Our Privacy Portal
The home of our privacy and cookie policy
Your privacy is important to us – just as knowing how we use your information is important to you. Our Privacy Portal gives you full visibility of how we collect, use, share and protect your personal information when you use our products, services and our website.
We've broken this information down into chunks so you can find the details you need as quickly and easily as possible.
Privacy policy
Our privacy and cookies policy gets updated from time to time. Whenever we make a change, we’ll post this on our website and let you know if there is a material change.
We have revised our privacy and cookies policy, refreshing it to tie in with the launch of our new Privacy Portal.
Last updated: 15 July 2021
How to use this privacy and cookies policy
In this policy, we explain how we collect, use, share and protect your personal information when you use our products and services and our website.
Who we are
We are Vodafone Limited.
In this privacy policy:
“we/us” means Vodafone Limited
“third party” means someone who is not you or us
“Vodafone Group” means Vodafone Group Plc and any company or other organisation in which Vodafone Group Plc owns more than 15% of the share capital
Our registered office is Vodafone House, The Connection Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2FN. We are registered in England under company number 1471587 and registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), registration number Z1933885.
How to contact us
Your opinion matters to us – if you have any questions about our privacy policy or your privacy settings, please submit your query and a member of our dedicated team will respond to you. If you would like to mail us by post directly, send it marked the “Privacy Team” to Vodafone House, The Connection, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 2FN.
Our principles
Vodafone is committed to respecting your privacy. We take privacy, security and complying with data protection and privacy laws seriously.
Here are Vodafone’s core Privacy Commitments. We aim to put these commitments at the heart of everything we do.
The information we collect about you and how we collect it can vary depending on the products and services that you use and subscribe to, how you have used the products and services, and how you have interacted with Vodafone even if you aren’t a customer, or what we have obtained from a third party with permission to share it with us.
To find the privacy supplements for all our products and services, please go to the 'Privacy and our products and services' section of this Privacy Portal.
Vodafone will process your personal data based on:
The performance of your contract or to enter into the contract and to take action on your requests. For example, so you can make calls and texts, and browse the internet on your phone, we process things like the numbers you dial, how much data you’re using and when you’re doing it so we can provide connectivity. This also enables us to generate your bill, based on your usage. We also need to conduct credit checks when you apply for a product or service.
Vodafone’s legitimate business interests, for example, fraud prevention, maintaining the security of our network and services, direct marketing, and the improvement of our services. Whenever we rely on this lawful basis to process your data, we assess our business interests to make sure they do not override your rights. Additionally, in some cases you have the right to object to this processing. For more information, visit the 'Your rights' section of this policy.
Compliance with a mandatory legal obligation, including for example accounting and tax requirements and regulations in relation to electronic communications and financial services, which are subject to strict internal policies (such as retention periods), procedures, and your right to restrict usage of your data, which control the scope of legal assistance to be provided.
Substantial public interest, for example, to assist with detecting and preventing fraud, tax evasion and financial crime, or to safeguard the economic well-being of certain individuals.
Consent you provide where Vodafone does not rely on another legal basis. Consent may be withdrawn at any time. When you give your consent, you will be given details on how to change your mind or visit the 'Your rights' section of this policy for more information.
We will collect your personal information when you, for example:
Buy or use any of our products and services
Use our network or other Vodafone products and services
Register for a specific product or service
Subscribe to newsletters, alerts or other services from us
Contact us through various channels, or ask for information about a product or service
Take part in a competition, prize draw, event or survey
Visit or browse our website or other Vodafone Group websites
Have given permission to other companies to share information about you
Where your information is publicly available
Are the customer of a business that we acquire
We also collect information from certain organisations, where appropriate and to the extent we have legal grounds to do so. These include fraud-prevention agencies, business directories, credit check reference/vetting agencies, billing calculating agencies and connected network providers.
We may also collect information about you on CCTV when you visit our premises or on other security cameras as part of our security and crime prevention measures.
We use cookies (small text files stored in your browser) and other techniques such as web beacons (small, clear picture files used to follow your movements on our website). For more details on this and how to opt out of these, please see the 'Cookies' section of this policy.
The types of information we may have are, where applicable:
Your name, address, phone and/or mobile number, your date of birth, gender, information about your property or household, and email address.
Your credit or debit card information, information about your bank account and other financial information. For example, you’ll have to give us this information when you open an account with us. We’ll collect the data necessary to process a payment whenever you make a purchase.
Your traffic data. This is data we see as part of providing you with connectivity, like the numbers you call, the time and duration of the call or how you are using data.
Your location data. This can be precise where it uses Global Positioning System (GPS) data or by identifying nearby mobile phone masts and Wi-Fi hotspots and you enable location-based services or features. Or less precise where, for example, a location is derived from your IP address or data such as a post code or name of a town or city.
Your contact with us, such as a note or recording of a call you make to one of our contact centres, a Live Chat, an email or letter sent, or other records of any contact with us.
Your account information, such as dates of payment owed or received, subscriptions you use, account numbers or other information related to your account or included in My Vodafone.
Credential information – we’ll collect passwords, hints and similar security information used for authentication and access to accounts and services.
Your preferences for particular products, services and lifestyle activities when you tell us what they are (for example via VeryMe Rewards), or we assume what they are, based on how you use the products and services.
See the 'Cookies' section for details on what we collect using cookies, web beacons and other technologies, including ad data.
Your browsing history. We don’t have a history of the sites you browse, as this is limited for a short period of time to enable the connection to be made. If you have given permission, Vodafone may collect the categories of website you have browsed on your mobile, device or PC, for example sports, music or news and use these interests to send you personalised marketing or show you personalised advertising. You can opt out of advertising through Cookies. In the case of marketing, see 'Opting out of marketing' in the 'Your rights' section of this policy.
Information we obtain from other sources, such as credit agencies, fraud-prevention agencies, and from other data providers. This includes demographic data, interest-based data, and internet browsing behaviour.
In some cases (where permitted by law), special categories of personal data or personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences. Special categories of personal data include information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning health or data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation. For example, we may collect your health data when assessing your situation to facilitate debt recovery activities, provide additional support or when providing our communications in accessible formats.
We’ll also get information about how you use our products and services, such as:
The level of service that you receive – for example, network or service faults and other events that may affect our network services or other services;
Details of your use of the specific services or products, for example: every time you use your mobile phone, a record is kept. This includes the number you called or sent a text or picture message to, the length, date and time of that call, text or picture message and your approximate location at the time that the communication takes place (based on the location of the nearest cell that you sent that call or message from). The same is also recorded every time you receive an incoming call or message.
We will use your personal information for the following purposes:
1. To provide you with your service
Processing your order and providing you with your products and services
To process the products and services you’ve bought from us, install equipment at your property or deliver equipment to you, and keep you updated with the progress of your order.
To provide the relevant product or service to you. This includes other services not included in your agreement with us (PayPal, for example), services that use information about where you are, and to contact with you messages about changes to the products or services.
Billing and customer care
To bill you for using our products and services, or to take the appropriate amount of credit from you.
Contact you if the billing information you provided us with is about to expire or we’re not able to take payment.
To respond to any questions or concerns you may have about our network, products or services.
Service messages
We will contact you with customer service messages to keep you updated with current information about products and services you’ve taken. For example, changes to our terms and conditions or service interruptions.
Providing roaming services
To improve your roaming experiences, to ensure that we’re meeting our commitments around fair use, to detect and resolve fraudulent use of our networks (and our partners' roaming networks) and to solve technical issues if you are experiencing any.
To understand how Vodafone is performing in providing roaming services, whether roaming services and related products are working as intended, or whether improvements are needed to make roaming better.
Vodafone uses personal data such as your name, email address, password, mobile phone number and call records in order to do this. Vodafone creates aggregated and statistical management reports from this information that do not identify you individually. Vodafone may also take this personal data and anonymise it so that more in-depth analysis of our roaming services can be undertaken. This helps Vodafone to develop its roaming services for customers without identifying users in an individual way.
2. To improve our service
Improving and innovating our products and services
We collect anonymous, de-identified or aggregate information in order to improve the service we offer to everyone. None of these analytics are linked back to you in any way.
Managing our networks and understanding network usage
To protect our networks and manage the volumes of calls, texts and other uses of our networks. For example, we identify peak periods of use so we can try and ensure the networks can handle the volume at those times.
To understand how you use our networks, products and services. That way we can seek to review and improve these, and develop more interesting and relevant products and services, as well as personalising our products and services.
3. Marketing and tailoring our service to you
Marketing
As our customer, we will contact you to keep you informed about new and existing products and services, competitions, prize draws, events, VeryMe Rewards offers and other promotions and we may use your personal information to run those competitions, prize draws, events and promotions. We may also send you newsletters or white papers and occasionally invite you to participate in market research. We tailor these messages based on the products and services you’ve bought from us in the past, or information we have from third parties such as Experian.
With your permission, we can use your calling and messaging activities, location information and browsing information to further tailor our messages to you. To opt in text Start Network and/or Start Location to 9774 on your Vodafone mobile. Alternatively, you can contact a member of our customer services team, or use our privacy query form to have a member of our dedicated team respond to you.
If you have given your permission, we will also contact you to let you know about products and services of Vodafone Group companies and those of other companies which we think may interest you
There are various ways that we may do this – including by email, post, phone, text, picture message or notifications through our apps.
You can control your marketing permissions and the data we use to tailor these communications at any time. See 'Opting out of marketing' within the 'Your rights' section of this privacy policy.
Advertising online
To deliver advertising that's relevant to you, you’ll also see targeted advertising online based on the use of cookies. This is known as interest-based advertising. It can be on websites belonging to the Vodafone Group, those of other organisations as well as other online media channels such as social media sites. We may also combine data collected via the cookies with other data we have collected. If you don't want any information processed through the use of cookies, check the 'Cookies' section in this Privacy Portal. It explains how to control and opt out of cookies.
Remember that opting out of interest-based advertising doesn't stop advertisements from being displayed – it's just that they won’t be tailored to your interests.
You will also see advertising in your social media, for example in your Facebook or Twitter feed. If you don’t want to receive this advertising, go to the relevant platform’s ad settings.
4. Research and analytics
We use a variety of analytics methods including what is commonly referred to as “Big data analytics”. Big data analytics are mathematically driven analysis techniques on large and varied data sets (that's why it's “big” data) to uncover hidden patterns and hitherto unrevealed trends. At Vodafone we take governance of big data analytics seriously. Our data scientists are required to sign up to a Code of Ethics. We have a strict use case process that requires that privacy and data protection law checks are carried out before any use case commences. We also have strict rules ensuring that personal information is anonymised or de-identified at the appropriate stage in the process.
We use our analytics to, for example:
Conduct market research and to carry out research and statistical analysis, including to monitor how customers use our networks, products and services;
Frame our marketing campaigns and determine how we might personalise those;
Provide reports to third parties (such reports don’t contain information which may identify you as an individual). For example, as part of Vodafone Analytics
5. Credit checks, fraud prevention and security
We will sometimes need to profile you, for credit, fraud and security purposes.
Credit checks and ID
We will carry out a credit check when you apply for a contract for any products or services with us.
We will also use your personal information for identity verification purposes, for access to your account and for general account management. We sometimes supplement the information we collect about you with information from other sources (for example, the electoral roll and credit reference agencies) to assess the accuracy of the information that we hold.
Fraud prevention and security
We will process your personal and traffic data in order to protect against and detect fraud, to protect and detect misuse or damage to our networks, to recover debts or trace those who owe us money resulting from the use of our services.
For more details on these, check our Credit checks page and our Fraud page.
COVID-19: NHS Test and Trace
If we need to visit your property for any reason, such as to install equipment, we may share the personal data you provide as part of the booking arrangement to NHS Test and Trace if we receive a request from NHS Test and Trace for contact tracing purposes. The personal data that may be shared with NHS Test and Trace include your full name, contact details and information about the visit.
For further information on how NHS Test and Trace processes your personal data, please see the NHS Test and Trace Privacy Policy
Where applicable, we share information about you with:
Companies in the Vodafone Group
Partners, suppliers or agents involved in delivering the products and services you’ve ordered or used
Companies who are engaged to perform services for, or on behalf of, Vodafone Limited, or Vodafone Group
Credit reference, fraud-prevention or business-scoring agencies, or other credit scoring agencies
Debt collection agencies or other debt-recovery organisations
Law enforcement agencies, government bodies, regulatory organisations, courts or other public authorities if we have to, or are authorised to by law
A third party or body where such disclosure is required to satisfy any applicable law, or other legal or regulatory requirement
Emergency services (if you make an emergency call), including your approximate location
Third parties for joint promotions with that third party (including third party who provide offers on VeryMe Rewards). They’ll be responsible for their own compliance with applicable privacy laws
Other third parties when you are signing up to their service and it is used by them for authentication and fraud-prevention purposes
Third parties that we advertise with in order to serve you advertisements online (e.g. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon). You can opt-out of this by managing your account permissions. To do this see the ‘Your Rights’ section below.
Third parties that we use to serve you marketing, for example, MailChimp
Fraud management and law enforcement
We will release information if it’s reasonable for the purpose of protecting us against fraud, defending our rights or property, or to protect the interests of our customers.
We also may need to release your information to comply with our legal obligation to respond to the authorities’ lawful demands. Your personal data shall only be provided when we in good faith believe we are obliged to do so in accordance with the law and pursuant to an exhaustive evaluation of all legal requirements.
More information on how the Vodafone Group companies balance our responsibility to respect our customers' right to privacy with our legal obligations to disclose customer data is available.
Mergers and acquisitions
If we’re reorganised or sold to another organisation, we will provide your information to that organisation.
Third parties that we work with
Where you’ve purchased Vodafone products and services using a third party or partner organisation, we often need to exchange information with them as part of managing that relationship and your account – for example, to be able to identify your order and be able to pay them.
If we have a contract with a service provider or contractor to provide us with services or provide a service on our behalf, and they may have access to your personal information, we don’t authorise them to use or disclose your personal information except in connection with providing their services.
We collect and combine information in order to monitor your use of products and services, and that of our other customers, as well as to help us to improve the quality of our products and services.
Third-party products that you buy through your Vodafone account
Where you buy a third-party product or service through your Vodafone account (such as Charge to Bill for mobile), the contract for it is with the party selling that product or service. Vodafone is only charging the amount directly to your bill as part of its arrangements with the seller (or with a third party authorised by the seller). As part of this, you’re agreeing that Vodafone may pass certain personal information to such parties to complete your purchase.
The seller’s terms and conditions and privacy and cookies policies will apply to how it uses your personal information – please read them carefully.
You may connect third party devices to your SIM, either manually via a SIM card or electronically through our OneNumber product. These include mobile phone devices or connected devices such as smart speakers or smart watches.
When you connect your SIM to these devices those third parties may record your SIM details or your interaction with the network. The third party device manufacturers will process your personal data in accordance with their privacy policies and we recommend that you read these before choosing to connect.
We may need to transfer your information to other Vodafone Group companies or service providers in countries outside the UK, such as Egypt, India, US and countries in the European Economic Area (EEA). The EEA consists of countries in the European Union, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. This kind of data transfer may happen if our servers (i.e. where we store data) or our suppliers and service providers are based outside the UK, or if you use our services and products while visiting countries outside the UK.
If Vodafone sends your information to a country that isn't in the UK, we will make sure that your information is properly protected. We will always ensure that there is a proper legal agreement that covers the data transfer. In addition, if the country is not considered to have laws that are equivalent to UK data protection standards then we will ask the third party to enter into a legal agreement that reflects those standards.
For information on how long we hold your personal data for, see our retention schedule [PDF: 244.88 KB].
We have specialised security teams who constantly review and improve our measures to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, accidental loss, disclosure or destruction.
Communications over the internet (such as emails) aren’t secure unless they’ve been encrypted. Your communications may go through a number of countries before being delivered, as this is the nature of the internet.
We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that's beyond our control.
We’ll never ask for your secure personal or account information by an unsolicited means of communication. You’re responsible for keeping your personal and account information secure and not sharing it with others.
Our website may provide links to third-party websites. We cannot be responsible for the security and content of such third-party websites. So make sure you read that company’s privacy and cookies policies before using or putting your personal information on their site.
The same applies to any third-party websites or content you connect to using our products and services.
You may choose to disclose your information in certain ways such as social plug-ins (including those offered by Google, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) or using third-party services that allow you to post reviews or other information publicly, and a third party could use that information.
Social plug-ins and social applications are operated by the social network themselves and are subject to their own terms of use and privacy and cookies policies. You should make sure you’re familiar with these.
Below we set out details on how you can exercise your rights. If you have a question or cannot find the answer, please contact our Customer Services team or use our privacy query form and a member of our dedicated team will respond to you.
Please note: the privacy query form is not for Subject Access Requests (SARs). To raise a Subject Access Request, please fill in the Subject Access Request form
Right to access personal data
You have the right to make a request for a copy of the personal data that Vodafone holds about you. To make this request as an individual or an authorised third party, visit our Subject Access Request page which gives details on how to do this. Alternatively, you can contact our Customer Services team.
Right to correct personal data
You have the right to correct information held about you if it’s not accurate. If the information we hold about you is inaccurate or needs to be updated, you can log in to My Vodafone to update it or you can contact our Customer Service team
Right to data portability
You have the right to be able to take with you the personal data you provided to us in certain circumstances. Vodafone ensures that you can take your data with you by allowing you to download your monthly bills, at the click of a button. In order to do this, log in to My Vodafone and go to your billing area.
Right to object to use of personal data
You have the right, in certain circumstances, to object to Vodafone processing your personal information. For more information or to exercise this right, please contact our Customer Services team. If this relates to an automated decision performed on you (this means with no human involvement), please let us know and we will review your request.
To opt out of marketing messages:
If you no longer want to receive marketing messages from Vodafone, you can choose to opt out at any time. If you’ve previously opted in to receive personalised content based on how and where you use our network, you can also opt out at any time.
The easiest way to opt out is by using our marketing preferences page, found under your My Vodafone account settings.
There are also various other ways to opt out:
Contact our customer services team - see the contact us page
Click the link at the end of a marketing email, text or picture message to unsubscribe from that channel
Change your communication preferences by texting the relevant code in this table
Tell the adviser if you receive a marketing call
Disable push notification messages, including marketing messages, at any time in our apps by changing the notification settings on your device or by uninstalling the app
Contact our customer data team for guidance
If you’re opted out of marketing, you may still receive service-related messages.
Please note: You may still receive marketing messages for a short period after opting out while we update our records.
You may have received marketing from Vodafone even if you’re not a customer or have never had contact with us. This is a result of third-party marketing lists which Vodafone may acquire from time to time, stating that you have given permission to be contacted by other organisations. If you’ve registered with us to opt out of marketing from Vodafone, you shouldn’t receive such communications. If you still do, we ask that you let us know immediately by contacting our customer data team. This will only stop marketing from us and not stop the third parties from sharing your data unless you contact them directly.
To manage cookies and understand more about what they are
Want to disable a cookie, or understand more about what these are? Check the 'Cookies' section of this Privacy Portal for full details on how to do this.
To opt out of Vodafone Analytics, or to understand what it means for you
While it can’t identify or contact you, it’s your choice whether you’re included. Please see the Vodafone Analytics page.
How to lodge a complaint
If you want to contact us about any of your rights or complain about how we use your information, please use our privacy query form and a member of our dedicated team will respond to you. Alternatively, you can contact our Customer Services team – we’ll do our best to help but if you’re still unhappy, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Their website ico.org.uk has details on how to contact the ICO
Right to restrict use of your data
If you feel data we hold on you is inaccurate, or you believe we shouldn’t be processing your data, please contact our Customer Services team to discuss your rights. In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to restrict processing.
Right to erasure
Vodafone strives to only process and retain your data for as long as we need to. In certain circumstances you have the right to request that we erase personal data of yours that we hold. If you feel that we are retaining your data longer than we need, it is worth first checking that your contract with Vodafone has been terminated, which you can do with Customer Services. If your contract with Vodafone has been terminated, we may still have lawful grounds to process your personal data. For more information on retention periods, see the section in this privacy policy called ‘How long do we keep your personal information for?’.
Privacy and our products and services
Cookie policy
Our cookies policy
This section is about what cookies are, how we use them and how you can manage them.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small files that are stored on your device when you visit a website. The cookies mean that the website will remember you and how you've used the site every time you come back.
If you want to know more about cookies, head to aboutcookies.org or allaboutcookies.org (please note: these links open a new window or browser tab).
How we use cookies
We use cookies to do a number of things. For example, remembering your preferences, recording what you've put in your shopping basket, or counting the number of people looking at a website. We also use them to keep track of what you've bought from us, what you've done on the site, and to make advertising more relevant to you.
Cookies have a unique alphanumeric identifier that sits on your browser. In many cases, we won’t be able to link the information we collect by using a cookie back to you. They can, however, enable us to link that information back to you and your personal information, for instance, when you log in, or choose to register for a service, white paper or newsletter. For example, we may use web analytics to determine which ISP your IP address uses for browsing which can then be used to personalise the communications you receive from us (if you are opted into receiving personalised communications). For further information on how we use your information please see our Privacy Policy.
We have categorised our cookies into the following categories:
Strictly necessary – these are used to help make our website work efficiently.
Performance – these are used to analyse the way our website works and how we can improve it.
Functionality – these help to enhance your experience by doing things like remembering products you've added to your basket.
Targeting/advertising – these are used to share some information with third parties who we advertise with, so we know how you've reached our website and to be able to reconcile at an aggregate level with our affiliate partners. We can also use cookies to identify the parts of the website that you are interested in. We then use this information to show you adverts and pages we think may also be of interest to you, to tailor how we communicate with you, or to tailor the contents of the communications we send to you. If you prefer, you can manage your cookies on our website. Tailoring of content means it includes information reflecting the interest you’ve shown in the content of our web pages, or offers or promotions that we think may interest you, and to improve how we respond to your needs.
Sometimes, other companies will add a cookie on our website to show you adverts and pages which may be of interest to you. Details on these, and how to opt out if you prefer, can be found in the ‘Third-party cookies’ section of this cookies policy.
In addition to the cookies we use on our websites, we also use cookies and similar technologies in some emails and push notifications we send to mobile devices from our apps. These help us to understand whether you have opened the email and how you have interacted with it. If you have enabled images, cookies may be set on your computer or mobile device. Cookies will also be set if you click on any link within the email.
We use a YouTube domain, youtube-nocookie.com, to embed certain videos on our website. This means that no cookies are deployed when loading a YouTube video from our website. However, when you play an embedded video, YouTube will place cookies that are required for the video to play.
We sometimes use persistent cookies as well as 'session-based' cookies. A 'persistent' cookie will remain for a period of time set for that cookie. A 'session-based' cookie is allocated only for the duration of your visit to our website and automatically expires when you close down your browser.
Cookies and you
To make a purchase online or sign up to services like My Vodafone or Vodafone Rewards on Pay as you go, you must have cookies enabled on your internet browser. Some of the more popular browsers are:
If you choose not to enable cookies, you’ll still be able to browse our website, but it will restrict some of the functionality of our website and what you can do.
First-party cookies
First-party cookies originate from the same domain as the website you’re currently visiting (in this case, vodafone.co.uk).
See our list of first-party cookies (shown later on in this cookies policy).
Third-party cookies
Third-party cookies originate from a domain that’s different to the website being visited. For example, when you visit our website, we may link to another company's website – like our Facebook or Twitter account, or a video from our YouTube page. We don't control how they use their cookies, so we suggest you check their website to see how they're using them or block the cookies via our “cookie settings” button.
Affiliates of the Vodafone Group with a different domain name may also place cookies on our website, to show you adverts or pages of other Vodafone Group companies that may be of interest to you. Details of these affiliates – and how to opt out – are included in our list of third parties (shown later on in this cookies policy) that may put cookies on our website.
You can control cookies in your browser, to enable or disable them. If you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by any website – including a Vodafone website – you can do this through the web browser settings for each web browser you use, on each device you use to access the internet. You can opt-out of each cookie category except strictly necessary cookies.
Information on controlling and deleting cookies, including on a wide variety of browsers, is also available at allaboutcookies.org