Privacy Policy

The Privacy Policy was last updated 18th November 2021.


Introduction

At The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Limited we respect your right to privacy. This Privacy Notice explains who we are, how we collect, share and use personal information about you, and how you can exercise your privacy rights. This Privacy Policy describes SMMT’s current practices with regard to Personal Data collected by SMMT from you directly through www.autosupplierfinder.com (‘website’).  

The SMMT Automotive Supplier Finder website is owned and operated by The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Limited (SMMT). SMMT is the primary controller of your personal information provide to, or collected by or for, the website. You may choose not to submit the requested information, but that may limit or prohibit the use of the website and services that SMMT is able to offer you.  

SMMT is located at 71 Great Peter Street London SW1P 2BN. If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided at the bottom of this Privacy Notice.

 

Link to other websites

The SMMT Automotive Supplier Finder website contains hyperlinks to other websites that are not operated by SMMT. These hyperlinks are provided for your reference and convenience only and do not imply any endorsement of the activities of these third-party websites or any association with their operators. SMMT does not control these websites and is not responsible for their data or privacy practices. You are strongly advised to review any privacy policy posted on any site you visit before using the site or provide any Personal Data about yourself.

 

What does the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders do?

SMMT is the trade association for the United Kingdom automotive industry. Its role is to promote the interests of the UK automotive industry at home and abroad whilst providing services to the automotive industry. It is headquartered in the United Kingdom, but with operations all around the world.

 

What is SMMT Automotive Supplier Finder?

SMMT’s Automotive Supplier Finder (ASF) is an ever growing, free and comprehensive global database of automotive suppliers, covering over 6,000 automotive products and services and listings from over 9,000 companies.

Registered users browse the directory by product, service or company name to find companies to connect to using the RFQ/RFI function (Request for Quotation /Request for Information).

 

Your data protection rights

You have the following data protection rights:

  • If you wish to access, correct, update or request delete your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below, or (where applicable) by selecting “unsubscribe” at the bottom of the website.
  • In addition, you can in certain circumstances object to the processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information, but will be unable to access the SMMT Automotive Supplier Finder.
  • You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking “unsubscribe” in the marketing emails we send you or “opt-out” by updating your marketing preferences listing under your Automotive Supplier Finder personal details page. 
  • Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
  • You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority (Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and certain non-European countries (including the US and Canada) are available here).

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

 

How is data collected and used?

The personal information that we may collect about you broadly falls into the following categories:

  • Information that you provide voluntarily

SMMT collects personal data on the website when you submit data to us during registration - this includes your full name, company name, contact details (phone and email), job function, job title and marketing preferences. The personal data you provide will only be accessed by SMMT member of staff, Pixl8 (third party supplier) member of staff and your company contacts that have registered on the Automotive Supplier Finder.

Personal data may be used by SMMT to provide you with transactional emails, under the legal basis of legitimate interest, to proceed with conducting services, obligations and/or requests for Automotive Supplier Finder. You may from time to time receive a transactional email such as a request to respond to an RFI/RFQ, update your personal details, verify your email address, emails relating SMMT Meet the Buyer event and/or, but not limited to, request for a new password. If you are the main contact for your company you may receive additional transactional emails such as a request to approve new users to the company profile.

Personal data may be used by SMMT to provide you with information about Automotive Supplier Finder services, send you marketing communications where you have requested us to do so (for example, providing information about SMMT events or SMMT Member events).

  • Information that we collect automatically

Use of IP Addresses

An Internet Protocol (IP) Address is a set of numbers that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you log onto your internet service provider or through your organisation’s local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). Web servers automatically identify your computer by the IP address assigned to it during your session. SMMT may collect IP addresses for the purposes of systems administration and to audit the use of our websites. For more information please refer to our cookie policy.

 

Marketing and Consent

During user registration and login process or at any point where personal data is collected by us about you, you may be asked to indicate your marketing preferences regarding SMMT sending you information about other SMMT products or services, products and services of SMMT members or third parties. You will only be sent information if you have requested to receive it and if after giving your consent you later change your mind, you are free at any time to amend your details to remove your consent via the marketing preference page under your profile.

 

Legal basis for processing personal information

Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.

However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent or there is a contractual relationship, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you or your organisation, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms.  In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you or may otherwise need the personal information to protect your vital interests or those of another person.

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).

The legitimate interests that we rely on to collect and use your personal information include:

  • to set up and administer your account, provide technical and customer support and training, verify your identity, and send important account, subscription and service information;
  • to administer our relationship with you, our business and our third-party providers;
  • to personalize your experience with our Services. We may retain your browsing and usage information to make your searches within our Services more relevant and use those insights to target advertising to you online on our websites. You can manage your marketing preferences via the marketing preference page under your profile;
  • to contact you in relation to, and conduct, surveys or polls you choose to take part in and to analyse the data collected for market research purposes
  • to display information you choose to post, share, upload or make available as part of the Automotive Supplier Finder service and for related collaboration, peer connection, and information exchange;
  • to provide insights about use of the Automotive Supplier Finder service;
  • for internal research and development purposes and to improve, test and enhance the features and functions of our Automotive Supplier Finder service;
  • to meet our internal and external audit requirements, including our information security obligations;
  • to enforce our Terms of Use;
  • to protect our rights, privacy, safety, networks, systems and  property, or those of other persons;
  • for the prevention, detection or investigation of a crime or other breach of law or requirement, loss prevention or fraud;
  • to comply with requests from courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies, and other public and government authorities, including where they are outside your country of residence;
  • in order to participate in, or be the subject of, any sale, merger, acquisition, restructure, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below. 

 

Sharing Personal Data with Third Parties

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:

  • to our group companies, third party services providers and partners who provide data processing services to us (for example, to support the delivery of, provide functionality on, or help to enhance the security of our Website), or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice or notified to you when we collect your personal information. A list of our current group companies and current service providers is available on request;
  • to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
  • to an actual or potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any actual or proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy;
  • to any other person with your consent to the disclosure;
  • to your company employees.

 

Aggregated Data

SMMT aggregates personal data collected during the registration process and uses this together with the information collected via the use of ‘cookies’ to track data such as the total number of visits to our website, visitors to each page of our website, and the domain names of our visitors’ internet service providers. Third parties (including, but limited to, Google analytics, Good Tag Manager and Preside) may be used to assist SMMT with the aggregation process and the analysis of subsequent data obtained. We use this information, which remains in aggregate form, to improve and understand how our visitors use our website.

 

Cookies

SMMT may place a ‘cookie’ on your computer’s browser. Cookies are small text files, which provide us with information about how often someone visits our website, and what they do during those visits. Cookies do not themselves collect any personal data but if you provide such information to  our website, for example by registering with us, it may be linked to the data stored in the cookie. Where such data is used to produce aggregated data; NO PERSONAL DATA IS DISCLOSED IN THIS PROCESS. For further information about the types of Cookies we use, why, and how you can control Cookies, please see our Cookie Notice.

 

Security

SMMT operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection. SMMT Automotive Supplier Finder has security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of your user data under our control. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information.  Employees who have access to Personal Data have been trained to handle such data properly and in accordance with our security protocols and strict standards of confidentiality. Although we cannot guarantee against any loss, misuse, unauthorised disclosure, alteration or destruction of data, we try to prevent such unfortunate occurrences.

 

Updates to this Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make.  We will obtain your consent to any material Privacy Notice changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.

You can see when this Privacy Notice was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Notice.

 

International data transfers

Generally, SMMT does not transfer personal data outside of the European Economic Area. Visitors are advised to note however that if you are visiting  SMMT Automotive Supplier Finder from a country other than the country in which our server is located (currently, the United Kingdom), the various communications will necessarily result in the transfer of information across international boundaries.

In some cases, your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident.  These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country.

We have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Notice. These include implementing the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of personal information between our group companies, which require all group companies to protect personal information they process from the EEA in accordance with European Union data protection law.

Our Standard Contractual Clauses can be provided on request.  We have implemented similar appropriate safeguards with our third party service providers and partners and further details can be provided upon request.

 

Data retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

If you have questions about or need further information how long we retain your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

 

How to contact us

Should you have any queries or concerns regarding use of your personal data, please contact our Data and Compliance Manager by writing to the address 71 Great Peter Street London SW1P 2BN, or email [email protected].