Privacy Policy for douglastowingandrecovery.ie

Last Updated: June 10, 2025

Douglas Towing and Recovery (“we”, “our”, or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of our website visitors and service users. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect your personal data when you visit our website, douglastowingandrecovery.ie, and use our services, in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Irish data protection laws.

1. Who We Are

Douglas Towing and Recovery is based in Ireland. Contact Name: Mark Douglas Email: info@douglastowingandrecovery.ie

2. What Personal Data We Collect

We may collect and process the following types of personal data:

• Contact Information: This may include your name, email address, phone number, and postal address, which you voluntarily provide when you contact us through our website, by email, or by phone to enquire about our services.
• Service-Related Information: Details necessary to provide our towing and recovery services, such as your location, vehicle details, and incident information.
• Website Usage Data (Analytics): Information about how you use our website, including your IP address, browser type, operating system, referral source, length of visit, pages viewed, and navigation paths. This data is collected through Google Analytics (see Section 6).
• Marketing and Communication Preferences: Your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
• Cookies and Tracking Technologies: Information collected through cookies and similar technologies (see Section 6).

3. How We Collect Your Personal Data

We collect personal data in the following ways:

• Directly from you: When you fill out forms on our website, send us emails, make phone calls, or otherwise communicate with us directly.
• Automatically: As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, Browse actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies.

4. How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes and on the following legal bases:

• To provide our services: To respond to your enquiries, provide towing and recovery services, and manage your service requests.
  • Legal Basis: Performance of a contract or steps taken at your request prior to entering into a contract.
• To communicate with you: To send you service updates, important notices, and respond to your queries.
  • Legal Basis: Performance of a contract, legitimate interests (to respond to your communications), or consent (for marketing communications where required).
• To improve our website and services: To understand how our website is used, identify areas for improvement, and enhance user experience.
  • Legal Basis: Legitimate interests (to improve our business and services).
• For marketing purposes: To provide you with information about our services that may be of interest to you, where you have consented to receive such communications.
  • Legal Basis: Consent.
• For internal record keeping and administrative purposes: To manage our business operations, maintain records, and comply with our legal obligations.
  • Legal Basis: Legitimate interests (for running our business), legal obligation.
• To ensure the security of our website: To protect our website from fraud and other security threats.
  • Legal Basis: Legitimate interests (to protect our business and systems).

5. Disclosure of Your Personal Data

We may share your personal data with the following categories of recipients:

• Service Providers: We may share your data with third-party service providers who perform services on our behalf, such as IT and system administration services, website hosting, analytics providers (like Google Analytics), and marketing services. These providers are obligated to protect your data and only use it for the purposes for which it was provided.
• Legal and Regulatory Authorities: We may disclose your personal data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g., a court or a government agency).
• Professional Advisors: We may share your data with our professional advisors (e.g., lawyers, accountants) as necessary for them to provide services to us.
• Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your personal data may be transferred as part of that transaction.

We will not sell, rent, or lease your personal data to third parties.

6. Cookies and Google Ads

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies to enhance your Browse experience and for advertising purposes.

• What are Cookies? Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They are widely used to make websites work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.
• How We Use Cookies:
  • Strictly Necessary Cookies: These are essential for the operation of our website (e.g., to enable you to navigate the site and use its features).
  • Analytical/Performance Cookies (Google Analytics): We use Google Analytics to collect information about how visitors use our website. This includes details such as the number of visitors, the pages they visit, and the source of their visit. We use this information to improve our website and understand user behaviour. The data collected is aggregated and anonymised.
  • Advertising/Targeting Cookies (Google Ads): We use Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) to advertise our services across the internet. Google Ads uses cookies to show you relevant advertisements based on your past visits to our website. These cookies track your Browse habits and activity on our website to display targeted ads on other websites you visit. This is known as “remarketing.”
• Google Ads and Third-Party Vendors: Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to our users based on their visit to our site and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google Ad and Content Network Privacy Policy.
• Your Cookie Choices:
  • Most web browsers allow you to control cookies through their settings. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies.
  • You can manage your preferences for Google advertising by visiting Google’s Ad Settings: https://adssettings.google.com/
  • You can also opt out of various third-party advertising cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page: http://optout.networkadvertising.org/
  • Please note that if you disable or refuse cookies, some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly.

7. Data Retention

We will retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

8. International Transfers

As we are based in Ireland, your data will primarily be processed within the European Economic Area (EEA). However, some of our service providers, including Google (for Google Analytics and Google Ads), may process data outside the EEA. Where your personal data is transferred outside the EEA, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your data, such as standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, or by ensuring the recipient is part of a framework that provides adequate protection (e.g., the EU-US Data Privacy Framework).

9. Your Data Protection Rights

Under GDPR, you have the following rights concerning your personal data:

• The right to be informed: You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data. This Privacy Policy provides this information.
• The right of access: You have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• The right to rectification: You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you.
• The right to erasure (”the right to be forgotten”): You have the right to request the deletion of your personal data under certain circumstances.
• The right to restrict processing: You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data under certain conditions.
• The right to data portability: You have the right to receive the personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format and to transmit that data to another controller.
• The right to object: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain situations, particularly where we are processing it based on legitimate interests or for direct marketing.
• Rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling: You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at info@douglastowingandrecovery.ie. We will respond to your request within one month.

10. Security of Your Personal Data

We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal data from accidental loss, unauthorised access, use, alteration, or disclosure. These measures include encryption, access controls, and regular security assessments.

11. Links to Other Websites

Our website may contain links to other websites that are not operated by us. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these third-party websites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party websites you visit.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. The “Last Updated” date at the top of this policy indicates when it was last revised. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically.

13. How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact:

Mark Douglas Email: info@douglastowingandrecovery.ie

14. Complaining to the Data Protection Commission (DPC)

If you are not satisfied with our response to your privacy concerns, or if you believe we are processing your personal data unlawfully, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission (DPC) in Ireland.

Website: https://www.dataprotection.ie/ Address: Data Protection Commission, 21 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2, D02 RD28