Privacy Policy for The Literary Hive
This Privacy Policy explains how The Literary Hive collects, uses, and protects your personal information when you interact with our services, including our curated book selections, author events, reading group facilitation, literary workshops, café and co-working space, gift shop, online book sales, literary merchandise, and use of our online platform. We are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable data protection laws.
1. Information We Collect
We collect various types of information to provide and improve our services to you.
1.1 Personal Data You Provide Directly To Us
When you engage with our services, you may provide us with personal data. This includes:
- Identity Data: Name, title, date of birth, gender.
- Contact Data: Billing address, delivery address, email address, telephone numbers.
- Financial Data: Payment card details for transactions (though we do not store full payment card numbers on our servers).
- Transaction Data: Details about payments to and from you, and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
- Profile Data: Your username and password (for online accounts), purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback, and survey responses.
- Marketing and Communications Data: Your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties, and your communication preferences.
1.2 Automatically Collected Data
When you interact with our online platform, we may automatically collect certain information about your device and browsing actions. This may include:
- Technical Data: Internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our online platform.
- Usage Data: Information about how you use our online platform, products, and services.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use your personal data for the following purposes and under the following lawful bases:
- To provide and manage our services: Fulfilling online book orders, facilitating workshop registrations, managing event bookings, and providing access to our co-working space. (Lawful Basis: Performance of a contract with you.)
- To process payments: Handling transactions for purchases in-store or online. (Lawful Basis: Performance of a contract with you.)
- To communicate with you: Sending order confirmations, updates about events, responses to inquiries, and information about your account. (Lawful Basis: Performance of a contract with you or Legitimate Interests.)
- For marketing purposes: With your consent, sending you newsletters, promotional offers, and information about new books, events, and services that may be of interest to you. (Lawful Basis: Consent or Legitimate Interests.)
- To improve our services: Analyzing usage patterns on our online platform, gathering feedback from surveys, and understanding customer preferences to enhance our offerings. (Lawful Basis: Legitimate Interests.)
- For security and fraud prevention: Protecting our online platform, customers, and business from fraudulent activity and misuse. (Lawful Basis: Legitimate Interests; Compliance with a legal obligation.)
- To comply with legal obligations: Maintaining records for tax or auditing purposes, and responding to lawful requests from public authorities. (Lawful Basis: Compliance with a legal obligation.)
3. Sharing Your Information
We may share your personal data with third parties in the following circumstances:
- Service Providers: We work with third-party service providers who perform functions on our behalf, such as payment processing, order fulfillment, website hosting, data analysis, and marketing assistance. These providers have access to personal data needed to perform their functions but are not permitted to use it for other purposes.
- Legal Requirements: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g., a court order or government agency).
- Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your personal data may be transferred as part of that transaction.
- With Your Consent: We may share your information with other third parties when we have your explicit consent to do so.
4. International Data Transfers
As The Literary Hive is based in the United Kingdom, your data will primarily be processed within the UK and European Economic Area (EEA). However, some of our third-party service providers may be located outside the UK/EEA. Where your personal data is transferred to a country outside the UK/EEA that does not offer an adequate level of data protection, we will ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as using standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission or the UK Information Commissioner's Office, or ensuring the recipient is certified under an approved data transfer mechanism.
5. Data Security
We have implemented appropriate technical and organizational security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered, or disclosed. We also limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
6. Data Retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data, and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
7. Your Legal Rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data:
- Request access to your personal data.
- Request correction of your personal data.
- Request erasure of your personal data.
- Object to processing of your personal data.
- Request restriction of processing your personal data.
- Request transfer of your personal data.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the contact details provided below. You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance.
8. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The latest version will always be posted on our online platform, and we encourage you to review it periodically.
9. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us:
- The Literary Hive
- 14 Charing Cross Road
- Ground Floor
- London, Greater London
- WC2H 0AN
- United Kingdom