Privacy policy and use of Cookies
Thorns DIY takes your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information about us and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal information. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us or any supervisory authorities in the event that you have a complaint.
We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). Your personal data is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation, which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.
Occasionally our site might contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, and affiliates. 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.
Key terms used in this policy
- We, us or our refers to Thorns DIY.
- Personal information refers to any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.
How to contact us
Please contact us by post, email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information, we hold about you.
Thorns DIY
22 Exchange Street
Norwich
Norfolk
NR2 1AT
Phone: 01603 622891
Email: mail@thornsdiy.com
How to complain
We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information.
The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone: 0303 123 1113.
Personal information we collect about you
We need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you. If you do not provide personal information we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you. It is therefore important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
How your personal information is collected
We collect most of this personal information directly from you - in person, by telephone, text or email and or via our website.
How and why we use personal information
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason for so, for example:
- to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
- for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
- for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
- where you have given consent
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.
Below is an explanation of what we use (process) your personal information for and our reasons for doing so:
|
What we use your personal information for |
Our reasons |
|
To provide services to you |
For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. |
|
Ensuring business policies are adhered to, eg policies covering security and internet use |
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service to you. |
|
Updating and enhancing customer records |
For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, eg making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing and new services. |
|
Marketing our services and those of selected third parties to: |
For our legitimate interests, ie to promote our business to existing and former customers. |
Under data protection laws there are certain categories of more sensitive personal data (these include details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). We do not collect these types of data about you, nor do we collect information relating to criminal convictions.
Marketing
We strive to provide you with choices with our marketing. We may use your personal information to send you updates (by email, telephone or post) about our services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new services.
You will receive marketing communications from us if:
- you have requested to receive marketing communications from us; or
(b) you have requested information from us.
We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and never sell it with other organisations for marketing purposes.
You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:
- contacting us using the contact details above
- using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
Who we share your personal information with
We routinely share personal information with:
- thirds parties we use to help us deliver our services to you such as suppliers who are based in the United Kingdom who provide delivery and IT
- third parties approved by you e.g social media sites you choose to link your account to
We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal information to provide services to us and to you.
We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
We may also need to share some personal information with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised, but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.
Where you personal information is held
All information you provide to us is stored either on our secure servers or, in the case of delivery, financial and credit card information, on secure servers hosted by third party suppliers who have warranted to us that they are compliant with all applicable data protection laws.
Some of these third parties may be based outside the European Economic Area. For more information, including on how we safeguard your personal information when this occurs, see below: ‘Transferring your personal information out of the EEA’.
How long your personal information will be kept
We will keep your personal information while you have an account with us or we are providing services to you. Thereafter, we will keep your personal information for as long as is necessary:
- to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
- to show that we treated you fairly;
- to keep records required by law.
We will not retain your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of personal information.
When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal information, we will delete or anonymise it.
Transferring your personal information outside of the EEA
To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal information outside the European Economic Area (EEA), eg:
- with your and our service providers located outside the EEA;
- if you are based outside the EEA;
These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law.
Non-EEA countries do not have the same data protection laws as the United Kingdom and EEA. We will, however, ensure the transfer complies with data protection law and all personal information will be secure.
If you would like further information, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
Security
Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. You must not share a password with anyone.
Unfortunately, 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.
However, once we have received your information, we have put in place security measures, strict procedures and security features to try to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.
Usage data
We may also collect information how the Service is accessed and used ("Usage Data"). This Usage Data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
TRACKING & COOKIES DATA
We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Service and hold certain information.
Cookies are files with small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Service.
You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.
Examples of Cookies we use:
- Session Cookies.We use Session Cookies to operate our Service.
- Preference Cookies.We use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
- Security Cookies.We use Security Cookies for security purposes.
ANALYTICS
We may use third-party Service Providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Service.
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
- You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.
For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/
Your rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Your rights include:
(a) Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
(b) Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
(c) Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
(d) Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
(e) Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (i) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (ii) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (iii) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (iv) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
(f) Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. This right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
(g) Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, you can contact us using the details set out at the beginning of this privacy policy.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.
Changes to this privacy policy
This privacy notice was published on 31 Dec 2019
We may change this privacy notice from time to time - when we do we will inform you via our website.