Privacy & Data Protection Policy

The Newcastle Building Society (the "Society") respects the privacy of your personal information. This Privacy Policy sets out our current policies and procedures in relation to your data protection and relates solely to information supplied by you via this website. This Privacy Policy will not alter or affect any personal information otherwise provided by you to the Society. It is important that you revisit this Privacy Policy regularly, as we may from time to time change the content or services available on our website and consequently this Privacy Policy may change.

Any personal details that you supply to us via this website such as your contact details will be stored and held by us on computer databases or otherwise for the purpose of:

• Providing you with the service(s) that you have requested
• Fulfilling any agreement we may have with you
• Providing you with information about any other special offers, products and services that we feel may be of interest to you (unless you inform us that you do not want to receive such direct marketing)
• For assessment and analysis (e.g. market, customer and product analysis) to enable us to review, develop and improve the products and services which we offer and to enable us to provide you and other customers with relevant information through our marketing programme
• To compile statistical analysis of the pages of our website which you visit
• In order that we can monitor and improve the site, we may gather certain information about you when you use it, including details of your domain name and IP address, operating system, browser, version and the web site that you visited prior to our website.

We will not disclose your personal information to third parties except:

• to employees and agents of the Society and its subsidiaries and associates to administer any accounts, products and services provided to you by the Society now or in the future
• to anyone to whom we transfer or may transfer our rights and duties under our agreement with you
• anyone to whom you authorise us to give personal information
• if we have a duty to do so or if the law allows us to do so
• to our regulators, professional advisers and external auditors.

Site Tracking

In order that we can monitor and improve the site, we gather certain information about you when you use it, including details of your domain name and IP address, operating system, browser, version and the website that you visited prior to our website. We collect this information through the use of cookies, web beacons and web logs.

Cookies

A cookie is a text-only string of information that a website transfers to the cookie file of the browser on your computer's hard disk so that the website can remember who you are. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the "lifetime" of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number. Cookies cannot be used by themselves to identify you and are not computer programs, and can't cause any damage to your computer.

Persistent Cookies are created and stored on your computer's hard drive for a period of time to identify it to the site tracking tool. The cookie does not collect any personal information. The cookie we issue contains the following information:

• A uniquely generated random number so that we can differentiate visitors and the expiry date of the cookie

Session Cookies are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave our site. Session Cookies allow you to carry information across pages of our site and avoid having to re-enter information.

Disabling / Enabling Cookies.

By modifying the settings of your browser, you may opt to accept cookies, to be informed when one is about to be placed on your computer, or to automatically reject all cookies.

However, you will not be able to use all the interactive features of our site or our online savings account if cookies are disabled.

More information on cookies can be found at About Cookies

Use of Web Beacons

Web beacons (sometimes known as clear or transparent gifs) are used to identify whether a recipient has opened an HTML email. When the email is opened the web beacon generates a record showing that the email has been viewed. Web Beacons may also recognise when the email was opened, how many times it was forwarded and which URLs (links within the email) were clicked.

These beacons do not carry any personally identifiable information and are only used to track the effectiveness of a campaign.

Disabling Web Beacons within Emails.

If you do not wish to receive Web Beacons you will need to disable HTML images or refuse HTML (select Text only) emails via your email software.

Data Protection

We endeavour to take all reasonable steps to protect your personal information but cannot guarantee the security of any data you disclose on-line. You accept the inherent security risks of providing information and dealing on-line over the Internet and will not hold us responsible for any breach of security unless this is due to our negligence or wilful default.

Please be aware that our site may link to other websites which may be accessed through our site. We are not responsible for the use of any personal information that you give directly to or are collected via such third party sites. You should read the respective data policies or procedures of these linked websites to find out how they use your information.

In the course of undertaking the activities specified in this privacy policy it may be necessary to transfer data to third parties who provide services to us outside the European Economic Area to countries which do not have data protection laws or to countries where your privacy and other fundamental rights will not be protected as extensively as in the UK. If we do this, we will ensure that anyone to whom we transfer your information agrees to treat your information with the same level of protection as provide in the UK.

As part of its services, the Society may occasionally inform you (by email, telephone, mail or otherwise) about special offers, products and services which we consider may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive details through our marketing programme you can opt out of receiving further marketing from the Group by email, telephone or otherwise by contacting the Customer Services Manager at:

Under the Data Protection Act, you have certain rights to see a copy of personal information which we hold about you upon payment of a fee by writing to the Legal Services Department, Newcastle Building Society, Portland House, New Bridge Street, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8AL. We may monitor and record telephone calls for training and security purposes.

© Newcastle Building Society. All rights reserved.

Updated April 2005.