About Us - myguide

myguide Terms of Use

Please read these terms of use ("the terms") carefully before using the myguide website (the website). You should access and use the website and content only if you agree to these terms.

By using this site, you are agreeing to these terms.

If you don’t accept these terms

If you do not accept these terms in full, you do not have permission to access the content of the website and you should stop using the website immediately.

Ownership

This website is supplied by The Department for Education. ‘myguide’ and ‘we’ refer to:

Department for Education, Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BT

References to ‘you’ mean anyone using the website.

Changes to the website

We can alter, suspend or stop any service on the website, or its content, without telling you.

We can change these terms at any time. You can find the date we last changed the terms at the end of this page. We recommend that you visit this page from time to time to make sure that you know about any changes we have made. By continuing to use the website after any changes to the terms, you are agreeing to the changes.

You accept that you have no legal claim if we change the website or these terms.

Using the website

You agree to use the website only for lawful purposes, and in a way which does not infringe the rights of anyone else or affect anyone else's use of the website.

You agree not to act in an unlawful manner or in a way which may harass or distress anyone else.

Using email accounts

The website offers you the chance to create your own email address and to send and receive emails from that address. Any email account we set up for you is governed by these terms.

When you register for our email service, you agree to:

give your full name, not a nickname
give information that is accurate, up to date and complete and keep your information accurate and up to date.

To update your personal details on the website:

log in
click on ’Settings’ and select the ’Change personal details’ option.

The website and email service is free (though you will need to pay any service or phone charges for accessing the internet). Because the service is free, we do not guarantee:

it will be available
it will be working properly or
we will continue to provide the website or the email service.

We can:

close down or change the website or our email service at any time
refuse to provide our email service for any reason and
make rules and set limits about using our email service, including the number or size of the email messages that you can send or receive and the maximum disk space that we will allocate to you on our servers (currently 30Mb).

We will tell you if we are going to introduce or change these rules or limits.

We are not responsible if any emails you send or receive using our email service are not stored or are deleted.

You alone are responsible for any content or other materials that you send by email and you agree you will not use your email account:

for any unlawful purposes
to transmit or communicate any offensive or illegal material
to transmit or communicate any material which infringes any person's rights such as copyright
for commercial purposes including without limitation publishing or circulating any promotional material or advertisements, for trying to raise money or sell or supply goods or services
to send any material which is likely to harm our or any other person's reputation
to send any materials that have not been asked for including chain letters, junk mail or spam
to transmit any material which is likely to harm our or anyone else's computer systems
to pretend to be someone else or pretend you are associated with a person
to transmit material which makes excessive demands on bandwidth or
to send materials which use more than 2 Mb of capacity.

While we will not look at the content of emails before you send or receive them (unless we have to do so by law), if you send any content that does not meet these terms, we reserve the right to:

remove that content or block access to it and
respond to any complaints we receive about it.

We will not be liable to you if we remove any content because we believe that it does not meet these terms.

We can keep any content that you send or receive using our email service if:

the law says we have to
we need to do so to meet these terms or
we have to respond to third-party complaints about the content.

We can end your email account and delete all information stored on it if you do not access your myguide account for 90 days or longer.

We can suspend or end your right to use the email service immediately if in our sole opinion you are not meeting these terms, or if a regulatory authority asks us to. If we end your right to access the email service, we may immediately close down your account and delete all information associated with it.

Disclaimer and limiting liability

We provide the content of this website for general background information only. You should consult a qualified adviser for advice on any specific question or problem.

You should not rely on the accuracy of any part of the content. We will not be liable for any damage, loss, costs or expenses which arise directly or indirectly from you using this website.

We make every effort to make sure that the website does not contain any error or defect, but we do not accept responsibility for any damage to or loss of data on your computer system, network or server that results from you using the website, or any content made available through the website.

As far as the law allows, and except as expressly set out in these terms, we will not be responsible for any warranties and representations, express or implied, in respect of the content including without limitation warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement of third party rights or any law, compatibility, security and accuracy.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by using this website or the services provided through this website.

We will be liable for:

death or personal injury caused by our negligence and
anything the law says we are liable for.

Downtime

Computer and telecommunications systems may contain faults, including viruses, and may from time to time need downtime (time when the website is not available) for repair, maintenance and upgrading.

So, we do not guarantee that the website will always be available, but we will make reasonable efforts to reduce the time when it is not available. You cannot claim we have broken these terms because of downtime.

Links to other websites

The website provides links to the websites of third parties. For example, when you search on the internet, the search results are provided as links to third party websites. We do not recommend the content, products, advertising or other materials available from these third-party websites and you should use them at your own risk. We are not responsible for any damages, loss, cost or expense arising from your use of these third party websites.

We cannot guarantee that the links to third-party websites and services will work all the time.

Our privacy policy does not apply to third-party websites. You should be aware of the privacy policies of these websites so that you understand how these third parties will use your personal data.

The internet search facility is powered by Yahoo. We are not liable for its availability or for the search results or for your reliance on the search results.

Copyright

We, or third parties who have granted us licences to use the material, own all the content provided on the website. This includes all the:

graphics, code and text
learning materials
software
video and, digital downloads
data compilation and information
music
images, icons and logos
design
names and
buttons.

You cannot copy, reproduce, publish, upload, post, transmit or distribute any of the content.

You can download and temporarily store these pages for your own personal and private use. You can also print them for your own non-commercial use as long as you do not change the content and you do not use them in any other publication without getting our prior permission.

You cannot copy or use the ’ myguide ’ mark, the ’myguide.gov.uk’ domain or other names, images or logos identifying the Department for Education or third parties, and their products and services, without getting permission in writing from the Department.

For further information on copyright see http://www.education.gov.uk/copyright

Password

If you want to get your own email address, you will need to register with us. We will ask you for your first name, your family name and a password, and we will give you a username and email address. As you will be responsible for all activities that occur under your username and password, you should keep them confidential. You must tell us immediately if anyone else is using your username or password without your permission, or if you believe that your username or password are no longer confidential.

We can ask you to alter your username and password if we believe that they are no longer secure.

General

You should not rely on any statement we or any of our representatives have made about using this website (other than those set out in these terms).

If we cancel any of these terms, or we cannot enforce them, those terms that are not affected will still apply.

Your and our rights under these terms can be waived only in writing. If you or we do not exercise a right, we are not waiving that right.

Governing law

These terms will be governed by the laws of England and Wales.

myguide Privacy Statement

This privacy statement explains how we (The Department for Education or ’ myguide ’):

collect information from you through this website
use the information and
use cookies.

If you have any questions or comments about:

how we handle your personal information or
our privacy statement

please contact us through our Feedback page in the ‘About Us’ section of this website.

We are registered as a Data Controller under the United Kingdom Data Protection Act, 1998.

What personal information do we collect?

You can use the website without providing any personal data. However, you will have to provide personal data if you:

register with us to get your own myguide user name and email address or
call our helpline or contact us through our Feedback page

If you want to register to get your own email address and use myguide’s full suite of features, you will need to give:

your first name and family name
a password and
some ‘memorable’ information (something that means something special to you such as a special date or name). If you forget your password you should ask a member of staff who can then arrange for your password to be reset.
your postcode.

Optional Information

In addition to the information you are required to give during registration, you will be asked some questions which you do not have to answer. We will ask you for:

Consent to use your details for marketing purposes
Your age group and
Your gender

After you have registered we will ask you:

about your ethnicity and
about your qualifications and
where you heard about myguide

but you don't have to provide this information.

We may transfer your information to countries or jurisdictions which do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK, if necessary for the above purposes. If we do make such a transfer, we will, if appropriate, put a contract in place to ensure that your information is protected.

Updating your personal details

To update the personal details that you gave to us when you registered:

log on to the website
click on ‘Settings’ and
select the ‘Personal details’ option.

Updating your Address details

To update the address details that you gave to us when you registered:

log on to the website
click on ‘Settings’ and
select the ‘Address details’ option.

Updating your Contact Consent details

To update the contact details that you may have given to us when you registered:

log on to the website
click on ‘Settings’ and
select the ‘Contact consent’ option.

If you change your mind about being contacted or the way that you agreed to be contacted then you can change the setting on these screens.

Please note: we may record calls to the helpdesk for quality and training purposes only. We will store calls for about three months and keep them confidential.

How do we use your personal data?

We will use your personal data:

to deliver our services on the website and support you when you use the website
for administration
to make sure you are keeping to our Terms of use
for marketing
for auditing
for general statistics and research
for making sure the website is working properly
for getting professional advice and
for any legal purpose.

Who do we disclose your personal information to?

We will only give your personal information:

to anyone who takes over our business who can use it only for the purposes described in this privacy statement
to service providers such as research and evaluation agencies who we employ to process data for us
to our auditors and legal advisors and
if the law says we have to.

You have a right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you. We will charge you a small fee for this. To get a copy of this information, please call the helpline on 0800 0921 129.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files which are sent to your browser by a web server and stored on your computer's hard disk. We use cookies on our site to monitor how visitors use it.

The cookies we use on the website do not collect or store any personal information.

You can disable cookies but, if you do, you may not be able to use certain features on our site. If you want to know how to remove cookies from your browser, go to the All About Cookies website.

Security

We have a security policy which includes a number of sophisticated security measures to protect against personal data under our control being lost, misused or altered. Your email account is hosted on a secure and certified website and the email account and the pages where you login and logout are protected by industry-standard security features.

You should always log off from your myguide account at the end of each session to stop anyone else using it.

Last Updated: 10^th June 2010.