Introduction

This document sets out what you can expect of us regarding how we use and look after your user information. In it, we seek to abide by the letter and spirit of the guidelines laid out by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office in the document ‘Privacy Notes – Code of Practice’.

We will never share your user information with third parties for promotional purposes.

 

Who We Are

More formally, we are the Chocolate Smiths Limited. We are a company registered in England and Wales with Company number 09312663 and our registered address is at Verdemar House, 230 Park View, Whitley Bay, England, NE26 3QR.

If you have any concerns about the way we use your information or any questions about this Privacy Policy, please let us know.  We can be contacted via email at steffi@thechocolatesmiths.com, or by writing to the address above.

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What we do with your information

Information submitted to the Chocolate Smiths will be processed to:

• Permit us to deliver our products to you;

• Provide you with updates on our products and other information that we feel may be of interest to you; and,

• Continually improve our service offering and user experience.

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We compile statistics about user trends on our website, which are used by third party organisations to understand how users interact with businesses, brands, and one another online. These statistics are drawn from a dataset which does not contain any information from which you can be identified.

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What user information we would like you to give us and how long we will keep it

We will ask you to provide your name and your address in order for us to deliver our products to you. When registering with us we will keep your data for a reasonable time following delivery of your most recent order, after which point your data will be deleted permanently.

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Where we hold your information

The information and content held on our website is deployed geographically to maximise user experience. All information that could identify individuals within the European Union is stored exclusively within the European Union.

We hold our data on Wix, who are contracted by use for the provision of technical services. We remain responsible at all times for the security of your information, but if you want to know more about how we interact with Wix, you can view their Privacy Policy, amongst their other policies here http://www.wix.com/about/privacy.

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What we do to ensure the security of your personal information

We take the security of your personal data very seriously. Our approach to information security is constantly evolving and continually reviewed.

We have adopted industry best practices from both technological and business process perspectives in order to make securing your data a key part of the way we do business.

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Your rights regarding your personal information

We will contact you with updates about the products and services that we offer.

You can opt in or out at any time by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in our emails.

If you would like us to stop using your information at any time, or would like to view any information that we hold about you please contact us via email at steffi@thechocolatesmiths.com

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Our Cookie Policy

As part of our overall approach to privacy and transparency, this section describes what cookies are in the context of our web and mobile interfaces, and what their use means to you. At the end, we've included some links to help you research cookies and their impact, and how you can use your web browser to control the way it manages cookies.

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What are cookies?

According to Wikipedia:

"A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity. [1] Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past."

(used under licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

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What cookies do we use?

In this section, we explain what cookies are used in the overall service we provide to our users, and how you can switch off cookies via a setting in your browser.

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Our use of cookies:

We use cookies to record when you've logged into our service (either via web or mobile) so you don't have to keep logging in for each new page; we also use our own cookies to recognise who you are when you return to our platform in a new visit.

These cookies are an essential part of how our platform operates, and they greatly improve your user experience.  Ironically, the banner that you saw the first time you looked at the website alerting you to the use of cookies makes use of a cookie itself, that would not be required were it not for the European Directive on the use of cookies.

These cookies are only used by us, and the information they contain is not shared with anyone else.

 

List of services we use which use their own cookies:

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• Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand general trends about our content and traffic sources: for example, where users come from, which pages are most popular, which sites provide most traffic, how our marketing efforts impact the amount of visits we receive.

Google's statement about privacy is here: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/analytics/privacyoverview.html

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• Twitter button

The Twitter button allows our users to share The Chocolate Smiths products with their followers more easily.

Twitter privacy policy states they use cookies "to collect additional website usage data and to improve our Services" - https://twitter.com/privacy

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• Facebook Connect & Mobile

We use Facebook Connect to allow you to sign up to, and log into, our platform (web & mobile) without having to fill our your details - saving time and effort

Facebook's statement about privacy relating their Connect feature is here http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=229348490415842; and also here http://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info-on-other#anothersite

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Consent

In line with the latest advice from the Information Commissioner’s Office, we interpret your continued use of our platform as consent for us to use cookies to capture data about how you interact with our services, and those of other services we use.

 

More information about cookies

Links which provide more information about cookies:

http://www.allaboutcookies.org/

http://www.aboutcookies.org/default.aspx

Link explaining how to switch off cookies in various browsers:

http://www.aboutcookies.org/Default.aspx?page=1

 

Contact the Information Commissioner if there is a problem

If you consider we have not addressed your problem, you can contact the UK Information Commissioner’s Office for assistance. Further information can be found via https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/raising-concerns/.