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Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 25 April 2018

Design Shack takes data privacy very seriously and recognises the importance of protecting and respecting your personal data. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect, how we use that information, to whom we pass the information, your rights and key contact information.

1. Overview

To provide you with a Design Shack membership, we need to collect information about you. Our aim is not to be intrusive, and we won’t ask you unnecessary questions. Any information we receive about you will be subject to strict controls to minimise the risk of misuse – including unauthorised access to, or disclosure of, your personal data.

Please read this notice carefully, and any other documents referred to in it. Here we set out the basis on which any information we collect about you or from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us and other parties in providing you with the services accessed through the website. Design Shack (“our”, “us” and “we”) commits to using your information only in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, the term “information” means any confidential and/or personal data or other information related to users of Design Shack – including, but not limited to, corporate and individual customers and their connected parties.

By visiting this website or providing your personal information to one of our employees, for example by telephone or email, you accept and expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information and direct us to do so in the manner described in this Privacy Policy.

This includes information you provide when you browse our website, register for an account, enter a competition, promotion or survey, purchase from us, and when you contact us for other reasons.

If you have concerns about any of the terms of this Privacy Policy, please email us so that we can provide further information.

2. What Information We Collect

We may collect and process the following information about you:

Information You Provide to Us

You may provide us with information by filling in forms on our website, our partners’ websites or by talking with us by over the phone or corresponding with us via email or otherwise.

This includes information you provide when you browse our website, register for an account, purchase from us, and when you contact us for other reasons.

Initial Information

To open a free Design Shack account, you must provide your email address. You then have the option to enter additional information to your profile: your name, website URL, biography, and social media account usernames.

To submit a design to our gallery, you must provide a URL, screenshot, name, and description.

When We Communicate

When you communicate with us for customer service or other purposes, including by phone, email or using other methods, we retain that information and our responses to you.

Information We Collect When You Use Our Website

When you arrive at or leave the Design Shack website, whether connected by a fixed line or wirelessly, we receive the web address of the site that you came from or are going to.

While you are using our site we collect information on the services you search for or view, page response times and length of visits to specific pages, how you interacted with each page (including scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

We collect information about the device you are using, such as the type of device, operating system and platform, the type and version of browser, browser plug-in types and versions, the times you access our website/app and the time zone setting, mobile network information and unique device identifier.

3. How We Use Your Information

Our primary purpose in collecting your information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient and customised experience. By submitting your information to Design Shack, you agree that we may use your information for the following purposes:

Fulfilling Your Requests

We will use your information to:

  • Provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us, including the provision of our membership
  • Complete any transaction you are undertaking with us; and
  • Administer any promotion, survey or competition that you enter via our website(s)

Communication and Customer Service

We communicate with our users on a regular basis via email to provide requested services and help you manage your account. These activities include:

  • Responding to requests for customer service
  • Confirming information concerning a user’s identity, business or account activity
  • Resolving customer complaints
  • Conducting customer surveys

We use your email address to:

  • Confirm your opening of a Design Shack account
  • Send you notice of account activity with Design Shack (submitting designs, their approval/rejection, or similar)
  • Send you information about important changes to our products and services, including notice of any times that our services may not be available
  • Send notices and other disclosures required by law

Users cannot opt out of these communications, but they will be primarily service-oriented rather than promotional.

As we are obligated to send these communications to current customers, if you do not wish to receive these communications at all, then, unfortunately, you must close your account.

Marketing

We also use your email address to send you other types of communications that you can control, including information about the Design Shack membership, customer surveys and special promotions. These communications are to:

  • Provide you with information about the Design Shack membership
  • Provide news about the design and creative industry, marketing and advertising messages, updates on the services we offer, and promotional offers based on your activities
  • Tell you about new products and features we are developing that you may find useful

You can choose whether to receive these communications when you make a purchase, or create an account (or at any time thereafter) by logging in to your account on the Design Shack website, visiting your profile page and changing your preferences.

Service Improvements and Account Management

We will use your information to deliver and improve Design Shack services and manage your account, including:

  • Verifying your identity, including during account creation and password reset processes
  • Improving our existing, and developing new, products, services, websites, apps and capabilities
  • Administering our website(s) and for internal business administration and operations purposes, including storage, backup, archiving, troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes
  • As part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure, including managing and protecting our information technology infrastructure.

Questionnaires, Surveys, Competitions and Profile Data

From time to time we may offer you optional questionnaires, surveys, and competitions. If you choose to answer these questionnaires, surveys or competitions, we may use your information to improve Design Shack, send you marketing or advertising information, manage the competitions and for such purposes as collecting demographic information or assessing users’ interests and needs.

You will be given notice of how the information will be used prior to your participation in the survey, questionnaire or competition.

Accessing and Changing Your Information

You can review the information you have provided to us and make any desired changes to your information or to the settings on your Design Shack account at any time by logging in to your account on the Design Shack website, visiting the profile page and changing your details.

4. Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site and to provide interest-based advertising.

You may adjust the settings on your browser to refuse cookies but some of the services on our website(s) may not work if you do so.

5. Public Information and Sharing with Third Parties

Blog Comments

We have public comments on our some of our website pages. Any information you include in a comment on our blog may be read, collected, and used by anyone. If your personal information appears on our blogs and you want it removed, contact us here. If we are unable to remove your information, we will tell you why.

Social Media Platforms and Widgets

Our websites include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button. These features may collect information about your IP address and which page you are visiting on our Website, and they may set a cookie to make sure the feature functions properly.

Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Website. We also maintain presences on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Any information, communications, or materials you submit to us via a social media platform is done at your own risk without any expectation of privacy. We cannot control the actions of other users of these platforms or the actions of the platforms themselves. Your interactions with those features and platforms are governed by the privacy policies of the companies that provide them.

Links to Third-Party Websites

Our websites include links to other websites, whose privacy practices may be different from ours. If you submit Personal Information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any website you visit.

Where Required by Law

We may disclose necessary information to the police and other law enforcement agencies, security forces, competent governmental, intergovernmental or supranational bodies, competent agencies, departments, regulatory authorities, self-regulatory authorities or organisations, and other third parties where we are legally compelled and/or permitted to do so.

Mergers and Acquisitions

As with any business, it is possible that in the future Design Shack could buy, merge with, or be acquired by, another company. We may disclose your information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets, along with its professional advisers. If Design Shack or a substantial proportion of its assets are acquired by a third party, information held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets, and such successor company would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until it is amended.

Analytics and Search Engine Providers

We share your IP address with analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site, and also for 3rd party advertising on 3rd party websites.

6. Transferring Data Overseas

Design Shack is committed to adequately protecting your information regardless of where the data resides and to providing appropriate protection for your information where such data is transferred outside of the EEA.

The information that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored in, a country outside the European Economic Area (EEA). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for our suppliers. These staff may be engaged in the fulfilment of your request, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

By submitting your information and making use of Design Shack, you agree to such transfers, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We will do our best to protect your information, however we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted to our site or sent to us by email or other non-secure electronic methods; any such transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use protective procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

7. Data Retention Policy

We retain data for the purposes of reporting, backup, and financial compliance for a period of up to five years. Where you have requested that we do so, we will take steps to delete your data from our system (with the exception of the required data retention for tax or financial reporting).

Where you have asked us not to contact you, we will retain that information on a ‘do not contact’ list to reduce the risk of us contacting you in the future.

8. Security Policy

To protect your personal information, we take reasonable precautions and follow industry best practices to make sure it is not inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed.

If you provide us with your credit card information, the information is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL) and stored with a AES-256 encryption. Although no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, we follow all PCI-DSS requirements and implement additional generally accepted industry standards.

9. Age of Consent

By using this site, you represent that you are at least the age of majority in your state or province of residence, or that you are the age of majority in your state or province of residence and you have given us your consent to allow any of your minor dependents to use this site.

10. Customer Rights

You have the following rights:

To ask us to correct any information we hold about you if it is incorrect.

Whilst we endeavour at all times to keep your information accurate, we welcome your corrections. You can correct your profile at any time by logging onto your account via the Design Shack website. We may ask you for additional verification information if you are changing certain details such as your name or your address.

To ask us to erase your information if we no longer have any reason to hold it, also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’.

Our Data Retention Policy (see section 7) explains the circumstances when we can or are obliged to retain information, however outside of those periods we will delete your information in line with our data retention policy and on request. We will maintain a record that you made an erasure request to reduce the likelihood of us contacting you in the future but we will use that information for no other purpose.

To ask us to return to you information you provided to us, also known as ‘data portability’.

You can ask us to send you in electronic format the information you provided to us.

To ask us not to process your information where you previously gave consent or where we are exercising our legitimate interest.

If you make a request for us to stop processing your information, we will investigate to see if there is a compelling reason for processing to continue and will discuss the conclusion of the investigation with you.

You cannot object to processing which is a legal obligation or where we must process your information to satisfy a contract to which you are a party. If you previously gave consent and we processed your data on the basis of that consent, you cannot object to that past processing, however you can ask us to stop processing it in the future.

To ask for a copy of the information we hold about you.

We will endeavour to respond to your request within 30 days, however at time of high demand we may need 90 days to compile a full response.

To ask us not to process your information for marketing purposes.

You can do this by checking or unchecking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your information, or by logging onto your account and managing your contact preferences, or by clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link(s) at the foot of every marketing or promotional email.

11. Contacting Us

The Data Controller

The Data Controller is Compact Creative Limited, Registered office address C/O Ppi Accountancy Limited Horley Green House, Horley Green Road, Claremount, Halifax, HX3 6AS, company registration number 07208797.

Contacting Us With Questions or Requests

If you want to exercise your right to access your information or have any questions about this Privacy Policy, Design Shack’s information practices, or your dealings with Design Shack, you can contact us by email.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may amend this policy at any time, as new features are added to Design Shack or as we incorporate suggestions from our customers. The current version of the policy is reflected in the “updated” date at the start of the policy.

Your continued use of our website(s) after a posting of a new version of this Policy will constitute your acceptance of, and agreement to, any changes. If you disagree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, you may close your account at any time.