Privacy Policy

Website Privacy Policy

The Greeting Card Association  (“we”, “us”), is the “data controller” of personal data belonging to our members, business contacts, website users and customers (which we call “personal information” for clarity). This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy policy.

This privacy policy (which is our “privacy notice” for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulations), describes how we collect and use personal information about you through your use of this website, or contact us by email.

It is important that you read this privacy policy, together with any other privacy policy or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your information. This privacy policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

It is important that you read this notice, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.

Collection and Use of your information

What personal information we collect about you and how we use it depends on what you do on our website and how you interact with us. We do not collect “special categories” of personal information such as details of race, religious beliefs or political opinions; or details of any criminal offences or convictions.

We typically collect personal information from you directly when you enter your personal information into our website or contact us by email. We also gather personal information automatically through the use of cookies and analytics services and receive personal information about you from various third parties such as technical information from analytics providers, advertising networks, and search information providers.

Emails and Newsletters

If you wish to sign up to receive our email newsletter, we ask for your name, email address, employer and details of why you are interested in us. We need this information in order to send the newsletter to you. We also have a legitimate interest in understanding why you want to hear from us. Our lawful basis for using your personal information in this way is your express consent.

When signing up to our emails and newsletters, we also ask you whether you wish to receive newsletters and other offers from specific third parties whose services might be of interest to you. If you agree to this, we will pass your details to those third parties who will contact you directly. Our lawful basis for passing your contact details to third parties is your express consent.

Enquiries about membership

When contacting us with an enquiry about membership, you provide us with your name, phone number and email address. In the course of a sale or negotiations for a sale, you may also provide us with additional personal information such as your personal bank account details.

We use the personal information which you have given us in order to respond to your enquiry and to process your order. The use of your personal information in this way is necessary so that we can take steps at your request with a view to entering into a contract with you.

We may also retain your personal information and details of your enquiry for up to 2 years because we have a legitimate interest knowing who has been interested in our business, being able to deal with future enquiries from you and, in some cases, following up on potential business leads.

Membership Listing

When you become a member, you have the option to be included in our directory of members which is publically available. Your listing might include personal information such as your name and contact details. Our directory helps members find each other and helps you to publicise your business by advertising your creative talents to the public.

The lawful basis for including your personal information in our online directory is your express consent. You are free to opt-out of being included in the directory at any time in which case we will remove your listing from future editions of the directory (we cannot delete past references).

News about your Membership

If you are a member, we may use your identity and contact details to send you news about your membership and information about the services which we offer.

We may also send our email newsletter and other marketing emails to you if you have not opted-out of receiving them. Our lawful basis for using your personal information in this way is our legitimate interest in sending you news and information about offers we think you may be interested in.

You are free to opt-out of receiving our newsletter and marketing emails at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of any newsletter or marketing email from us.

Putting you in contact with other members

If a member contacts us with a query, we might pass on the identity and contact details of another of our members (such as an associate member) who might be able to assist. For example, if a member contacts us with a question about copyright law we might give that member details of one of an employee of a law firm which is one of our associate members. The lawful basis for us the collection and disclosure of identity and contact details in this way is our legitimate interest in being able to assist our members with their queries.

In some cases we might contact third parties, such as associate members or those who provide services to us to pass on the contact details of members who have asked us for advice. We may also provide details of our member’s issue. We will not do this unless you have given us your consent to pass on your details.

Transaction History

When we process a transaction with you, we collect and store information about your identity, the order that you placed and your payment information. The use of your personal information in this way is necessary so that we can take steps at your request with a view to entering into a contract with you and so that we can comply with our contractual obligations to you.

We retain this information after your order has been fulfilled, typically for 7 years. The lawful basis of our collection and use of your personal information is our legitimate interests in being able to respond to queries about your purchase, dealing with complaints (including defending ourselves in any legal proceedings), and complying with accounting obligations imposed on us by law.

Business to Business marketing

We have a legitimate interest in using the personal information that we have gathered from our contact with you in order to build a list of business or commercial contacts and/or to gain insight into who is interested in our products and services to grow our business.

In some cases, we may use your personal information to send you marketing emails or information about our commercial offers which we think might be of interest to you. In compliance with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (“PECR”), we will only send you marketing emails in this way without your consent if you are not an “individual subscriber” within the meaning of PECR (we might, for example, contact you in this way if you are an employee of a limited company).

If you are a consumer, sole trader or member of a partnership (or an employee of any business which trades in these ways), we do not use your personal information to send you marketing messages by email, unless you have provided your express consent for us to do so.

You have the right to opt-out of receiving marketing emails and can do so at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in such emails.

Keeping you informed about changes

If you are a member or have signed up to receive our newsletters, we may use your identity and contact details to contact you periodically to keep you updated about changes to our terms and conditions, website, our policies or the terms of use.

We use your personal information in this way to allow us to comply with legal obligations (when changes to the law require changes to our terms), and for our legitimate interests to keep you and our records updated.

Cookies

By using and browsing our website, you consent to cookies being used. If you do not agree to our use of cookies, you must disable cookies or stop using the site.

A Cookie is a small file that our website asks your web browser to put on your computer’s hard drive to help us tell you apart from other users of our website.

We use Cookies to:

• help us recognise you and help us remember your preferences when you come back to our website (for example, your choice of language or region).
• Ensure the functioning of our website, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
• recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
• record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

For further information on cookies, please visit www.aboutcookies.org.

Our use of cookies mean that we and third parties gather information which could identify you personally (such as information about the equipment that you use or your IP address).

The lawful basis for our use of any personal information which we collect through our use of Cookies is our legitimate interests, specifically:

• for technical purposes, so our website functions properly.
• to drive targeted advertisements from third-parties to make suggestions and recommendations about goods or services which may be of interest to you.
• to enable us to collect information about the browsing habits and activities of customers, so we can constantly improve our website and service, develop our business and inform our marketing strategy.

Cookies are set by us and may also be set by third parties.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some cookies, or to alert you if websites set or access cookies. The site may not operate properly if cookies are switched off.

Cookies used on this site include:

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
GDPR Cookie Consent	persistent	1 year	When you click to accept the Cookie notification on this website, a cookie is used to remember your consent. That way you can enjoy our site without the nagging notification appearing at the bottom of the site.
Google Analytics	3rd party	2 years	Used to track how the website is used and provide feedback to help us improve user experience. Your information is passed to Google to help with the analysis but NOT used for direct marketing. To opt out of Google Analytics Tracking, please click the button at the bottom of this page.
Woocommerce (Cart Hash)	session	session	Helps WooCommerce (the ecommerce engine used on this website) determine when cart contents/data changes.
Woocommerce (items in cart)	session	session	Helps WooCommerce (the ecommerce engine used on this website) determine when cart contents/data changes.
Woocommerce (session)	persistent	2 days	Contains a unique code for each customer so that it knows where to find the cart data in the database for each customer.
Woocommerce (Store Notice)	session	session	Allows visitors to dismiss store notices that may appear.
Wordpress	persistent	2 weeks	Cookies used by Wordpress for core functionality. These cookies are required for the website to work properly. More information can be found on this website: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Cookies

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics® to monitor website traffic. This involves the collection of technical information which might be personally identifying. The lawful basis for the collection and use of your personal information through Google Analytics is our legitimate interest to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, and to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy.

At the suggestion of Google, Inc., we have included the following statement to explain about the service:

“This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.”

You can disable Google Analytics on this website by clicking the button below:

Disable Google Analytics on this website

Obtaining Consent and providing us with information we need

Details of the lawful basis of our use of your personal information are set out above.

In some circumstances, we may approach you for your specific consent to allow us to process certain personal information for a specific purpose. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent.

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform our obligations to you or to send you information that you would like to receive from us (such as newsletters).

This may mean that we refuse to enter into or cancel any contract between us, or refuse to provide you with a service that you would like us to provide.

Data Sharing and Transfer

We may share your personal information with third parties where required by law, to parties who are under contract to provide services to us (our “data processors”) where the use of your personal information forms part of their contractual duties, and with other companies in our group of companies where they have a legitimate interest in receiving that information.

We may also share your personal information with other third parties, for example, in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business.

Except as required by Google, for the use of Google Analytics we do not transfer your personal information to third parties outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). Google is part of the EU-US Privacy shield which requires them to protect your personal information in a similar way as it is within the EEA.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we have a policy to limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a legitimate reason to receive it. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Retaining Information

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil 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 information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the purposes for which we use your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law, you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request the erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to stop processing personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party (in some circumstances and where this is technically possible).

If you want to exercise these rights, please contact us hello@gca.cards. We may ask your for further information to help us deal with your request or to help us verify your identity.

Your right to withdraw consent

In cases where we have asked for consent and you have given us consent to use your personal information for a specific purpose (such as opting-in to receiving marketing emails), you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us hello@gca.cards.

Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law. Your withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal information up to the time that you let us know that you have withdrawn your consent.

Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to update this privacy policy at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy policy when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

Contacting us

We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer and are not currently required to do so. If you have any questions about this privacy policy or about how we handle your personal information, please contact us in our capacity as the data controller at:

hello@gca.cards Greeting Card Association, PO Box 497, TEDDINGTON, TW11 1EL. 020 7619 9266

You 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.  Contact details for the ICO are available [here – https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/].

This version was last updated on 18/02/19 and historic versions (if any) can be obtained by contacting us