Privacy notice and cookie policy

PRIVACY NOTICE

We are committed to protecting your privacy when dealing with your personal information. This privacy notice provides details about the information we collect about you, how we use it and how we protect it. It also provides information about your rights.

How we collect personal information

We collect personal information from you and from third parties (anyone acting on your behalf, for example, brokers, health-care providers and so on).

Where you provide us with information about other people, you must make sure that they have seen a copy of this privacy notice and are comfortable with you giving us their information.

We collect personal information from you through your contact with us, including by phone (we may record or monitor phone calls to make sure we are keeping to legal rules, codes of practice and internal policies, and for quality assurance purposes), by email, through our websites, through our apps, by post, by filling in application or other forms, by entering competitions, through social media or face-to-face (for example, in medical consultations, diagnosis and treatment).

We may collect information from:

  • your parent or guardian, if you are under 18 years old;
  • a family member, or someone else acting on your behalf;
  • doctors, other clinicians and health-care professionals, hospitals, clinics and other health-care providers;
  • any service providers who work with us in relation to your product or service, if we don’t provide it to you direct, such as providing you with apps, medical treatment, dental treatment or health assessments.

If we provide you with insurance products and services, we may collect information from:

  • the main member, if you are a dependant under a family insurance policy;
  • your employer, if you are covered by an insurance policy your employer has taken out;
  • brokers and other agents (this may be your broker if you have one, or your employer’s broker if they have one);
  • other third parties we work with, such as agents working on our behalf, other insurers and reinsurers, actuaries, auditors, solicitors, translators and interpreters, tax advisers, debt-collection agencies, credit-reference agencies, fraud-detection agencies (including health-insurance counter-fraud groups), regulators, data-protection supervisory authorities, health-care professionals, other health-care providers and medical-assistance providers.

If we provide you with health-care, dental or care-home services, we may collect information from:

  • your employer, if you are covered by a contract for services your employer has taken out or if we are providing occupational health services;
  • brokers and other agents (this may be your broker if you have one, or your employer’s broker if they have one);
  • those paying for the products or services we provide to you, including other insurers, public-sector commissioners and embassies.

What we use your personal information for

We normally process standard personal information if this is necessary to provide the services set out in a contract, it is in our or a third party’s legitimate interests or it is required or allowed by any law that applies.

By law, we must have a lawful reason for processing your personal information. We process standard personal information about you if this is:

  • necessary to provide the services set out in a contract − if we have a contract with you, we will process your personal information in order to fulfil that contract (that is, to provide you and your dependants with our products and services);
  • in our or a third party’s legitimate interests;
  • required or allowed by law.

We share your information with:

  • other organisations you belong to, or are professionally associated with, in order to confirm your entitlement to claim discounts on our products and services;
  • doctors, clinicians and other health-care professionals, hospitals, clinics and other health-care providers;
  • suppliers who help deliver products or services on our behalf;
  • people or organisations we have to, or are allowed to, share your personal information with by law (for example, for fraud-prevention or safeguarding purposes, including with the Care Quality Commission);
  • the police and other law-enforcement agencies to help them perform their duties, or with others if we have to do this by law or under a court order;
  • if we sell or buy any business or assets, the potential buyer or seller of that business or those assets.

If we provide health-care and care-home services, we share your information with:

  • your employer, if your employer is paying for the services we are providing;
  • our insurance partners, for example, brokers, reinsurers, actuaries, auditors, solicitors, translators and interpreters, tax advisers, debt-collection agencies, credit-reference agencies, fraud-detection agencies, regulators, data-protection supervisory authorities;
  • those paying for the products or services we provide to you, including insurers, public-sector commissioners and embassies;
  • those providing your treatment and other benefits.

How long we keep your personal information

We keep your personal information in line with set periods calculated using the following criteria.

  • How long you have been a customer with us, the types of products or services you have with us, and when you will stop being our customer.
  • How long it is reasonable to keep records to show we have met the obligations we have to you and by law.
  • Any time limits for making a claim.
  • Any periods for keeping information which are set by law or recommended by regulators, professional bodies or associations.
  • Any relevant proceedings that apply.

If you would like more information about how long we will keep your information for, please contact us at info@venicemedicalassistance.com.

Your rights

You have the right to access your information and to ask us to correct any mistakes and delete and restrict the use of your information. You also have the right to object to us using your information, to ask us to transfer information you have provided, to withdraw permission you have given us to use your information and to ask us not to use automated decision-making which will affect you. For more information, see below. You have the following rights (certain exceptions apply).

Right of access: you have the right to make a request for details of your personal information and a copy of that personal information

Right to rectification: you have the right to have inaccurate information about you corrected or removed

Right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’): you have the right to have certain personal information about you deleted from our records

Right to restriction of processing: you have the right to ask us to use your personal information for restricted purposes only

Right to object: you have the right to object to us processing (including profiling) your personal information in cases where our processing is based on a task carried out in the public interest or where we have let you know it is necessary to process your information for our or a third party’s legitimate interests. You can object to us using your information for direct marketing and profiling purposes in relation to direct marketing.

Right to data portability: you have the right to ask us to transfer the personal information you have given us to you or to someone else in a format that can be read by computer.

Right to withdraw consent: you have the right to withdraw any permission you have given us to handle your personal information. If you withdraw your permission, this will not affect the lawfulness of how we used your personal information before you withdrew permission, and we will let you know if we will no longer be able to provide you with your chosen product or service.

Right in relation to automated decisions: you have the right not to have a decision which produces legal effects which concern you or which have a significant effect on you based only on automated processing, unless this is necessary for entering into a contract with you, it is authorised by law or you have given your permission for this. We will let you know if we make automated decisions, our legal reasons for doing this and the rights you have.

Please note: Other than your right to object to us using your information for direct marketing (and profiling for the purposes of direct marketing), your rights are not absolute. This means they do not always apply in all cases, and we will let you know in our correspondence with you how we will be able to meet your request relating to your rights. If you make a request, we will ask you to confirm your identity if we need to, and to provide information that helps us to understand your request better. If we do not meet your request, we will explain why. In order to exercise your rights please contact info@venicemedicalassistance.com.

COOKIE POLICY

What is a cookie?

A cookie, also known as a browser cookie, is a text file containing small amounts of information which a server may download to your computer hard drive, tablet or mobile device when you visit a website or use an app.

There are different types of cookies which are used to do different things. These include letting you navigate between different pages on a website efficiently, remembering preferences you have given and helping us to identify ways to improve your overall site experience. Others are used to provide you with advertising which is more tailored to your interests, or to measure the number of site visits and the most popular pages users visit.

First party and third party cookies

Cookies can be set and controlled by the operator of the website which the user is browsing such as Bupa for this website (known as a ‘first party cookie’) or a third party such as Facebook, for example to display advertisements and social sharing features, (known as a ‘third party cookie’).

Due to their core role of enhancing and enabling usability or site processes, disabling certain cookies may prevent you from using certain aspects of the Bupa website, such as generating a quote or placing an order.

Broadly speaking, there are two different types of browser cookie:

(1) Session cookies are stored in the computer’s memory during a user’s browsing session and are automatically deleted from the user’s computer when the browser is closed or the session is deemed to have ended.

These cookies usually store a session ID that is not personally identifiable to users, allowing the user to move from page to page without having to log-in repeatedly. They are widely used by commercial websites; for example to keep track of items that a consumer has added to a shopping basket.

Session cookies do not collect any information from the user’s computer and they expire at the end of the user’s browser session. They can also become inaccessible after the session has been inactive for a specified length of time, usually 20 or 30 minutes.

(2) Persistent cookies are stored on the user’s computer and are not deleted when the browser is closed. Persistent cookies can be used to retain user preferences for a particular website, allowing those preferences to be used in future browsing sessions.

Persistent cookies usually assign a unique ID to the user’s browser and they are usually configured to identify a user for a prolonged period of time, from days to months or even years.

How do we use cookies?

The cookies used by Venice Medical Assistance help us to track basic visitor information and to learn about the behaviour of visitors to this website and how they respond to our marketing communications and for research and statistical purposes. The more we learn, the better we are able to provide relevant and interesting content and services. The cookies that Venice Medical Assistance uses do not collect personal information such as name, address, email address and do not link any information they collect to an individual. From time to time Venice Medical Assistance may also analyse IP addresses, user agent strings or other anonymous data sources. All data is collected in an anonymous and aggregated form.

How can you control the use of cookies?

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies and your use of this website constitutes your consent to this website setting cookies on your computer or other device.

It is possible to disable cookies on most web browsers.  We recommend that if you do not want this website to set cookies on your computer or other device you should either; not use the site and delete any Venice Medical Assistance cookies that may have already been placed, or change the settings in your website browser to disable cookies.  However, because cookies allow you to take advantage of some of this website’s essential features, we recommend you leave them turned on.