Privacy policy

This policy explains what personal information Warm Sector collects when you visit warmsector.com or buy from us, why, who sees it, how long we keep it, and how to see it, correct it or have it deleted. It is written to meet the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Who we are

Your personal information is controlled by Robert Cowling, trading as Warm Sector, of 18 Thackeray Road, Exeter. You can contact us about it at hello@warmsector.com.

What we collect, and why

What	Why we need it	Our legal basis
Your name, email address, delivery and billing address, and phone number if you give one	To take payment, make and send your order, and tell you about it	Contract: we cannot fulfil the order without it
What you type into a personalised print: the date, place, title, trips, names, birth date or other words	To draw your print exactly as you ask. These words are printed on the sheet, so anyone who sees the print can read them	Contract
Messages you send us, and proofs we send you	To check your print and answer you	Contract, and our legitimate interest in answering you
Payment details	Taken by Shopify's payment providers. We never see or keep your full card number	Contract
Order records: what was bought, when, for how much	To keep accounts and pay tax	Legal obligation
Your device and browsing: cookies, IP address, pages visited	To run the shop, keep your basket, prevent fraud and see how the site is used. Cookies that are not strictly necessary are only set if you accept them	Necessary cookies: legitimate interest. Others: your consent

We do not ask for more than this, we do not sell your information, and we do not use it to make automated decisions about you. We only email you about your order unless you have separately agreed to hear from us, and you can say stop at any time.

Who we share it with

Shopify, which runs the shop, takes payment and holds order and customer records for us.
Prodigi, our print lab, which receives your name, delivery address, phone number if needed, and the picture to print. Your print is made in the lab nearest to you, in the UK, the Netherlands or the United States.
Delivery carriers, who receive your name, address and phone number to deliver the parcel.
Our email provider, which carries the messages between us.
Our accountant or the tax authorities, if the law requires.

When you type a place into a personalised print we look it up with public map services (OpenStreetMap's Nominatim, and postcodes.io for postcodes). They receive the place or postcode you typed, but not your name or any other detail about you.

Some of these companies are outside the UK and the European Economic Area, including in the United States and Canada. Where that happens we rely on a lawful transfer mechanism, such as the UK's adequacy regulations for the country, the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, or the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum.

How long we keep it

Order records (name, address, what you bought, the amount): 6 years from the end of the financial year of the order, because UK law requires us to keep accounting records.
The files we made for your print (the picture, the preview, the words you typed, our order log): 12 months after delivery, so we can reprint it or deal with a problem, then deleted.
Emails and proofs between us: 12 months after the order is completed, then deleted.
Places you typed, which we keep to avoid looking them up twice: they are not linked to your name, and are cleared at the same time as the files for your print.
Cookies: for the time shown in the cookie settings.
Print lab and carriers keep what they need for their own delivery and tax records under their own policies.

After these periods we delete the information or make it anonymous, so it can no longer be linked to you.

Your rights

You can ask us at any time to:

tell you what we hold about you and give you a copy;
correct anything wrong;
delete your information (see below);
restrict how we use it, or object to a use that relies on our legitimate interest;
give you your information in a portable format;
withdraw consent, for example to cookies or to emails, without affecting what was done before.

How to have your information deleted

Email hello@warmsector.com from the address you used to order, with the words "Delete my data" and, if you can, your order number. If you write from a different address we will ask you to confirm who you are before we do anything, so that nobody can delete your information, or learn it, by pretending to be you.
We reply to say we have your request. We aim to finish within 7 days, and always within one month at most.
We delete your customer record in Shopify, the files and notes we made for your print, our emails with you, and the places you typed. We ask our print lab to delete its copy of your order where its own rules allow.
We email you to confirm what has been deleted, and to tell you plainly anything we must keep and why. The usual one is the order record and invoice, which UK tax law makes us keep for 6 years. We keep only that, locked away from other use, and delete it when the period ends.

Shopify may refuse to erase a customer who has ordered very recently, because of its own rules and our own need to deal with returns and the right to cancel. If so we tell you the date it can be done, and do it then. Deleting your information does not cancel an order that is still being made or sent, and a print already made to your wording cannot be unmade: we will say so before we go ahead if your request would affect an open order.

There is no charge for any of this, unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.

Cookies

The shop uses cookies that are strictly necessary to work (your basket, checkout and security). Any others, such as measuring how the shop is used, are only used if you accept them in the cookie banner. You can change your choice at any time from the link in the shop's footer, or in your browser's settings.

Complaints

Please tell us first at hello@warmsector.com, so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.