Privacy Policy

1. Scope and updates of this User Privacy Notice

This User Privacy Notice applies to your use of this website and all needcar.parts applications, services (including payment services), products and tools (collectively the “Services”) provided by needcar.parts Inc. or its affiliates (needcar.parts Inc. and the companies it directly or indirectly controls are referred to as “needcar.parts Affiliates”). This User Privacy Notice applies regardless of how you access or use these Services, including access via mobile devices and apps.

2. What personal data we collect and process

We collect your personal data when you use our Services, create a new needcar.parts account, provide us with information via a web form, add or update information in your needcar.parts account, participate in online community discussions or otherwise interact with us. We also collect personal data from other sources (such as other needcar.parts Affiliates, credit agencies or bureaus, and data providers).

3. Purposes and legal bases for data processing and categories of recipients

We process your personal data for various purposes and based on several different legal bases that allow this processing. For example, we process your personal data to provide and improve our Services, to provide you with a personalised user experience on this website, to contact you about your needcar.parts account and our Services, to provide customer service, to provide you with personalised advertising and marketing communications, and to detect, prevent, mitigate and investigate fraudulent or illegal activity. We also share your information with third parties, including service providers acting on our behalf, for these purposes. In addition, we may share your personal data among needcar.parts Affiliates in order to fulfil our contract with you.

4. Cross-border data transfers

Some recipients of your personal data are located outside your jurisdiction or have offices in jurisdictions where data protection laws may provide a different level of protection than the laws in your jurisdiction. When transferring personal data to such recipients, we provide appropriate safeguards.

5. Storage duration and erasure

Your personal data will be stored by us and our service providers in accordance with applicable data protection laws to the extent necessary for the processing purposes set out in this User Privacy Notice. Subsequently, we will delete your personal data in accordance with our data retention and deletion policy or take steps to properly render the data anonymous, unless we are legally obliged or permitted to keep your personal data longer (e.g. for legal compliance, tax, accounting or auditing purposes, or to detect and prevent fraudulent or illegal activity on needcar.parts). In Europe, the retention periods are generally between 6 and 10 years (e.g. for contracts, notifications and business letters). As far as legally permissible or required, we restrict the processing of your data instead of deleting it (e.g. by restricting access to it). This applies in particular to cases where we may still need the data for the execution of the contract or for the assertion of or defence against legal claims, or where such retention is otherwise required or permitted by law. In these cases, the duration of the restriction of processing depends on the respective statutory limitation or retention periods. The data will be deleted after the relevant limitation or retention periods have expired.

6. Rights as a data subject

Subject to possible restrictions under national law, as a data subject, you have the right to access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing and data portability with regard to your personal data. In addition, you can withdraw your consent and object to our processing of your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests. You can also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

7. Cookies & similar technologies

When you use our Services, we and authorised third parties make use of cookies and similar technologies (which we will refer to collectively as “cookies”) to provide you with a better, faster and safer user experience or to show you personalised advertising. You can find detailed information about the use of cookies and similar technologies and your choices in our User Cookie Notice.

8. Data security

We protect your personal data through technical and organisational security measures to minimise risks associated with data loss, misuse, unauthorised access and unauthorised disclosure and alteration. To this end we use network security services and data encryption, for example, as well as physical access restrictions for our data centres and logical access controls for data and systems access.

9. Other important information regarding data protection

This section contains important additional information about the protection of personal data in connection with the use of our Services, including whether you are required to provide personal data.

10. needcar.parts and AI

Responsible AI

We are committed to developing and using artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly, ensuring that we use AI to enhance the needcar.parts experience and respect the needs of the entire needcar.parts community. To achieve this, we have invested in a robust Responsible AI (RAI) approach at needcar.parts which leverages the RAI principles. These principles direct the development, deployment, and use of AI at needcar.parts.

Use of AI

We may use AI-powered tools and products for various purposes, including:

• To improve and enhance our Services.
• To offer you new or enhanced features and products (such as AI-powered listing generation, image background enhancement and AI assistants).
• To make information about listings and services more accessible, such as by offering AI-generated summaries of product reviews.
• To offer you a more customised and personalised experience.
• To provide you with enhanced customer service, for example, to bring real-time answers to chat, to analyse customer service interactions to improve their quality or to better understand customer pain points, and to help respond to customer queries.
• To support fraud detection and compliance checks, and to detect suspicious activity on our properties.
• To analyse data for specific patterns (e.g. for market research purposes).
• To support us in our day-to-day work (e.g. to create summaries, to translate text or to generate images).

AI-powered tools and products may involve personal data processing, but this is not necessarily the case. We use both our own AI models and third-party AI models and systems to deliver AI-powered tools and products. If our use of AI involves the processing of personal data, we rely on the legal bases above for the purposes mentioned therein. If we use any AI system that interacts directly with you, we will let you know.

AI development and training

Where permitted under applicable law, we use personal data collected from our users to train, test, validate, and align our own AI models as well as third-party AI models and systems that we use for the purposes outlined in this User Privacy Notice. We may combine personal data from our users with data from external sources (e.g. from publicly available sources). The use of personal data for AI development and training is based on our legitimate interest to achieve the objectives outlined under “Use of AI” above.

When training, testing, validating, and aligning AI models, we take appropriate steps to mitigate potential privacy impacts (e.g. through filtering, data masking, differential privacy techniques). Where applicable, our steps are based on data protection impact assessments and the legitimate interest assessment that we carry out. These take into account the purpose of the model, the need and suitability of certain training data, as well as measures that can be reasonably taken during training and thereafter.

AI-related individual rights

You have rights with regard to your personal data. Your rights also include the right to object to our processing of your personal data for AI development and training purposes.

 

Privacy Policy

1. Important notice

This Privacy Policy describes how we obtain and use your personal data, why we are allowed to do so by the law, who has access to your personal data and what your rights are. Please review it carefully.

In the event that the Site contains a separate Privacy Statement linked to via the Site homepage, in the case of conflict between that Privacy Statement and this Privacy Policy, the Privacy Statement shall prevail over this Privacy Policy

We take your privacy seriously and use your personal data as further explained in this Privacy Policy. We are the “controller” of the personal data you provide to us.

You have the right to object to us processing your personal data for our legitimate business interests or for direct marketing purposes (including any related profiling). For more information about your rights and how you can exercise them, please see the section Your rights.

2. Personal Data we may collect and why

Personal data is any information which identifies you personally whether directly (for example, your name) or indirectly (for example, information about your use of our products and services).

We may collect the following data about you:

• Contact details: your name, email address, and telephone number so that we can contact you in response to an enquiry you make via our Site or in relation to the products and services that we have from time to time agreed to provide to you;
• Correspondence: we collect any additional personal data you may provide to us from time to time if you contact us by email, letter or telephone, through our Site, by submitting a comment on our Site, or by any other means;
• Survey responses: information from surveys that we use for research purposes, if you choose to respond to them;
• Transaction details: we or our third party providers will collect information relating to transactions you carry out through our Site and for the purposes of fulfilling your orders;
• Details of visits to the Sites: details of your visits to our Site, including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access.

3. Cookies

What are Cookies?

We collect information about your use of our Site through cookies. Cookies are information that files stored on your computer, tablet or smartphone that help websites remember who you are and information about your visit. Cookies can help to display the information on our Site in a way that matches your interests. Most major websites use cookies.

a. What cookies are used on this Site?

The cookies we and our business partners use on our Site are broadly grouped into the following categories:

• Essential – Some of the cookies on our Site are essential for us to be able to provide you with a service you have requested. An example of this could be a cookie used to enable you to log into your account on our Site or which allows communication between your browser and our Site. Our cookie preference cookie described in the section “How can I reject or opt out of receiving cookies?” is also an essential cookie. You may not be able to use our Site without these cookies.
• Analytics – We use analytics cookies to helps us understand how users engage with our Site. An example is counting the number of different people coming to our Site or using a particular feature, rather than the total number of times the site or feature is used. Without this cookie, if you visited our Site once each week for three weeks we would count you as three separate users. We would find it difficult to analyse how well our Site was performing and improve it without these cookies.
• User Cookies – We use cookies to improve your experience by remembering your preferences so we know how you like to use our Site. Examples of this would be remembering you so that you are served with the same content or to remember you when you come back to our Site.
• Social Sharing – We use third party cookies to allow you to share content directly on the social networking/sharing sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Examples would be if you wanted to “like” or “tweet” about us or our products or services. Please see our “Third Party Cookies” section below for more details.
• Interest-Based Advertising – You will have noticed that when you visit websites you will be shown adverts for products and services you may wish to buy. The money made by website owners for showing third party adverts on their websites often pays for the cost of running the website and therefore usually allows you to use the website without having to pay a registration or usage fee. To try and ensure that the adverts you see are relevant to you third party cookies may be used to collect information about the types of things that interest you, for example websites you visit and the geography that you are based in. Having these cookies does not increase the number of adverts you will be shown, but simply makes the adverts you see more relevant. Please see our “Third Party Cookies” section below for more details.

b. How can I reject or opt out of receiving cookies?

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our Site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you use our Site. The “Help” menu of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. For more information about cookies and how to stop cookies being installed or how to delete existing cookies from your hard drive visit the following website: http://www.allaboutcookies.org.

c. Third party cookies

Some of the cookies described in the “What Cookies are used on our Site” section above are stored on your machine by third parties when you use our Site. Third parties may also read cookies on your browser to collect information or to serve content or advertisements to you. We have no control over these cookies or how the third parties use them. They are used to allow that third party to provide a service to us, for example analytics. For more information on these cookies and how to disable them, please see:

• Internet Advertising Bureau website at http://www.youronlinechoices.com/ where you will be able to opt-out of receiving Interest-Based Advertising cookies from some of the third parties listed below; and/or
• If you want to know more about how cookies work and how to manage or delete them, visit the World Wide Web Consortium’s website.

4. How we use your personal data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide you with the products and services you have requested
We use your personal data to accept you as a new or returning customer to provide you with the products and services you have requested in accordance with the Trading Terms or Terms of Trading.

To send you service communications, including in relation to changes to our Trading Terms or Terms of Trading
We use the contact details you have provided to us so that we can communicate with you about the products and services that we provide, including to let you know about major changes to those products and services or to the Trading Terms or Terms of Trading between us or to any related information.

Direct marketing (including by third parties)
If you have provided your consent or we otherwise have the right to do so, we may use your contact details to send you direct marketing and keep you informed of promotional offers by email, SMS, post or telephone relating to our products and services.

You can unsubscribe from our direct marketing at any time by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link in any of our emails or by contacting us.

Our trusted business partners would also like to use your name, email address, postal address and telephone number to inform you of similar products, services and promotional offers. We will only share your personal data with our partners where you have provided us with your consent to do so. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link in any of their emails or by contacting us.

To track your usage of our website, communications, products and services
We use cookies and similar technologies to track your activity on our Site so that we can provide important features and functionality on our Site, monitor its usage, and provide you with a more personalised experienced.

To provide and improve customer support
We use your personal data to be able to provide and improve the customer support we provide to you (for example, where you have questions about our products and services).

To maintain our records and improve data accuracy
Like any business, we process personal data in the course of maintaining and administering our internal records. This includes processing your personal data to ensure that the information we hold about you is kept up to date and accurate.

To respond to enquiries, complaints and disputes
We use the personal data we hold about you to help us respond to any enquiries or complaints you have made, or deal with any dispute which may arise in the course of us providing our products and services to you, in the most effective manner.

To investigate, detect and prevent fraud and comply with our legal obligations
In certain circumstances, we use your personal data only to the extent required in order to enable us to comply with our legal obligations, including for fraud detection, investigation and prevention purposes. This may require us to provide your personal data to law enforcement agencies if they request it.

5. Legal grounds for processing

Data protection law requires us to only process your personal data if we satisfy one or more legal grounds. These are set out in data protection law and we rely on a number of different grounds for the processing we carry out. These are as follows:

Consent

In certain circumstances, we process your personal data after obtaining your consent to do so for the purposes of:

• sending you marketing communications about our products and services;
• sharing your name, email address, postal address and telephone number with our trusted business partners so that they may market to you about their own similar products and services;
• conducting marketing research;
• obtaining your credit score so that we can establish the best possible payment terms we are able to offer to you.

Necessary for the performance of a contract and to comply with our legal obligations

It is necessary for us to process your basic contact details, payment details and information about the business you represent for the performance of the Trading Terms or Terms of Trading between us. In particular, we rely on this legal ground to:

• provide you with the products and services;
• communicate with you about the products and services that we provide to you, including to let you know about major changes to those products and services or to the Trading Terms or Terms of Trading between us or to any related information;
• provide and improve customer support; and
• notify you about changes to our service

If you choose not to give some or all of the aforementioned information to us, this may affect our ability to provide our products and services to you.

In certain circumstances, we also use your personal data only to the extent required in order to enable us to comply with our legal obligations, including to detect, investigate and prevent fraud.

Necessary for the purposes of our legitimate business interests or those of a third party
It is sometimes necessary to collect and use your personal data for the purposes of our legitimate interests as a business, which are to:

• provide you with products and services that are as useful and beneficial as possible, including by personalising our contact with you and making sure we tell you about all the offers that are relevant to you;
• better understand our customer base so that we can improve our products and services and marketing activities (which could also benefit you);
• comply with our contractual obligations to third parties;
• develop and improve our Site to enhance the customer experience;
• train our staff so that we can provide you with a better customer service;
• respond to any enquiries or complaints you have made, or deal with any dispute which may arise in the course of us providing our products and services to you; and
• to ensure that content from our Site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
• ensure effective operational management and internal administration of our business, document retention, compliance with regulatory guidance and exercise or defence of legal claims.

Where we think there is a risk that one of your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms may be affected we will not process your personal data unless there is another legal ground for us to do so (either that we have obtained your consent to the processing or it is necessary for us to perform our contract with you or to comply with our legal obligations).

6. Who we share your personal data with

We may provide your personal data to our suppliers and service providers, including other companies in our group, who provide certain business services for us and act as “processors” of your personal data on our behalf. In addition, we may disclose your personal data if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to protect the rights, property, or safety, of our business, our customers or others. This includes, in specific cases, exchanging information with other organisations for the purposes of fraud protection.

In some cases, the personal data we collect from you may, for the purposes set out above, be transferred outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and such destinations may not have laws which protect your personal data to the same extent as in the EEA. We are required by data protection law to ensure that where we or our “processors” transfer your personal data outside of the EEA, it is treated securely and is protected against unauthorised access, loss or destruction, unlawful processing and any processing which is inconsistent with the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

7. How long we keep your personal data for

We retain your personal data for no longer than is necessary for the purposes(s) for which it was provided. What this means in practice will vary between different types of data. When determining the relevant retention periods, we take into account factors including:

• legal obligation(s) under applicable law to retain data for a certain period of time;
• statute of limitations under applicable law;
• potential or actual disputes; and
• guidelines issued by relevant data protection authorities.

Otherwise, we securely erase your personal data from our systems when it is no longer needed.

8. Your rights

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

Rights	What does this mean?
1.    Rights to be informed	You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your personal data and your rights. This is why we are providing you with the information in this Privacy Policy.
2.     Right of access	You have the right to obtain access to your personal data (if we are processing it) and certain other information (similar to that provided in this Privacy Policy). This is so you are aware and can check that we are using your personal data in accordance with data protection law.
3.    Right to rectification	You are entitled to have your personal data corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
4.    Right to erasure	This is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enable you to request the deletion or removal of your personal data where there is no compelling reason for us to keep using it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions.
5.    Right to restrict processing	You have the right to ‘block’ or supress further use of your personal data in certain circumstances. When processing is restricted, we can still store your personal data, but may not use it further.
6.    Right of data portability	You have the right to obtain and reuse your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format in certain circumstances. In addition, where certain conditions apply, you have the right to have such information transferred directly to a third party.
7.    Right to object to processing	You have the right to object to us processing your personal data for our legitimate business interests or for direct marketing purposes (including in each case any related profiling).
8.    Right to withdraw consent to processing	If you have given your consent to us to process your personal data for a particular purpose (for example, direct marketing), you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that any processing of your personal data up to that point is unlawful).
9.    Right to make a complaint to the data protection authorities	You have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data or believe our processing of your personal data does not comply with data protection law.

9. How to contact us

If you would like to exercise your data protection rights or if you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please feel free to contact us by using the details set out on our Site.

If you’re not satisfied with our response to any enquiries or complaint or believe our processing of your personal data does not comply with data protection law, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) by:

• writing to: Information Commissioner’s Officer, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF;
• calling: 0303 123 1113; or
• submitting a message through the ICO’s website at: ico.org.uk

10. Links to other websites

Our website may contain hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. This Privacy Policy does not apply to those other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit, as they will govern the use of any personal data you provide when visiting those 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.

11. Changes to this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 1 May 2018.

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time, so you may want to check it each time you provide personal data to us.