Yotcom Limited is committed to protecting your personal information when you are using Yotcom Limited services. We want our services to be safe and enjoyable environments for our users. This Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us through the yotcom.com website.

In order to provide you with the full range of Yotcom Limited services, we are sometimes required to collect information about you.

This privacy policy explains the following:

• what information Yotcom Limited may collect about you;

• how Yotcom Limited will use information we collect about you;

• when Yotcom Limited may use your details to contact you;

• whether Yotcom Limited will disclose your details to anyone else;

• your choices regarding the personal information you have provided to us;

• the use of cookies on the yotcom.com website.

As set out above, Yotcom Limited is committed to safeguarding your personal information. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Data Protection Act 1998 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the "data protection laws").

The website contains hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, including cookies, and we urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit or are collected by cookies whilst visiting these websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.

When you sign up to participate in or receive a service from the Yotcom.com website, or register, we may ask for personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name, email address, nationality, department or date of birth.
By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable Yotcom Limited and its service providers to provide you with the services you select.
Yotcom Limited also uses cookies and collects IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet). We use analysis software to look at IP addresses and cookies for the purpose of enhancing your user experience. This information is not used to develop a personal profile of you and the log files are regularly purged.

Yotcom Limited will use your personal information for a number of purposes including the following:

• for "service administration purposes", which means that Yotcom Limited may contact you for reasons related to the service you have signed up for, e.g. to provide you with password reminders or to notify you that a particular service has been suspended for maintenance);

• to contact you about a submission you have made to the forum, including any content you provide;

• to personalise the way yotcom.com content is presented to you;

• IP addresses are used to identify the location of users, the number of visits from different countries and also to block disruptive use; and

• to analyse and improve the services offered on Yotcom.com, e.g. to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience.

Where Yotcom Limited proposes using your personal information for any other uses we will ensure that we notify you first. You will also be given the opportunity to withhold or withdraw your consent for your use other than as listed above.

Yotcom Limited may contact you:

• in relation to the functioning of any service you have signed up for in order to ensure that Yotcom Limited can deliver the services to you;

• where you have opted to receive further correspondence;

• in relation to any contribution you have made to Yotcom.com, e.g. on the yotcom.com forums;

• to invite you to participate in surveys about Yotcom Limited services (participation is always voluntary); and

• to send you our newsletter.

Yotcom Limited won't contact you for marketing purposes, unless you specifically agree to be contacted for these purposes.

We will keep your information confidential except where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies). We will only use your information within Yotcom Limited.

If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to Yotcom.com, or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on Yotcom.com, Yotcom Limited may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.

Where Yotcom Limited reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of England or Wales (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), Yotcom Limited may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your email/Internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant service, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with Yotcom Limited. In the case that you wish to cancel your registration as a Yotcom.com member, once an account is deleted a red flag goes on the database and, while people cannot use the personal information, it stays on the system for a period of one year for administration purposes before being deleted automatically.
Where you contribute to Yotcom.com, Yotcom Limited will generally only keep your content for as long as is reasonably required for the purpose(s) for which it was submitted.

Yotcom Limited believes it has an obligation to record snapshots of history which may include some content provided by users. Therefore, some content submitted to or shared with Yotcom Limited may be retained for prolonged periods of time or potentially indefinitely in the Yotcom Archive, which is true of interesting postings which are published. There may also be rare instances where we will share your contribution with third parties in the interests of maintaining historical archives (e.g. contributions about people's experiences during historic events may be passed to historical publications). Where possible, we will endeavour to inform you upfront or let you know at a later date where we are likely to keep content indefinitely or pass it onto an approved historical archive.

Under the Data Protection Act you have the right to request a copy of the personal information the Yotcom Limited holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. (We charge £10 for information requests and will require you to prove your identity with 2 pieces of approved photographic identification.) We will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct or delete personal information about you on our files.

Please address requests and questions about this or any other question about this Privacy Policy to info@yotcom.com.

This privacy policy may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to the Yotcom.com website. The date of the most recent revisions will appear on this page.

a. What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites. Many sites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.

Cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor the websites to your interests. Users have the opportunity to set their devices to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user and accordingly you may not be able to take full advantage of all of the Yotcom.com features. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

During the course of any visit to yotcom.com, the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your device. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the device (and probably its user) has visited the website before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

b. How does Yotcom Limited use cookies?

Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse the profile of our visitors and help us to provide you with a better user experience. For example: if on a previous visit you went to our Port Directory Services, we might find this out from your cookie and highlight this information on your second and subsequent visits.

Yotcom Limited also use a number of independent measurement and research companies. They gather information regarding the visitors to the yotcom.com site on our behalf using cookies, log file data and code which is embedded on our website. Yotcom Limited use this type of information to help improve the services it provides to its users. Yotcom Limited strictly requires that third parties do not use any information for their own business or other purposes.