Privacy Policy

Who is collecting my information?

The personal information you provide to this site is collected by RS Components Ltd. RS Components Ltd is a company registered in England under number 1002091, whose registered office is at Birchington Road, Weldon, Corby, Northamptonshire NN17 9RS. RS Components Ltd is notified in the United Kingdom under the Data Protection Act 1998. Please be aware that RS Online has links to other sites which may collect personally identifiable information about you. The information practices of those web sites linked to RS Online are not covered by this privacy statement.

With whom does RS share my information?

The company named on this site is a distributor of RS for your country, and RS operates this site on behalf of that distributor. Therefore all personal information collected by this site which is necessary for the distributor to fulfil your order will be passed to the distributor, and all other personal information collected by this site may be passed to the distributor. Any other sharing of information by RS's distributor will be notified to you by the distributor in accordance with local law.

In the event that RS's distributor for your country changes, your personal information may be disclosed to the new distributor.

RS may need to disclose your information to organisations working on our behalf anywhere in the world, but will never sell, rent, or give away information that personally identifies customers to third parties. From time to time, we may release aggregated and anonymised marketing statistics to business partners, or may use these in press releases, advertising, or published reports. RS is a member of a world-wide group of companies of which Electrocomponents plc is the parent company - RS may share aggregated and anonymised marketing statistics with this group of companies. RS may also disclose user information in special cases when we believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with RS's rights or property, other RS Online users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities. In addition, RS may disclose user information when the law requires it.

What personal information does RS Online collect from me?

The following information is gathered when you register: Username, Password, Security Password, your name, telephone number, fax number, email address, company name, address, company's area of business, job technology, job function, purchasing influence, number of employees in your company, your primary product interest and how you heard about the site. We may also record some details of how you use the site, such as adverts you click on or products you search for.

In addition, we keep copies of information you submit when you send email feedback to the site, ask a technical question, or report a problem. If you contact RS in writing we may keep a record of that correspondence. RS also occasionally asks users to complete surveys that we use for research purposes.

What does RS do to protect your personal data online?

In order to ensure the security and protection of your personal details whenever you submit any sensitive information such as credit card number and account details, we use 128 bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption - the latest technology to encode and protect your data - which is your guarantee for a safe and secure transaction. The RS VeriSign Security Guarantee pops up whenever you submit sensitive information as an indication that the current information will be encrypted. This means that your information is protected and safe to submit.

Sensitive credit card information stored on our in-house systems is also held in encrypted format.

Note: If you rely upon the graphical indication on your browser screen (such as the padlock icon in Internet Explorer) this may not always indicate that a secure communication is taking place. This is because RS Online uses frames to display certain information and the security icon may not always detect that a secure connection has been established in another frame.

What security precautions are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of my information?

Your RS Online Account Information and RS Online Personal Profile are password-protected so that you and only you have access to this personal information. We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. RS Online will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or in an unsolicited email. Also remember to close your browser window when you have finished your work. This is to ensure that others cannot access your personal or business information if you share a computer or are using a computer in a public place.

How do the distributor and RS use my information?

RS's distributor will use your information for the purposes of order fulfilment. Any other use by RS's distributor will be notified to you by the distributor in accordance with local law.

RS collects your personal information to provide you with customised and relevant information on your home page when you visit the site. RS also does research on our users' demographics, interests, and behaviour based on the information provided to us through registration, from our server log files or from surveys. We do this to better understand and serve our users. This research is compiled and analysed on an aggregated and anonymous basis.

What are my choices regarding collection, use, and distribution of my information?

RS's distributor may, from time to time, contact you regarding it and its products. The distributor will let you know what to do if you do not want to be contacted by the distributor. In addition, RS may occasionally send you direct mail about products and about RS that we feel may be of interest to you. If you do not want to receive email messages from us, simply select to be removed from our email list when registering.

Or, at any time, you can easily edit your RS Online Personal Profile to no longer receive such mailings. If you do not wish to receive other forms of direct mail promotions from us, then please contact the RS Online HelpDesk by email to [rs.webhelp@rs-components.com].

What are cookies and how does RS Online use them?

If you use the Data Library on the site to locate and download data sheets, your browser may alert you to the fact that a cookie is being sent to your PC. Unlike most cookies this will not be stored on your hard drive. The purpose of the cookie is merely to identify you to the data sheet server for the time you are using it. Once you have finished using the library, the cookie will be deleted.

For more information please see our cookie policy here.