PRIVACY POLICY

The Compassionate Shopping Guide is produced by Naturewatch Foundation, a registered charity working to make the world a kinder place for all animals.

This Privacy Policy explains how the Compassionate Shopping Guide handles and uses your personal information and your rights in relation to that information. Protecting your data is important to us, and always has been.

This Privacy Policy applies to all pages hosted on this website. It does not apply to other organisations we may direct you to under the Compassionate Shopping Guide umbrella, as their privacy policies may differ.

This policy applies to www.compassionateshoppingguide.org only.

We periodically update this Privacy Policy and we encourage you to regularly review this page to ensure that you’re happy with any changes.

How to contact the Compassionate Shopping Guide

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our treatment of the information you provide, please either:

Send an email to compassionateshopping@naturewatch.org

Send a letter to Compassionate Shopping Guide, c/o Naturewatch Foundation, 49 Rodney Road, Cheltenham, GL50 1HX, United Kingdom

Telephone us on +44 (0) 1242 252 871. Our telephone line is normally manned from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, apart from public holidays

How your data is collected

Your name and contact information will only be collected via the Compassionate Shopping Guide website (compassionateshoppingguide.org). By submitting your details, you enable the Compassionate Shopping Guide to either 1. send periodic emails related to our work to make the world a kinder place for animals, including our work to end animal testing, and to highlight relevant content about brands endorsed in the guide and cruelty-free living, or 2. (if you’re a company or brand) process applications to become endorsed in the guide, or renew your endorsement. We will not share your information with a third party unless we have your written permission.

Occasionally, we may ask for additional information where it may help us achieve the Mission of Naturewatch Foundation. We may also store relevant information about you that you voluntarily share with us.

Cookie Policy

Cookies are small text files on your computer, smartphone, tablet or other device.  They are made by your web-browser when you visit a website.  Every time you go back to that website, your browser will send the cookie file back to the website’s server. Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improving the user experience.

We use cookies, like most websites, to help us provide you with the best experience when you visit our site. Cookies collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. They allow us to understand (by using tools like Google Analytics) how visitors are interacting with our website so that we can improve it.

All browsers allow you to control which cookies you accept and which you delete. You will usually find these settings under the ‘Preferences’ or ‘Tools’ menu of your browser. For more information about cookies, please see www.allaboutcookies.org.

How do we collect information from you?

We may obtain information about you when you sign-up to our newsletter, support a petition or when you submit a form to apply to become endorsed in the Compassionate Shopping Guide (or to renew your endorsement).

How and why is your information used?

We may use your information for a number of different purposes, which may include:

• For campaigning purposes – where you have signed a petition or otherwise have taken action, your details may be sent to the campaign target, or an email sent on your behalf, as indicated when you took action e.g to send an email to a decision maker;
• Providing you with information that you have requested from us;
• Carrying out our obligations under any contracts entered into between you and us;
• Keeping a record of your relationship with us;
• Informing you of volunteering opportunities;
• Sending you communications directly related to the Compassionate Shopping Guide;
• Processing applications to become endorsed in the Compassionate Shopping Guide;
• Processing renewals to remain endorsed in the Compassionate Shopping Guide.

How long is your information kept for?

We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected. The length of time we retain your personal information for is determined by operational and legal considerations. We review our retention periods on a regular basis.

What the Compassionate Shopping Guide does to keep your data secure

When you give us personal information, we make every effort to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Your personal data is processed only in accordance with EU Data Protection laws.

Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

How the Compassionate Shopping Guide will communicate with you

For any communications about the Compassionate Shopping Guide, we will generally contact you via email or, occasionally, by sending you a letter through the post. If you’re a company or brand that has applied to become endorsed, we may also contact you via telephone using the contact phone numbers you provided in your application or renewal form. We will only contact you if we have your consent or if we believe you would be interested in the information, unless you have expressed a preference not to receive communications from the Compassionate Shopping Guide.

To respond to your queries, we will contact you via the medium you used to contact us or by a medium you have indicated you would like us to respond with. If we need to contact you for any administrative purposes then we will usually send an email to you.

The Compassionate Shopping Guide will never call you to ask for a donation and will never employ a third party to do so on our behalf.

Respecting your choices

When you provide us with personal information, we will assume that you are happy with the above uses of this information unless otherwise advised. You always have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. You can change your mailing preference at any time by contacting us via one of the three methods listed at the beginning of the Privacy Policy.

Your individual rights

Under the UK Data Protection Law your rights are as follows. You can read more about your rights in detail here. Here is a summary of the rights that we think may apply:

Right of access

You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless legal exceptions apply.

If you want to access your information, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity by post to the address provided above.

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change email address, or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us (see above).

Right to restrict use

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy or we’re not lawfully allowed to use it.

Right of erasure

You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions; we will do so as far as we are required to.

Third party websites

Please note that we cannot be responsible for the privacy and security policies and practices of third-party websites, even when they provide links to our website or can be accessed using links from our website. We recommend that you check the policy of each website you visit.

16 or Under

Although we are not responsible for determining the age of website visitors, our websites are intended for use by people aged 16 and over.

If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Parents and guardians should be aware that owing to the nature of our work, images posted on the Compassionate Shopping Guide website may, occasionally, be considered unsuitable for children under the age of 13 (e.g. the carefully considered use of photographs of dead, dying or otherwise suffering animals). 

Thank you for your support