This website (the ‘site’) is maintained by WriteSideLeft Ltd, also referred to in this policy as ‘we’, ‘our’, and ‘us’).
This privacy policy (our ‘Privacy Policy’), together with the cookie policy and terms and conditions set out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.
We take your online privacy seriously. Please read below for a further explanation of the information we gather and how we use it. We have tried to write this Privacy Policy in a way that is clear, simple and free of legal language. However, if you still have questions about anything in our Privacy Policy, please contact us at admin@writesideleft.com
Changes to the policy
While we will endeavour to tell you if we make significant changes to this policy, we reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy at any time and without notice, so be sure to check this Privacy Policy regularly to understand how we use your information. This Privacy Policy was last updated on Monday 5 Decemember 2022
How We Collect and Use Your Personal Data
Information that you provide when you use the website
As you explore our site you will come across certain activities for which we request some personal information. These activities are outlined and explained below.
1.1. Sales through the site: If products or services are available on the site, we collect the following personal information when you purchase a product or service on our website: your name, billing address, email address, contact telephone number, payment card information for the purpose of processing and fulfilling your sales order.
1.2. Competitions/Prize draws: We may ask for your name, email address and address so that we can contact you in the event that you win.
1.3. Feedback, Suggestions, Opinions: Sometimes we may ask you for your suggestions and opinions or provide you with a link for emailing us your response. We will only use the email address we receive from you for the purpose of responding to your questions or suggestions.
1.4. General Marketing (see Section 4 below)
Age restrictions
1.5 You can only register to use our site if you are over the age of majority in the country in which you reside in. That means that we do not knowingly collect any information about (or market to) children, minors or anyone under the age of majority unless their parent or legal guardian has consented.
1.6 If we become aware that a child, minor or anyone under the age of majority has registered with us and provided us with personal information without parental or guardian consent, we will take steps to terminate that person’s account and delete their profile information from our site. If we do delete an account because you violated our age restriction rules, we may retain your email and IP address to ensure that you do not try to get around our rules by creating a new account.
Our Legal Basis for Using Your Information
2.1 The legal grounds on which we rely to use your information are:
To allow us to perform our contract with you: When you purchase goods or services from us, a contract between you and us will have been entered into. In order for us to fulfil our obligations under such contract, we will need to collect and process your personal information, including payment information.
To allow us to exercise our legitimate interests as a data controller: We rely on our legitimate interests as a data controller to process the personal information that you provide to us on feedback forms or through any contest or promotional feature that we may run, and to process personal information that we collect from you when you use our site. It is in our legitimate interests as a business to process the above information in order to administer our site, to ensure that content from our site is presented to you effectively and securely, and to run contests and other promotional features.
Where we have obtained your consent: We may provide you with certain marketing information about services or products where you have provided your explicit consent for us to do so.
Disclosure of Personal Data and Your Rights
3.1 We will only disclose your information to:
our suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you;
our third party service providers in order to identify or resolve technical problems arising from the use of the website or to assist with the payment process; and
our regulators, law enforcement or fraud prevention agencies, as well as our legal advisers, courts and any other authorised bodies, for the purposes of investigating any actual or suspected criminal activity, enforcing our rights or other regulatory or legal matters.
Marketing
4.1. We may provide you with certain marketing information about services or products where you have provided your explicit consent for us to do so. Please note that we will use your personal information in order to provide certain marketing information for the same or similar services you have previously used.
4.2. If you register to be sent information about our authors, books or events we will ask you for some personal information in order to provide you with the service you are requesting. As noted above, you may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send.
4.3. If you decide to join a future membership program we will request certain items of personal information from you such as, but not limited to, your name, email and address. We will use this information to keep you up to date with activities such as offers, competitions and promotions which we believe will be of interest to you. You can unsubscribe from membership at any time.
4.4. We occasionally use Social Media to promote offers, competitions and giveaways. In some cases, we may need to collect personal information from you such as, but not limited to, your name, email and address. We will state why we need this information and not use it for any other purpose.
4.5. If you wish to opt out of receiving marketing communications from us you can do so by emailing us at admin@writesideleft.com
Links to Other Sites
5.1. Our site contains links to other sites that are not under our control, even though they may use our name or logo on their site through an agreement with us. Such other sites do not necessarily follow our privacy policies, and may place their own cookies on your computer. This practice is standard on the Internet. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.
Security of Private Information
6.1. The transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.
6.2 Please note that where we provide you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of the website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. Please do not share a password with anyone.
6.3 We make no undertaking or warranty about how or where your data may be stored by third parties with whom you may choose to engage via our site and to whom you may supply personal data, or request that we supply personal data.
Storage and Retention
7.1. Where we collect and store personal data it will be held on servers located in the EEA. We do not transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area unless there is a legal mechanism in place which allows this.
7.2. We will retain information about you for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes for which the information was collected. After that, we will delete it.
7.3 The retention period may vary depending on the purposes for which the information was collected. Where a specific legal or regulatory requirement applies to your information we will retain it for the period of time specified in such legal or regulatory requirement. In the absence of a specific legal or regulatory requirement we will retain your information for six years following the event to which it relates (e.g. the specific sale, the specific competition, etc.). We may be required to extend the retention period if the information is required due a complaint or because it is required for litigation. Please also note that we are sometimes legally obliged to retain the information, for example, for tax and accounting purposes.
Parents and Guardians
8. We encourage you to get involved with your children’s online usage and to be aware of the activities in which they are participating. We also ask you to check back here regularly to see what our latest policies are, particularly those relating to children. You should be aware that if your children voluntarily disclose their names, email addresses or other information, such disclosures may result in unsolicited messages from other parties. We suggest that you discourage your child from providing such information on this site or elsewhere unless you are confident that the information will not be misused.
Your Rights Regarding Your Personal Information
9.1. You have certain rights in relation to your personal information that is processed by us. We set out an overview of these rights below. These rights are not absolute and apply subject to certain conditions, as set out in applicable data protection laws. Your rights may include:
- the right to access personal data held by us about you;
- the right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data held by us about you;
- in certain circumstances, the right to require us to erase personal data held by us about you;
- in certain circumstances, the right to restrict our processing of personal data held by us about you;
- in certain circumstances, a right to receive personal data which you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format. You may also have the right to require us to transfer this personal data to another organisation, at your request;
- the right to object to our processing of personal data held by us about you (including for the purposes of sending marketing materials to you); and
- the right to withdraw your consent, where we are relying on it to use your personal data (for example, to provide you with marketing information about our services and products).
9.2 You can exercise these rights by emailing us at admin@writesideleft.com
Contacting the ICO
10. Should you wish to make a complaint, you may also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office here.