Privacy Policy / GDPR Compliance / Cookies Disclosure

Personalize Portraits (Trading as Mezev Limited) are committed to protecting your privacy and personal data.

All personal data collected and held by Personalize Portraits will be governed by the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (up to and including 24/05/2018) and by the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") from 25/05/2018 onwards.

For the purpose of the GDPR, we are the data controller in respect of information collected on our website or via other means, such as you contacting us by telephone or visiting our showroom.

Personalize Portraits are committed to providing safe and secure storage and access to your personal data, using established encryption techniques to protect your data as best as possible.

The Personalize Portraits website (https://www.personalizeportraits.com) is now only available via a secure SSL/HTTPS connection.

Information we collect about you

When using our website and services, you provide us with a certain amount of personal information about yourself to allow us to manage your account, process your orders and contact you with information about your orders and/or our sales and marketing material.

Information you may provide to us includes:

  • Your name
  • Your email address
  • Your address(es) (including billing and delivery addresses)
  • Your telephone number(s)
  • Your Tax/VAT number
  • Information about the items you order and when you order them
  • Your preferences as to what types of information you wish to allow us to contact you about
  • Limited information about payments you make for your orders

Each time you visit our website, we may automatically collect certain information about your visit. This information is collected only for the purposes of providing a better service, to gain knowledge of the areas of our website that attract most interest, to analyse and find issues with our website and services, to gain knowledge of where in the world our visitors are from and to gain knowlege of the types of devices our visitors use to judge current and future trends.

The information we collect about you may include:

  • Your IP address (which may be used to gain a rough guide as to the country/city you are visiting from)
  • The device type, operating system type/version and web browser type/version you are using to access our website
  • Your current time zone
  • Your current location when offered by your web browser
  • The URLs/pages/resources you access on our website
  • The times that you request information from our website
  • The links and methods you use to visit our website, such as following a link from a search engine or social media service or other website that links back to us

Payment information 

Of all the information and personal data we deal with, payment information is perhaps the most important of all.

For your own personal protection we take great steps to minimize the risks associated with taking payments.

For this reason, we use established payment providers of high renown on the PersonalizePortraits website to process your payments on our behalf. We do not store or keep record of your credit/debit card or bank account details when you make a payment.

All payment information is handled solely by our payment providers, who only provide us back with limited information about your payments, which may include:

  • Your name, address, email address
  • The order for which you have made payment
  • Masked credit/debit card details as a reference containing only the last 4 digits (e.g, #### #### #### 1234)
  • Payment transaction/reference numbers to allow us to identify payments if we need to issue refunds or cancellations

We are currently using the following payment providers on the Personalize Portraits website:

  • Starling Bank for processing credit/debit card payments
  • PayPal
  • Stripe

Your account and password

When you create an account on the PersonalizePortraits website, you choose to provide us with a limited amount of personal information about yourself and a password which you use to access your account.

In addition to other security practices and encryption we use to maintain the security of your personal data, your password especially is extremely sensitive and you also have a personal responsibility to ensure it is kept safe and secure.

Your password should only be know to you and you alone. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. This includes us. We will never ask you for your account password.

When you create your account or change your password, we store your encrypted password in a secure manor which means that even we do not know what it is.

When you sign in to your account, we can only validate that the password you enter at the time of sign in is what you have set it to. We do not store what you have entered when you sign in. If what you enter for your password at the time of sign in is incorrect we can say so, but we cannot say what it 'should' be.

If you forget your password you must use the "Forgot your password?" feature of our website to reset it yourself.

Where we store your data

The data we collect about you is stored securely by us or our subsidiaries, business partners, suppliers, contractors or 3rd party service providers in compliance with best industry practices for encryption and secure data transfer.

We will store your data inside the European Economic Area ("EEA") whenever possible. Some of our 3rd party service providers may however be based outside of the EEA and may therefore store and process your data outside of the EEA in order to provide our services. Your data will not be stored or transferred to countries outside of the EEA without adequate protection.

We have a policy to only use reputable 3rd party suppliers and ensure they are located in countries with which the United Kingdom has good relations, such as those in the EEA and the United States of America.

UploadKit

We use a 3rd party app called 'File Uploads by UploadKit' to store documents and photos provided for artwork design, the files are automatically deleted after 30 days. They are kept securely on this platform, and we delete all files from our work stations every day at 17:00 UK time.

Read their privacy policy here:

Data retention

The personal information and data that we hold about you will only be retained for as long as is required for the purposes for which is was obtained or as required by law.

Your order history is retained indefinitely to allow for historical viewing of orders, our accounting and aiding with support based upon past orders.

How your information is used

We use information held about you in a number of ways. These include:

  • To provide a better service
  • To manage and maintain your account with us, including attempts to keep your account safe and secure
  • To provide you with information about your account, including essential notifications of account activity or changes to how your account needs to be managed
  • To provide you with essential notifications about additions or changes to our services which require your attention
  • To provide you with information and updates about your orders, payments and deliveries
  • To contact you with any issues that may arrise relating to your orders
  • To contact you with selected information about us, our products, promotions, sales, special offers, competitions and other marking information based upon your opted-in preferences
  • To gain knowledge of the areas of our website that attract most interest, to analyse and find issues with our website, to gain knowledge of where in the world our visitors are from and to gain knowlege of the types of devices our visitors use to judge current and future trends
  • To maintain our sales records, internal accountancy systems, stock control and order fulfilment services

Disclosure of your information

We are not in the business of trading off your personal information.

The information we hold about you and the trust you have given us is something we value highly, and we only want to utilise it to provide you with a better service.

We have an active policy not to disclose your information to external parties unless it is essential to our business or we are obliged to do so by the laws that govern us.

We may disclose your personal information with:

  • Subsidiaries, business partners, suppliers, contractors and 3rd party service providers who are essential to our business and allowing us to provide our services
  • Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our website
  • Prospective sellers or buyers in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets
  • The new owner(s) in the event of any sale of Mezev Ltd. or substantial assets of Mezev Ltd. into new hands

In addition to the above, we may also disclose your information (within the laws that govern us) if we:

  • Are obliged to comply with any legal or law enforcement obligations
  • Need to enforce our terms of use or terms of business
  • Need to protect the rights, property or safety of our business, our staff, our customers, our subsidiaries, our business partners, our suppliers, our contractors, or others
  • Need to investigate, notify or prevent fraud protection
  • Need to investigate or protect against credit risk

We will otherwise never lease, distribute or sell your personal information to any third parties unless we have your express permission to do so.

Where we do disclose your information, we will only disclose the minimum amount of information to fullfil the criteria for which it is required and only when essential.

If we can disclose information by first making it anonymous then we will do so.

Google

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalize content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See Google's Privacy Policy to learn more about how they process data for each of these purposes and their Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising, and how long Google stores this information.

Klarna

In order to be able to offer you Klarna’s payment options, we will pass to Klarna certain aspects of your personal information, such as contact and order details, in order for Klarna to assess whether you qualify for their payment options and to tailor the payment options for you.

General information on Klarna you can find here. Your personal data is handled in accordance with applicable data protection law and in accordance with the information in Klarna’s privacy policy.

Links from our website

The internet works because websites are inter-connected - they link to and from each other.

Our website may contain links to and from 3rd party websites.

Our policies, practices and terms and conditions only apply to the Personalize Portraits website. You should proactively ensure that any 3rd party websites you may visit comply without your own expectations about privacy and security.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

From time to time we may review or update our Privacy Policy. When we do so we will update this content.

Your continued use of our website will signify that you agree to the Privacy Policy currently in place.

GDPR compliance

Complying with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR")

The GDPR comes into effect/came into effect on 25/05/2018. It changes/changed UK data privacy law to give you more control over how your data is used, how you're contacted, as well as better protection for your personal data.

Our current Privacy Policy outlines our policies and practices and is in effect immediately and will continue to be in effect until further notice.

At the beginning of January 2018, we implemented new measures to ensure we have explicit permission to contact you with information about Personalize Portraits and our sales and marketing information. We removed our old mailing list and replaced it with a new mailing list in association with a specialist service provider. This requires you to provide express and explicit permission when signing up and opting into specific areas of interest that we can contact you about.

We are committed to having a policy of only contacting you with information related to your account, your orders and other news, sales and marketing information you are interested in receiving from us.

While contacting you about your account and orders is an essential part of the service we offer, we acknowledge that news, sales and marketing information isn't essential to your relationship with us. You can change your preferences as to what types of sales and marketing emails you receive from us or unsubscribe entirely from all future sales and marking emails by updating your profile/preferences by following the link at the bottom of every sales and marketing email we send out.

Things to know about the GDPR:

  1. Under the jurisdictions that the GDPR applies to, every company you deal with has to comply. It is not optional and you need do nothing to be protected by it.

    For example, all United Kingdom based companies (like ourselves) have to ensure that great care is taken with your personal data.

  2. The rapid speed at which technology has advanced over the past few years has meant that the amount of personal data being generated is increasing rapidly. The new changes to the law as a result of the GDPR mean that all companies now have to review how they manage all personal data and ensure good practices are in place. This will help you to be better protected.

  3. You can choose who contacts you, how they contact you and what they contact you about. In most cases, you have to give explicit consent to be contacted about certain things, in an easy to understanding manner.

    For example, the new PersonalizePortraits Mailing List requires explicit opt-in for areas of interest. Other companies will have to do the same and it is no longer acceptable to make sign-ups overly difficult to understand or pre-tick all those boxes for things you don't want.

  4. You can change your mind. Under the GDPR you have the right to withdraw consent about how you are contacted. This is why we now provide a link at the bottom of every sales and marketing email we send out that allows you to update your profile/preferences to choose what we contact you about, or unsubscribe entirely.

  5. Organisations holding data about you have to have the right processes in place, or risk hefty fines or other action.

You may find some more useful information about the GDPR by visiting the ICO's Guide to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/

Cookies & PersonalizePortraits's Use of Cookies

The Personalize Portraits website uses "cookies". By continuing to visit the Personalize Portraits website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer. When you visit a website, that website can store limited amounts of information about your visit into those cookies. When you re-visit that website, those cookies are sent back to the website so the data it stored can be read back.

Cookies often get a bad press due to their associations with intrusive advertising and the 'nasty side' of the internet. While this can be a concern, they are actually an essential requirement for most websites to function at all.

The internet works over HTTP. This is the protocol/method of communication which handles you making a request to a website to view a page or do something, and that website being able to send you back a response, such as a page showing a product on a shopping site.

The problem is that HTTP is what is called 'stateless'. This means that every time you ask to view a page, it does not know who you are, it does not know that you are in the process of trying to add items to your basket and it does not know that you have an account which you want to remain signed in to.

This is where cookies can come in.

The websites you visit (such as ours) store information into cookies that allow them to know that it is you coming back and making another request to view or do something, and not an entirely different person.

For example, when you sign in to your account on our website, we store a unique random identifier (lots of letters and symbols) into a cookie. We then use this to know it's you coming back to us, so you can stay signed in. Or when you add an item to your basket, cookies allow us to keep it there for you while you continue shopping around.

See, not all bad.

Another common use for cookies is analytics and a limited amount of tracking. This isn't really as bad as it can sound and virtually every website out there does it.

These cookies are often used to gain statistics about what pages are being visited, how people navigate their way around the website, what pages are popular and generally how people interact with the website.

This information can be invaluable to gaining an understanding of how your visitors use your website and gain knowledge of what you can do to make things better, or how you should look to work in the future.

Most of these analytics are semi-anonymous and are not used to 'spy' on what a particular individual does, but to gain a general overview of how everyone interacts with the website.

We use cookies on the PersonalizePortraits website for three primary purposes:

  1. To allow you to sign in to your account and add items to your basket and checkout

  2. To analise how our website is doing; where people come from in the world, what pages/products they are interested in, how any advertisements we have in place are doing, etc

  3. To store some preferences about your use of our website, such as how you want to view prices or only showing you a notice once rather than every time you visit a page

Amongst our own cookies that we create to allow us to function as an e-commerce website, we also utilise the following 3rd parties:

    1. Google - analytics and statistics about how our website is viewed, used and interacted with. Google’s Privacy & Terms
    2. Facebook - analytics and statistics about how our website is viewed, used and interacted with, primarily to allow us to know how people are interacting with our Facebook social media content
    3. Klaviyo - to provide a prompt to sign-up to our Newsletter and Mailing List and know when we have already asked you, so as not to keep bugging you all the time

We believe that all the cookies we use on the Personalize Portraits website are required for our business. We don't make any of them optional.

You can however decide for yourself not to enable cookies in your web browser or periodically delete your cookies and internet history at your own personal discretion.

Please be aware that disabling cookies when you visit the Personalize Portraits website will prevent you being able to browse properly, add items to your basket, make a purchase or use an account, amongst other features.

From time to time we may review our cookie policies and usage. Please refer back to this page for the latest information.