Privacy & Cookies

This Privacy Policy helps you understand what personal information we collect, why we collect it, what we do with it and the choices you have, including how to access and update information.

Our Policy applies to you if you use our products or services in store, over the phone, online, through our mobile applications or if you use any of our websites or interact with us on social media (our "Services").

Information We Collect

We collect personal information about you when you visit one of our stores, use one of our websites or web or mobile device applications ("Mobile Apps") or if you communicate with us by phone, e-mail and social media. We refer to our websites and Mobile Apps as "Online Services" in this Policy.

The types of personal information we collect includes:

• Personal details such as your name, address, date of birth, email address, phone number and other contact information.
• Transaction information, such as the product you purchased, its price, your method of payment and your payment details, which are anonymised as per Payment Card Industry Security Standards (PCI DSS).
• Information about you, like your employment details, financial position and information taken from identification documents, like your passport or driving licence, when we review your application for a phone contract or loans offered by selected third parties partners and partners.
• Your account information, such as dates of payments owed and received, the subscription services you use, or any other information related to your account.
• The phone numbers that you call or send messages to, or the phone numbers that you receive calls and messages from.
• The date and time of the calls and messages you send or receive through our network, and your location at the time these communications take place.

When you're using our Online Services, the information we collect includes:

• Account information, like your username, password, and other identifiers or credentials you use to access our Online Services, or to buy our products and services, details of your shopping preferences, such as your favourite brands and products, as well as which of our stores you prefer to shop in.
• Information that you provide in your dealings with us. This includes when you register to use our Online Services, or when you subscribe to our services or request further services and/or information from us.
• Details of your visits to one of our websites or in-store WI-FI or App, and the resources that you access. Examples include ads that you click, device information and your location.
• IP address, type of device you are browsing from and cookie information.

More information is available in our Cookie Policy.

The situations when you provide personal information could include when you:

• Purchase products at our stores or through our contact centre.
• Register or use our Online Services.
• Request to receive marketing or other communications.
• Use our Wi-Fi networks or other in-store tech.
• Enter one of our competitions or when you complete one of our customer surveys.
• Submit information when you're providing feedback or making an enquiry.
• Use interactive features of our Online Services.

More sensitive information

Under data protection law, some personal information is considered more sensitive, including information relating to a person's racial origins, certain beliefs or health conditions. It can also include information relating to criminal activity.

We do not expect to handle any of your more sensitive information unless it becomes relevant in our dealings with you or you volunteer the information. Examples of this might be where you have a vulnerability or health condition which is relevant to our dealings with you; where you are involved in a medical emergency or accident; if the information is relevant to a legal dispute or complaint; or while addressing criminality impacting our business. On the rare occasions we handle more sensitive information, we only do so as allowed by data protection law (for example, where we have your consent, to protect someone's vital interests or to prevent or detect crime) or as required by law.

How we protect children and customers in vulnerable circumstances?

We understand the importance of protecting those that may be in vulnerable circumstances or who are children, especially when signing up for a new mobile phone contract with us.

We do not allow under 18s to sign up for a new mobile phone contract. Our Online Services are aimed at adults, and we do not knowingly collect or expect to collect or store children's information. In the event a child visits our website we ensure the highest privacy by design, including only collecting the minimum information that is necessary.

Occasionally, we may need to handle more sensitive information of customers with vulnerabilities or in vulnerable circumstances. This can include, for example, information about medical conditions or symptoms they have. We do this to assist our customers who have a need for additional support. We only collect the minimal amount of information required to achieve this, and only keep it for as long as reasonably necessary.

Digital advertising and personalisation

We advertise across all digital platforms with both targeted and non-targeted advertising. For targeted advertising, we may use information obtained through the use of cookies or similar technologies in your web browser to display ads to you, which you may see on other websites or digital platforms. We will seek your consent to deploy these kinds of cookies and similar technologies through our website cookies consent mechanism. More information is available in our Cookie Policy.

In order to ensure that appropriate ads are displayed, we work with partners and agencies to analyse and prepare the information, and measure the effectiveness of our advertising. See below the section on "Who we share your personal information with". Where applicable, we or our advertising partners will combine this information with your transaction information and other information, such as your cookie consent instruction, and information from external or publicly available sources. By building a richer picture of your preferences in this way, we can make sure you see ads most relevant to you. We also use this information to ensure you do not receive unnecessary ads.

Our digital advertising includes advertising across social media platforms. The media owners we most commonly work with are Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and Google (which owns YouTube). The individual privacy policies are linked for your information.

We will also use the information we have on existing customers for modelling purposes, to help identify potential new customers who may be interested in our products.

Our service providers

We work with partners, suppliers, insurers and agencies so they can process your personal information on our behalf and only where they meet our standards on the processing of data and security. We only share information that helps them provide their services to us or to help them provide their services to you. For example, some of our service providers place advertising for us online, about our products and services and those of our retail partners, suppliers and third parties. As a result, where you have indicated you are happy to receive online marketing from us in our cookie preference centre, you might see online advertising that we or our partners have placed on the websites you visit, or the interactive services you use.

Other third-party service providers include:

• Three as the provider of iD Mobile's network coverage, this includes sharing the MSISDN a unique number that identifies a subscriber on a network.
• Providers that we work with to delivery our marketing and campaigns, and facilitate our competitions.
• Manufacturers of products sold to our customers for whom we carry out repairs.
• Companies that enable us to collect your reviews and comments, both online and offline, such as Feefo.
• Companies which run our contact centres because they need your personal information to identify and contact you.
• Third party vendors who help us to manage and maintain the Group IT infrastructure.
• Companies that provide insights and analytics services for us so we can stock the right products, send the right marketing campaigns and understand our business and customers better.
• Specialist providers of digital advertising and personalising content to provide customers with adverts tailored to them.
• Partners that support our services, such as where we need to arrange a specialist engineer visit.
• Companies that work on our behalf processing and sorting information, monitoring how customers use our websites, issuing our emails for us and collecting product/customer feedback from you via surveys.

Where you have asked us to deliver your purchases either to the store ("Click & Collect") or any other place, we will also share your address and contact details with our delivery partners like DPD or Royal Mail, to ensure a successful delivery. These partners may contact you to provide periodic updates on your delivery.

Credit Reference Agencies and insurance

In order to process your mobile contract we will supply your personal information to credit reference agencies (“CRAs”) and they will perform a credit check. Throughout your contract we will also share your payment history with them, and they will give us information about you. This will include information from your order and about your financial situation and financial history. CRAs will supply to us both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information, and fraud prevention information. We will use this information to:

• Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford the contract.
• Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us.
• Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering.
• Trace and recover debts.

The identities of the CRAs, and the ways in which they use and share personal information, are explained in more detail at www.equifax.co.uk/crain.

We will also continue to exchange information about you with CRAs on an on-going basis, including about your settled accounts and any debts not fully repaid on time. CRAs will share your information with other organisations. Your information will also be linked to that of your spouse, any joint applicants or other financial associates.

If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us.

Security Measures

We take our responsibility to protect your information very seriously. All companies within the Currys Group use physical, technical and organisational security measures to protect the personal information supplied by you against loss, destruction, and any unauthorised access by third parties. We do this in several ways which include, but is not limited to:

• Following the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) when handling debit and credit card information.
• Adhering to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines when collecting, processing and storing information.
• Using encryption protocols and software to protect your personal information during transmission.
• Carrying out regular back-ups of our critical information.
• Regular testing and evaluation of our security measures.

Contact us

If you would like to access any of your rights as listed above please completed the Web Form. If you have any questions with regards to this Policy, please see the contact us options available on our website.

Alternatively, you can contact our Data Protection Office at:

• Email: [email protected]
• Post: Data Protection Office, London Campus at Waterloo, 8th Floor, 10 York Road, London, SE1 7ND

You can also contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you have any concerns or complaints with how Currys has handled your personal information: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/

This Privacy Policy was last updated August 2023 and replaces all previous versions. This Policy is regularly reviewed and if updates and changes are made we may notify you either by email or with an announcement on social channels.

Bought in lists

We will only use bought-in lists for texts, emails or recorded calls where we have proof of opt-in consent which specifically names us.

1. We will only use the information on the lists for marketing purposes.
2. We will delete any irrelevant or excessive personal information.
3. We will screen the names on bought-in lists against our own list of customers who say they do not want our calls, texts or emails.
4. We will carry out small sampling exercises to assess the reliability of the information on the lists.
5. When marketing by post or email, we will include our company name, address and telephone number in the content.
6. We will always tell customers where we obtained their details.
7. We will provide you with a link to our Privacy Policy.
8. We will undertake adequate due diligence when we first select information suppliers and in our ongoing work with them in order to make sure it has received and used personal information fairly.
9. We will make sure that adequate contractual terms are in place requiring information suppliers to make sure personal information was obtained and provided fairly and in accordance with the requirements of GDPR.
10. We will take all necessary steps to satisfy ourselves that the information has been properly sourced, permissioned and cleaned. We will make sure that sufficient due diligence is undertaken and contractual arrangements are in place with suppliers of personal information.