Privacy Policy

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Our Privacy Policy.

Last updated February 14, 2023.

This Privacy Policy describes how your Personal Information is collected, used, and shared when you visit or make a purchase from our Website at https://islandstocottages.com/. By using our products and/or services, you agree to our terms and conditions in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

For more information on our Terms and Conditions when you visit our website at https://islandstocottages.com/ and regarding your use of our products and/or services, please refer to our Terms & Conditions Policy.

For more information on what cookies we use, how we use them and why, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Foreword.

At Islands to Cottages, we like to keep things simple. However, due to business requirements, please read carefully the following thorough Privacy Policy highlighting several aspects of the behind the scene of this website regarding your Privacy. This Privacy Policy describes how our entity, also referred to as “Islands to Cottages”, “Us”, “Our”, “our Website” and “We”, handles your Personal Information.

This Privacy Policy discloses our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information when you visit our website, make a purchase and/or use our services. By using our services, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

What Personal Data We Collect And Why We Collect It.

Due to business requirements, we may collect from you, our users and site visitors, personal data such as name, email address, personal account preferences; transactional data, such as purchase information; and technical data, such as information about cookies. We do not voluntarily collect nor retain any sensitive personal data, such as data concerning health, although those might be integrated to the personal information you voluntarily provided to us and therefore fall under information we have no control over. Personal data we collect is solely for the purpose of fulfilling our contract with you, the customer, in order to communicate with you, fulfill any orders placed through our website, and ship the product or otherwise make it available to you. You have the legal right not to provide us with any of the aforementioned Personal Information, however please note that doing so might prevent us from fulfilling our contract with you.

Personal data is not just created by your interactions with our site. Personal data is also generated from technical processes such as contact forms, comments, cookies, analytics, and third party embeds. By default, our Website builder WordPress does not collect any personal data about visitors, and only collects the data shown on the User Profile screen from registered users. However, some of the plugins used on our website to allow it to run properly may collect personal data.

Device Information.

When you visit our website, make a purchase or use our services, certain information is collected automatically about the device you use to access it. This might include information about your internet service provider, type of web browser or operating system, IP address, time zone, cookies installed on your device, crash log or any further information pertaining to our website usage.

Additionally, as you browse through our website, we collect usage information about your interaction within our website, the individual web pages or products that you view, time and duration of our website visits, referring/exit pages and date/time stamps, what websites or search terms you used, and information about how you interact with our website. This data is collected automatically in order for us to assess how you access and use our website, to effectively load our website for enhanced experience and optimal use, and to perform analytics to optimize our website. It allows us to perform efficient maintenance within our website and to troubleshoot and improve our website functionality.

Order And Shipping Information.

Our website is our platform for eCommerce. In order to fulfill our contract with you, the customer, we need to collect your Personal Information as the user in order to communicate with you, fulfill any orders placed through the Site, and ship the product or otherwise make it available to you. Additionally when you make a purchase or start the process to make a purchase through our website, certain information is collected automatically from you, including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number and payment information during the checkout process on our store. We use a third party provider, WooCommerce, for our eStore. WooCommerce uses your information for purposes such as to send you information about your account and order, respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints, process payments and prevent fraud, set up your account for our store, comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes, improving our store offerings, and sending you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them.

If you create an account, our third party provider WooCommerce will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders. They generally store information about you for as long as they need the information for the purposes for which they collect and use it, and they are not legally required to continue to keep it.  WooCommerce will also store comments or reviews, if you choose to leave them. Your payment information (including your name, billing address, shipping address, credit card numbers, email address and/or phone numbers) is not store on our Website since a secure third party payment gateway (Paypal) is used to process your order.

We collect your order Information in order to provide products or services to you and fulfill our contract with you, process your payment information, arrange for shipping, provide you with invoices and/or order confirmations, communicate with you, screen our orders for potential risk or fraud, and when in line with the preferences you have shared with us, provide you with information or advertising relating to our products or services. This Personal Information is collected automatically via our website and therefore shared to the strict extend necessary with our third party providers to help provide our services, support the functionality of our website, fulfill our contract with you and improve your experience as the customer. Our providers include our Web host BlueHost, our gateway payment provider PayPal, our translation plugin TranslatePress, our eCommerce platform provider WooCommerce and our website builder WordPress.org.

Customer Service And Follow-up.

In order to fulfill our contract with you, we need your Personal Information for customer support services including dealing with satisfaction, returns, credits, post-sale management, shipping, billing, payment and/or other matters. We also collect your Personal information for routine follow-ups in order to assess your satisfaction.

General Announcements.

We may use your Personal Information for periodic general announcements to users. These can include notifications, updates regarding our company or our Website, marketing communications, and so forth.

Text Message Data.

We may exchange text messages in the course of our transaction with you in order to fulfill our contract with you, to provide support, to enhance our customer services or to fulfill an order. Please note that we reserve the right to retain the information share in the text message data indefinitely.

Contact Forms.

We use contact forms from third party plugins in order to fulfill our contract with you. Please note that personal data is captured when you submit a contact form for customer service purposes, but we do not use the information submitted for marketing purposes.

Media And Embedded Content.

Please note that all content provided on our website is for the sole purpose of your information only and shall not be, in whole or in part, copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, distributed, displayed, sold, transferred, or modified without the express written permission of Islands to Cottages.  Articles and general content on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These Websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Third Party Service Providers.

We might need to use your Personal Information in connection with our Website maintenance, upgrades, new releases or analytics data review or compilation. We will be required to share user data with any third party service providers that we might engage to assist in these efforts.

Similarly, we might have to share user information in connection with third party marketing or advertising services. However, we engage to the greatest extend possible that these service providers employ adequate security measures with respect to user data by abiding to strict security measures set in place by our hosts and third party providers.

For example, our online platform for eCommerce WooCommerce will track products you’ve viewed to  show you products you’ve recently viewed, location, IP address and browser type for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping, and shipping address to estimate shipping before you place an order, and send you the order.  They will also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you are browsing our website.

Sharing Personal Information.

As a general policy, we use Personal Information and message data for internal purposes only. Our company abides by strict rules regarding the sharing of Personal Information of our customers. We do not sell or rent information about you. We will not disclose Personal Information or message data to third parties without your consent, except as explained in the present Privacy Policy. Please note that in addition to the administrative and marketing purposes discussed above, we might share your Personal Information with service providers to help us provide our services and fulfill our contracts with you, as described above.

The Personal Information collected automatically via our website is shared to the strict extend necessary with our third party providers to help provide our services, support the functionality of our website, fulfill our contract with you and improve your experience as the customer.

Members of the team of our third party providers have access to the information you provide us. For example, both Administrators and Shop Managers can access order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information. Their team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you. They share information with third parties who help them provide your orders and offer services to you; for example we currently accept payments through PayPal. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to PayPal, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information. Please see the PayPal Privacy Policy for more details.

Cookies.

Cookies are inherent to the platform hosting our website and to the third party providers that allow our website to run. Islands to Cottages has to abide by their use to a certain extend in order to enhance our website functionality. Most Web browsers are initially set up to accept cookies.

For more information on how to modify your browser settings or how to block, manage or filter cookies please visit your browser’s help file. You can reset your Web browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. Please note, however, that certain features of the website might not function if you delete or disable cookies. Also, please note that blocking cookies may not completely prevent how we share information with third parties.

For more information about Cookies, please visit our Cookie Policy.

Analytics.

Our website uses analytics to allow our website to run properly and to optimize your experience as a user. You can opt out of analytics tracking and find out more about their Privacy Policy here.

Behavioural Advertising.

We may use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. We may share information about your use of our website, your purchases, and your interaction with our ads on other websites with our advertising partners. We collect and share some of this information directly with our advertising partners, and in some cases through the use of cookies or other similar technologies (which you may consent to, depending on your location).

For more information about behavioural advertising, please visit the Office of Privacy Commissioner of Canada. For more information about how to opt-out of behavioural advertising, please visit Privacy International for a step-by-step guide.

Do Not Track.

Some internet browsers include the ability to transmit “do not track” signals. Please note that pursuant to the rules and regulations set by our third party providers, and because no industry standard has yet been developed with respect to “do not track”, our website does not currently have the ability to process or respond to such “do not track” signals.

How Long We Retain Your Data.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the Personal Information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their Personal Information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information. Contact form entries are kept for six months, analytics records for a year, and customer purchase records for ten years.

Compliance With Laws.

We may be required to disclose your Personal Information in order to comply with any court orders or applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.

Our company cooperates with government and law enforcement officials to enforce and comply with the law. We may therefore disclose Personal Information, usage data, message data, and any other information about you, if we deem that it is reasonably necessary to: (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process (such as a subpoena or court order), or enforceable governmental request; (b) enforce the Terms & Conditions, including investigation of potential violations thereof; (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues; or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of the Company, its users or the public, as required or permitted by law.

Data Safekeeping.

We would like to remind you to carefully protect the Personal Information that you submit on our website — including passwords, usernames, location, images, and videos — and not to disclose any sensitive information in the public domain so that third parties can’t manipulate your accounts or assume your identities.

Security.

Islands to Cottages uses necessary measures to protect the security of the data automatically collected on our website. However, please note that it is impossible for us to completely guarantee that user data will be immune from malicious attack or compromise; as such, we want to emphasize the fact that your transmission of Personal Information is always at your own risk.

Storage And Maintenance Of User Data.

Your Personal Information is subject to the laws of Canada, regardless of the country from which your data originates. When you place an order through our website, we maintain your Personal Information for our records unless and until you ask us to erase this information. For more information, please see the “Your Rights” section below.

Your Rights Within The General Data Protection Regulation.

If you have interacted on this website or have left comments, you can request to receive a record of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

If you are a resident of the EU, you have the right to access the Personal Information we hold about you, to port it to a new service, and to ask that your Personal Information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us. Additionally, if you are a European resident please note that we are processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above. Therefore, your information will be transferred outside of Europe, including to Canada. 

Regardless of your location, by using our website you agree to allow third parties to process your IP address, in order to determine your location for the purpose of currency conversion. You also agree to have that currency stored temporarily as per standing procedure. For more information about the GDPR, please visit the EU GDPR page.

Updating User Information.

You have the right to correct, update, or change your Personal Information, or adjust or cease the frequency with which you receive company communications. Furthermore, you have the ability to disable your account, in accordance with our “Terms & Conditions“. If you wish to exercise your right to update your Personal Information, please contact us directly by filling up the form “Contact Us” [Re: Update User Information]. Please be advised that doing so might prevent us from fulfilling our contract with you.

Changes To The Privacy Policy.

Islands to Cottages might update this Privacy Policy from time-to-time to reflect changes in our practices and services, or for further operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. As the user, we highly recommend that you periodically revisit this page for any updates, and so that you are aware of the most recent changes in our Privacy Policy. We make every effort to notify our users of any policy changes but it is ultimately the user’s responsibility to be familiar with the latest version of all our policies.

Contact Us.

After reviewing this Policy, if you wish to receive further information regarding our privacy practices or if you have any questions pertaining to our Privacy Policy, please contact us [Re: Privacy Policy].