Privacy and Cookie Policy

Privacy

Rest assured, I take your privacy and the protection of your information very seriously. I will never sell your personal information to another company.

Jo Thornton is a very small online business, but I naturally need to use some personal information to take and send orders, answer customer enquiries, deal with returns and keep the sales and accounting records I am legally required to keep. I don't keep my own copies of customer data. Instead, I leave it securely within the specialist services that need it to run my business. If I ever download sales information to analyse it myself, I remove all names, addresses, email addresses and other identifying information immediately, and only keep the anonymised version.

Your orders and payments

When you order from my website, I need information such as your name, email address, delivery address and details of what you have ordered. Create.net hosts my website and checkout and securely stores the order information I need to process your purchase and refer back to it later if you contact me about an order. My sales are also recorded in AngelBooks, my sales and accounting system, which contains information such as your name, email and delivery address, the products purchased, the value of the order and its payment status. I need to retain some of this information for legal, tax and VAT purposes.Payments are processed securely by PayPal and Opayo. I do not receive or store your full card details. To send your order, I also provide the postal or courier company with the information needed to deliver it, normally your name and delivery address and, where the particular service requires it, your email address or telephone number.

Information I download

Occasionally I need to download sales information so that I can analyse or work with it myself. When I do this, I remove names, addresses, email addresses and any other customer-identifying information immediately. I keep only the non-identifying sales information I actually need, and it is this version that I save in pCloud, which I use for secure business file storage.I do not use pCloud as a general store of customer names, addresses or order histories. Very occasionally I may need to create a personalised document for an individual customer, such as an invoice. These files are only kept for as long as I need them.

Emails and customer enquiries

I use Gmail, provided by Google, for my business email, so if you contact me your email address, the contents of your message and our correspondence are processed using Google's services. I use this information to answer your enquiry, give product advice, help with an order or return and provide the customer service you have asked me for.I sometimes use ChatGPT, provided by OpenAI, as a writing assistant for selected customer emails. This does not mean that AI automatically reads through my inbox or answers customers for me. I read your email first and decide whether ChatGPT has any place in helping me with that particular reply. I decide what advice I want to give and what the answer needs to say; ChatGPT can then help me turn that into a clear email. Nothing is automatically answered or sent.Some customers share incredibly personal information with me, and my judgement comes first. If I consider an email or conversation particularly personal or sensitive, I don't use ChatGPT to help with it. If you would prefer me not to use AI assistance with your emails at all, simply tell me and I will reply without it. I have also switched off ChatGPT's model improvement setting, so these conversations are not used to train its models.You can read much more about exactly how and why I use AI on my AI and Customer Emails page.

Why I use and keep your information

I only use your personal information where I have a reason to do so. This will usually be because I need it to take, process and fulfil your order; because I have a legal obligation to keep certain tax and accounting records; or because I have a legitimate interest in answering customer enquiries, providing customer service, dealing with returns or problems and running the business properly.I don't keep personal information simply because I can. Some sales and accounting information has to be retained for a number of years because of legal and tax requirements. Other information, such as customer correspondence, is kept for as long as I reasonably need it to answer enquiries, deal with an order, return or problem, or resolve any later dispute. The specialist companies I use may also keep information for periods required for their own security, legal and regulatory obligations.Some of the services I use are international companies, which means information may sometimes be processed outside the UK. Where this happens, I use established providers which put appropriate legal safeguards in place for international transfers of personal information.

Your rights

You have rights over your personal information under UK data-protection law. Depending on the circumstances, you can ask me what information I hold about you, ask me to correct information that is wrong, request deletion where I no longer have a lawful reason to keep it, or ask me to restrict certain uses of your information. Where I am using your information on the basis of my legitimate interests, you also have the right to object to that use.If you have a privacy question or would like to exercise any of your rights, please contact me through my Contact page. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how your information has been handled, although I would always appreciate the opportunity to try to resolve any concern with you first.

Cookies:

Like most websites, this site uses cookies. These are small files stored on your device that help the website work properly and, depending on your choices, can also help me understand how the site is being used.

Essential cookies are needed for things such as the shopping basket, checkout and other basic website functions, so these cannot be switched off.The site may also use functional, performance, marketing or embedded-media cookies, depending on the features being used. For example, performance cookies can help show how visitors use the website so that I can see what is working well and what could be improved.

Where cookies are not essential, you can choose whether to allow them using the cookie settings shown on the website. You can accept all cookies, reject non-essential cookies or customise your choices.Some cookies may be provided by third-party services used on the website, such as payment, analytics, social-media or embedded-content providers. Their use will depend on the features you choose to interact with and the cookie permissions you have selected.