We are committed to protecting your privacy. We will only use the information that we collect about you lawfully (in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018).
We collect information about you for 2 reasons: firstly, to provide you with the best possible service and second, to process your enquiries or any order.
- We will contact you with important or legally necessary information, for example, when purchasing from us. Because this is important to you it is not possible to opt out of this communication.
- We may occasionally contact you in the future about updates, new products and offers to keep you informed. If this is no longer of interest you can opt out of this type of communication at anytime.
- We do not send random marketing emails to personal email addresses (spam).
- We give you the opportunity to refuse any marketing from us.
The type of information we will collect about you includes:
- your name
- address
- phone number
- email address
- details of your property
- energy supplier
- payment details
Who We Share Your Data With
We may where necessary, share the required data with third party to provide services. For example, in processing your order we will have to share data with our payment providers to take payment, the DNO (Distribution Network Operator) for certification, and any services required to support us e.g. scaffolding company. We may need to share your details with equipment suppliers for setup and a delivery company if they are needed to deliver your items. We will not be able to process your order being able to use these services.
Comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Also, we may share information with law enforcement agencies, government agencies or other companies assisting us in fraud prevention or investigation when –
- required by law
- protecting against potential and actual fraud plus unauthorized transactions
- investigating fraud which has already taken place
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
Your Data
We will never collect sensitive information about you without your explicit consent.
The information we hold will be accurate and up to date. You can check the information that we hold about you by emailing us. If you find any inaccuracies we will delete or correct it promptly.
The personal information which we hold will be held securely in accordance with our internal security policy and the law. You can request that we erase any personal data we hold about you providing this does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
If we intend to transfer your information outside the UK or EEA (European Economic Area) we will always obtain your consent first.
Using The Website
For functionality such as remembering your baskets and to help improve the website we may use technology to track the patterns of behaviour of visitors to our site. Another example of how this has benefited users is using the information to half the page loading times. This technology can include using a “cookie” which would be stored on your browser and analytics systems.
Obviously the information collected in this way can be used to identify you unless you modify your browser settings and we understand that some users may not want their information stored. If you would like to prevent this happening then there are several options including using your browser’s settings and various browser plugins you can install. If this applies to you we recommending starting by looking at your browser settings.
Also, as we use Google Analytics, Google may use your information to provide personalised advertising. You can opt out of this in your Google account if you have one, plus Google have a browser extension to opt out of Google Analytics, which works with all main browsers and is found at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. There are other more advanced ad prevention extensions available too, again available for all main browsers.
If you have any questions about privacy, you should simply contact us and we will happy to answer your questions.
Cookies
See Cookies page.
Enquires & Comments
When visitors leave an enquiry or comment on Solus Energy we collect the data entered, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included.
How Long We Retain Your Data
If you leave an enquiry or comment, that information and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise any follow-up contact easily and provide you with the best service.
Other data is held in accordance with legal requirements.
We Care for Your Security
We understand that you’re concerned about the security and privacy of your online transactions. This is why we use Security Certificates to ensure that your valuable data, such as credit card details, are encrypted when you interact with our site.
How Do You Secure My Information?
We employ encryption to ensure safe and secure access and transactions on Solus Energy.
Your computer and ours agree to transpose whatever we are sending into an unintelligible “hash” of characters, using a technology called TLS. Without the information on your computer or ours, no one can understand our encrypted communication.
For your safety, please expect anyone who communicates confidential information with you on the Internet to use encryption, the way we do.
What is TLS?
Transport Layer Security, TLS, is the security technology for encrypting a link between a web server and a browser. All data passed between our web server and your browser remains private and secure.
Whenever you communicate with us on our payment pages, a small green padlock appears in your browser as a sign that we are now engaging TLS. (Another sign on some browsers is that when you enter the secure area of the site, the background of the address bar turns dark yellow or bright green. You’ll also notice that http:// is replaced by https:// (The ‘s’ stands for ‘Secure’).
How Do I Know You Are A Real Organization?
To generate an encrypted TLS transmission, a web server requires an Security Certificate. Checking a website’s certificate is good practice that helps you avoid spoof websites, sometimes called “phishing” sites. To check the certificate, click on the padlock. Your browser will show you the name of the owner of the certificate. This name should match the name of the website operator.
Our security certificates are issued by a leading certificate authority, Thawte / Digicert. Thawte / Digicert is a leading global certificate authority, providing online security trusted by millions around the world, having issued over 1 million certificates since starting. Not only do the certificates they issue enable a high level of encryption, the certification company also confirm that a company is a legally accountable organization where we had to demonstrate to them that we are an existing business, along with our control over the domain you are visiting. When you use websites online, you deserve to be know who you are interacting with.
Seeing a site with a Security Certificate, confirms two essential factors:
- That you have a secure TLS (encrypted) link with this website
- That this website represents a real organization