Privacy policy.
Thanks for visiting Abacus Merchandising. We respect your privacy. When it comes to your personal information, we believe in transparency, not surprises. That’s why we’ve set out what personal information we collect, what we do with it and your choices and rights.
Abacus Merchandising will never sell your personal information to a third party.
By using Abacus Merchandising’s services, you confirm you have agreed to the Terms of Service and read and understood this Privacy Policy.
1. Key terms
In our Privacy Policy, when we refer to “Users”, we mean our customers who use our services, including visitors to our site.
2. How does this Privacy Policy apply?
This Privacy Policy describes what we do with personal information that we collect, such as your email address, how you use and interact with our services and information you submit to us.
3. Personal information we collect
We collect various personal information regarding you or your device. This includes the following:
· Information you provide if you provide us with your CV.
· Emails and other communications that you send us.
· Information from your use of our services. This includes: IP addresses, web pages you visited prior to coming to our site, information about your browser, network or device (such as browser type and version, operating system, internet service provider, preference settings, unique device IDs and language and other regional settings), information about how you interact with our website (such as timestamps, clicks, scrolling, browsing times, referral pages, load times, and problems you may encounter, such as loading errors).
4. How we collect personal information
We obtain personal information in two ways:
· You provide some of it directly (such as by uploading a CV).
· We record some of it automatically when you use our services (including with cookies).
5. How we use your personal information
We use the personal information we obtain about you for the following purposes:
· Provision of our services. Create and manage your account, provide and personalise our services, process payments and respond to your inquiries.
· Communicating with you. Communicate with you, including by sending you emails.
· Promotion. Promote our Services and send you tailored marketing communications about our services.
· Advertising. Analyse your interactions with our services and third parties’ online services so we can tailor our advertising to what we think will interest you.
· Improving our services. Analyse and learn about how the services are accessed and used, evaluate and improve our services.
· Security. Ensure the security and integrity of our services.
· Enforcement. Enforce our Terms of Service and other legal terms and policies.
· Protection. Protect our and others’ interests, rights and property (e.g. to protect our Users from abuse).
· Complying with law. Comply with applicable legal requirements.
We process your personal information for the above purposes when:
· Consent. You have consented to the use of your personal information. When you consent, you can change your mind at any time.
· Performance of a contract. We need your personal information to provide you with services requested by you, or to respond to your inquiries.
· Legal obligation. We have a legal obligation to use your personal information, such as to comply with applicable tax and other government regulations or to comply with a court order or binding law enforcement request.
· Legitimate interests. We have a legitimate interest in using your personal information. In particular, we have a legitimate interest in the following cases:
o To operate Abacus Merchandising business and provide you with tailored communications to develop and promote our business.
o To analyse and improve the safety and security of our services - we do this as it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests in ensuring Abacus Merchandising is secure, such as by implementing and enhancing security measures and protections and protecting against fraud, spam and abuse.
o To provide and improve the services, including any personalised services - we do this as it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests of providing an innovative and tailored offering to our users.
o To anonymise and subsequently use anonymised information.
o To protect your vital interests, or those of others.
6. How we share your personal information
We share personal information in the following ways:
· Affiliates. We share personal information with our affiliates when it is reasonably necessary or desirable, such as to help provide services to you or analyse and improve the services we or they provide.
· Following the law or protecting rights and interests. We disclose your personal information if we determine that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the law, protect our or others’ rights, property or interests or prevent fraud or abuse of Abacus Merchandising or our users. In particular, we may disclose your personal information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, such as to meet law enforcement requirements.
· Business transfers. If we're involved in a reorganiation, merger, acquisition or sale of some or all of our assets, your personal information may be transferred as part of that deal or the negotiation of contemplated deals.
7. Your rights and choices
Where applicable law requires (and subject to any relevant exceptions under law), you may have the right to access, update, change or delete personal information.
You can access, update, change or delete personal information by contacting us at mary@abacusmerchandising.co.uk to request the required changes. You can exercise your other rights (including deleting your data) by contacting us at the same email address. Please note that we may need to verify your identity in connection with your requests, and such verification process may require you to provide us with proof of identity. If we are unable to verify your identity or request, we may not, in accordance with applicable law, be able to fulfil your request.
Please note that, for technical reasons, there is likely to be a delay in deleting your personal information from our systems when you ask us to delete it. We also will retain personal information in order to comply with the law, protect our and others’ rights, resolve disputes or enforce our legal terms or policies, to the extent permitted under applicable law.
You may have the right to restrict or object to the processing of your personal information or to exercise a right to data portability under applicable law. You also may have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority, subject to applicable law.
Additionally, if we rely on consent for the processing of your personal information, you have the right to withdraw it at any time and free of charge. When you do so, this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before your consent withdrawal.
8. How we protect your personal information
While no service is completely secure, we are dedicated to keeping personal information safe. We maintain safeguards that are intended to appropriately protect against accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss, unauthorized alteration, unauthorized disclosure or access, misuse and any other unlawful form of processing, of the personal information in our possession. We employ security measures such as using firewalls to protect against intruders.
9. How we retain your personal information
We retain personal information regarding you or your use of our services for as long as needed to provide you with the services. We also retain personal information for as long as necessary to achieve the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, for example, to comply with our legal obligations, to protect us in the event of disputes and to enforce our agreements and to protect our and others’ interests.
The precise periods for which we keep your personal information vary depending on the nature of the information and why we need it. Factors we consider in determining these periods include the minimum required retention period prescribed by law or recommended as best practice, the period during which a claim can be made with respect to an agreement or other matter and other relevant criteria.
You may delete your personal information by contacting us at mary@abacusmerchandising.co.uk and we will delete the personal information we hold about you (unless we need to retain it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy).
10. Data transfers
Personal information that you submit through our services may be transferred to countries other than where you live, such as, for example, to servers in the U.S. We also store personal information locally on the devices you use to access the services. Your personal information may be transferred to countries that do not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the information.
We rely upon a number of means to transfer personal information which is subject to the European General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) in accordance with Chapter V of the GDPR. These include:
· Privacy Shield. We transfer, in accordance with Article 45 of the GDPR, personal information to companies that have certified their compliance with the EU-U.S. or Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks (each individually and jointly, the “Privacy Shield”), including Squarespace, Inc.
· Standard data protection clauses. We may, in accordance with Article 46 of the GDPR, transfer personal information to recipients that have entered into the European Commission approved contract for the transfer of personal data outside the European Economic Area.
· Other means. We may, in accordance with Articles 45 and 46 of the GDPR, transfer personal information to recipients that are in a country the European Commission or a European data protection supervisory authority has confirmed, by decision, offers an adequate level of data protection, pursuant to an approved certification mechanism or code of conduct, together with binding enforcement commitments from the recipient to apply the appropriate safeguards, including as regards data subjects’ rights, or to processors which have committed to comply with binding corporate rules.
You can find out more information about these transfer mechanisms here.
11. Privacy Shield
Abacus Merchandising’s hosting provider, Squarespace, Inc. has certified its compliance to the Privacy Shield.
Squarespace is committed to treating personal information received from the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom pursuant to the Privacy Shield Frameworks in accordance with the applicable Principles. You can find our certification here and you can learn more about the Frameworks and Principles by visiting https://www.privacyshield.gov/.
Squarespace’s accountability for personal information we receive under the Privacy Shield and subsequently transfer to a third party is described in the Privacy Shield Principles. In particular, we may use third parties to process data on our behalf as described in this Privacy Policy, and we remain liable if they do so in a manner inconsistent with the Privacy Shield Principles, unless we prove that we are not responsible for the event giving rise to the damage.
If you have a question or complaint you believe to be within the scope of our Privacy Shield certification, please contact us first at mary@abacusmerchandising.co.uk, or using the contact details in the “How to contact us” section below. We'll respond within 45 days.
For any complaints that we or Squarespace can’t resolve directly, JAMS is the independent organization responsible for reviewing and resolving complaints about our Privacy Shield compliance. You can contact JAMS free of charge at https://www.jamsadr.com/eu-us-privacy-shield. JAMS is an alternative dispute resolution provider based in the U.S.
If your concern still isn't addressed by JAMS, you may be entitled to a binding arbitration under the Privacy Shield Principles. For purposes of enforcing compliance with the Privacy Shield, Squarespace, Inc. is subject to the investigatory and enforcement authority of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
12. How to contact us
If you have questions, comments or complaints about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices or if you would like to exercise your rights and choices, please email us at mary@abacusmerchandising.co.uk or write to us at the addresses below:
Abacus Merchandising, The Place on the River, 9 The Island, Thames Ditton, Surrey KT7 0SH UK