notes must not include their email address. Sent and received email may appear in a Member's Inbox on the samename.com Service for an indefinite period - we do not delete it after any specific period. However, this does not mean that we will retain your email forever; there may come a time when we will need to delete some or all of it, for technical or other reasons. In this event, we will endeavour to give you advance warning that we are going to do so.
• Advertising. The samename.com Service may include interactive advertising for other businesses. We may use, and provide to third parties, anonymised demographic data provided by Members to target this advertising more appropriately.
• Credit Card information. There has been a lot of publicity about Credit Card security on the Internet so we use Paypal as our payment providers. they operate a secure server, to process our credit card payments. They encrypt Members' credit or debit card information and authorise payment directly. This means that Members' full credit card details are never revealed to us. Paypal may transfer to, process and hold your credit card information in countries either within or outside the European Economic Area in connection with performing their duties.
• Changes in samename.com business. If all of the assets which samename.com uses to operate its business (or substantially all of them) are acquired by a third party, we may transfer personal data we then hold to that party so that the acquirer can continue to provide thesamename.com Service.
• Place of processing. The personal information held by us is held on and processed by computers situated in the United Kingdom .

4. Security

We have security measures in place to protect our customer database and access to this database is restricted internally. However, it remains each Member's responsibility:

• to protect against unauthorised access to Your Details;
• to ensure no-one else uses thesamename.com Service on that Member's machine while it is "logged on" to the samename.com Service;
• to log off or exit from the samename.com Service when not using it; and
• to keep his/her password secret.

5. Removing yourself from the samename.com Service

You may have your registration details removed at any time. To remove yourself please follow this link

6. Disclosure for legal reasons

We reserve the right to communicate such of a Member's personal information as we hold to third parties which seek the disclosure of it, and which make a legally-compliant request for its disclosure.

7. Data Retention Period.

We will retain your personal data only as long as is necessary for the purposes to which you consent under the samename.com’s Terms and Conditions and this Privacy Policy, or as is required by applicable law, and then we will delete it.

8. Contacting samename.com

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of the samename.com Service, or your dealings with samename.com , you can contact us here . You can also use this address if you wish to request from samename.com a copy of the personal data we hold about you or a description of that data. Please note that by law we are entitled to charge you a small sum for providing this information

9. Links to third party sites

The samename.com Service contains links to other sites. samename.com is not responsible for the privacy practices, or the content, of those web sites

10. Data Protection Information

You can obtain further information about data protection laws by visiting the Information Commissioner's website at www.dataprotection.gov.uk

11. Changes to this Privacy Policy

If we change this Privacy Policy, we will notify you of the changed document in the same way as we notify changes to the samename.com Terms and Conditions.