From time to time, you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (e.g. name and email address etc) in order to receive or use services on our website. Such services include newsletters, competitions, alert e-mail etc.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable PropVals and its service providers to provide you with the services you select. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy. Our services are designed to give you the information that you want to receive. PropVals will act in accordance with current legislation and aim to meet current Internet best practice.

Information on visitors
During the course of any visit to PropVals, the pages you see, along with something called a cookie, are downloaded to your computer. Most, if not all, websites do this, because cookies allow the website publisher to do useful things like find out whether the computer (and probably its user) has visited the site before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

Any information that is supplied by cookies can help us to provide you with a better service and assists us to analyse the profile of our visitors. For example: if on a previous visit you went to, say, house price statistics for Glasgow, then we might find this out from your cookie and highlight updated statistical information on a second visit.

What is a cookie?
When you enter a site your computer will automatically be issued with a cookie. Cookies are text files that identify your computer to our server. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used. Many sites do this whenever a user visits their site in order to track traffic flows.

Cookies themselves only record those areas of the site that have been visited by the computer in question, and for how long. Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these, of course, means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user.

Use and storage of your personal information
When you supply any personal information to PropVals we have legal obligations towards you in the way we deal with that data. We must collect the information fairly, that is, we must explain how we will use it and tell you if we want to pass the information on to anyone else. In general, any information you provide to PropVals will only be used by ourselves and by our service providers. It will never be supplied to any other party without first obtaining your consent, unless we are obliged or permitted by law to disclose it. Also, if you post or send offensive or inappropriate content anywhere on or to PropVals and we consider such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, we will use whatever information is available about you to stop such behaviour. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school or e-mail provider about the content and your behaviour.

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you use the service you have requested, and remove it in the event that the purpose has been met.We will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

If you are notified on a PropVals page that your information may be used to allow us to contact you for "service administration purposes", this means that we may contact you for a number of purposes related to the service we deliver. For example, we may wish to provide you with password reminders or notify you that a particular service is temporarily unavailable. We will not contact you for third party promotional purposes, but we will notify you of improvements to the service or new services on PropVals.

How to find and control your cookies
If you're using Internet Explorer 6.0 and above:
1. Choose Tools, then
2. Internet Options
3. Click the Privacy Tab
4. Click on Custom Level
5. Click on the 'Advanced' button
6. Check the 'override automatic cookie handing' box and select Accept, Block or Prompt for action as appropriate.

If you're using Internet Explorer 5.0 or 5.5:
1. Choose Tools, then
2. Internet Options
3. Click the Security tab
4. Click on Custom Level
5. Scroll down to the sixth option to see how cookies are handled by IE5 and change to Accept, Disable, or Prompt for action as appropriate.

If you're using Internet Explorer 4.0:
1. Choose View, then
2. Internet Options
3. Click the Advanced tab
4. Scroll down to the yellow exclamation icon under Security and choose one of the three options to regulate your use of cookies.

How do you know which of the sites you've visited use cookies?
If you're using Internet Explorer 5.0 or 6.0 and above:
1. Choose Tools, then
2. Internet Options
3. Click the General tab
4. Click Settings
5. View Files

If you're using Internet Explorer 4.0:
On your Task Bar, click:
1. View, then
2. Internet Options
3. Under the tab General (the default tab) click
4. Settings
5. View Files.

How to see your cookie code
Just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.