Privacy and Cookie Statement

ITOPS takes the issue of privacy very seriously and we are committed to protecting and respecting our users' privacy. This Privacy and Cookie Statement sets out our current data processing practices. If you have any queries or concerns regarding these practices, you should contact us at admin@mycontrol4.co.uk

The Information We Collect

Registration: When you register with ITOPS, we ask for your name, email address and postal code. We usually also capture your IP address at the time you register.

Emailing an Article or Other Details: If you use our 'inform a colleague' service to email an article or post to a friend, you will need to provide us with this persons email address. ITOPS will automatically send this person a one-time email, attaching the recommended article as well as inviting them to visit and register with our site. We will not use these email addresses for any other purpose.

Making a purchase: Orders placed with us for goods and services from areas like the ITOPS Shop are fulfilled in a variety of different ways. Some products are handled entirely by ITOPS, some are handled via an associated company whilst others may be handled entirely by third parties. ITOPS will collect your personal information including your credit card number, shipping information and telephone number and all of this information is encrypted, using Secure Socket Layers (SSL) technology. If you order a product or service of ours which is fulfilled by an associated company or third party only your contact details will be passed on to them. Please be aware that these sites have their own privacy and data collection practices. ITOPS does not collect, see or have access to any personal information you may provide to such associates or third parties.

Optional Services: We may also ask for additional information when providing specific consultancy services. If you don't want to give us the information requested, you certainly don't have to, but it will inhibit the service delivery. On occasion, we may also ask you for other personal information in connection with surveys or other promotional offers running on our site but again, your participation in these features are purely voluntary.

Information We Automatically Track: While on our site, we automatically log certain information about how you're using our site. This information may include the URL that you just came from, your IP address and the pages you visit while on our site. If your browser is set up to accept them, we also use a feature known as a cookie Cookies contain bits of information that Web sites transfer to your computer's hard drive for record keeping purposes. Cookies can make the Web more useful by storing information about your preferences on a particular site such as ours. At ITOPS, cookies are used the following ways:

• To automatically access your previously stored account information and deliver more personalised services.
• To estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
• Advertising networks that serve ads onto our site may also use cookies but please note that we neither control nor have access to those cookies. These advertisers' uses of cookies are subject to their own privacy policies and not that of ITOPS.

Our Use of This Information More

Customized Service: ITOPS collects personal information to provide you, the user, with the best and most personalised Web service possible and to provide our advertisers with an efficient means to reach the right audience. In short, by knowing a little about you, ITOPS can deliver more relevant content and advertisements to you while at our Website and thus, provide you with a more efficient, customise and seamless experience when using our service.

Internal Research: Cookies and the other information we automatically track are used to help us better understand how our audience uses our site as well as for internal research on users' demographics and interests. Each browser accessing ITOPS is given a unique cookie which is then used to determine usage patterns, and to help in targeting content and ads based on user interests.

To Confirm Your Registration and Contact You: Once you've registered, we will send you a confirmation email acknowledging your new account to the address that you supplied us. We may subsequently email you about our various products and services, or other products and services we feel may interest you. If you'd rather not receive these subsequent communications, let us know of by emailing admin@mycontrol4.co.uk or use the form from the appropriate web page.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

ITOPS does not give, rent, lend or sell individual information to any third party. Furthermore, we will not disclose any information about individual users, except as described below.

Current or Prospective Advertisers/Partners: We only provide aggregate, non-identifiable information to our current and prospective advertisers and business partners. For example, we might tell advertisers that there are 1,000 Registered Accounts in North West England, but we won't tell them that Mr F Bloggs is one of them, and we won't tell them that his email address either.

Associated Company, Third Party Service Providers: We may employ the services of associated Companies or third party providers to aid us in certain aspects of our operations (such as system supplies or service delivery). Depending on the services performed, some of these providers may be provided with user information. These contractors would be subject to confidentiality agreements, which limit their use and disclosure of all information they obtain through their relationship with ITOPS and ITOPS-related business only, consistent with this policy.

Legal Requests: ITOPS may disclose your personally identifiable information to protect the rights and property of the Company as well as to comply with any applicable law or valid legal process. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Requests by Government Agencies. We will disclose any information we have in our possession to law enforcement or government officials in response to any inquiry or investigation or if in our sole discretion, we believe it is necessary or appropriate in connection with any investigation or activity that is or may be illegal or may expose us or you to legal liability. In compliance with the Data Protection Act. Pursuant to the Data Protection Act of 1998, ITOPS will disclose your information:
• Where the disclosure is required by or under any enactment, rule of law or by the order of a court.
• Where the disclosure is necessary:
• For the purpose of, or in connection with, any legal proceedings (including prospective legal proceedings);
• For the purpose of obtaining legal advice; or
• For the purpose of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights.

Security

ITOPS is committed to protecting your personal information. All information that you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Access to personalised areas of the site, such as MyCheckout and MyAccount is password-protected for your privacy and security. While we do our best to protect your personal information, ITOPS cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. What does all this mean? Basically, you must protect yourself. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and/or any account information. If you need to change your password, please follow the steps outlined below.

Direct Mailings

If you register with ITOPS or sign up for or buy any of our products or services, we will send you information about our various products and services, or other products and services we feel may interest you. Only ITOPS will send you these notices. If you do not want to receive such offers and mailings, you can let us know by emailing admin@mycontrol4.co.uk. We'll remove your name from our lists as soon as we can.

Deactivating Your Account or Editing Your Information

You have the ability to edit your information and preferences at any time, including whether you want us to contact you about our various products and services. If you would rather not hear from us ensure that you have set up your preferences to make this visible or let us know of by emailing admin@mycontrol4.co.uk or use the form from the appropriate web page. To de-activate your account please complete the form on the appropriate web page whereupon your request will be carried out and a confirmation email will be sent to you.

Other Data Processors

Many of our associates, vendors and service providers, link from our site to areas on their own sites where they sell their own goods and services. If you follow these links from our site to theirs, you should be aware that these other sites have their own privacy and data processing practices. ITOPS has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. For more information regarding a site and its privacy policies, check that site.

Changes to this Privacy and Cookie Statement

ITOPS may amend this Privacy and Cookie Statement from time to time. If we make any substantive changes to this policy, we'll announce it on our site.

Cookies

There's a lot of misinformation about cookies out there. Some of the more ridiculous claims are that cookies allow people to view things that are on your hard drive, or to get personal information from you against your will. Neither could be further from the truth. In reality, cookies are tools that help us help you. Cookies are critical to us because the Web page you're reading right now isn't on our server. It's on your browser. Though it seems like you're in ITOPS, you've actually called up a snapshot of our site. Because the page essentially "died" when you called it up onto your browser, we need some way to keep the interactive conversation going. The cookie allows that to happen. Our cookies are not used to gain any secret information from your browser and they do not hog your disk space.