At Skeinwalker Knits, we take privacy and data protection seriously. This privacy notice provides you with details of how Skeinwalker Knits collects and processes (personal) data through your use of our website www.skeinwalker.com or our services.
In short and in plain English:
What is a privacy policy and why is it necessary?
A Privacy Policy gives you, as a person and Internet user, important insights into how personal data is used and kept at Skeinwalker Knits HQ. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. Under the GDPR law, it is also required to provide transparency about how data is collected and used. In addition, the rights of a person and Internet user under GDPR law are listed here: https://www.eugdpr.org/the-regulation.html.
In GDPR terms, Skeinwalker Knits is the data controller and is responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy).
Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual (for example, an email address). It does not include anonymized or anonymous data (for example aggregated statistics).
Note that because updates might be necessary when providing new content or services, we reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy at any time without notice. The use of any personal information or contribution that you provide to us, or which is collected by us on or through our website or our services, is governed by this Privacy Policy. By using our website or our services, you consent to this Privacy Policy, whether or not you have read it. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not use our website or our services. By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.
What do we collect, and how do we use it?
Skeinwalker Knits uses various third-party services to deliver content and services, from mailing list emails to knitting pattern sales. As a rule, the third-party providers we use will only collect, use and disclose your information (to us) to the extent necessary to allow them to provide the relevant services (such as sending an email or delivering a pattern you bought). Each third-party service has its own Privacy Policy and you can find this information linked below. Note that most of our third-party service suppliers do usually require you to have an account on their platform (for example: Ravelry, Payhip, Paypal, DropBox) which means that you have opted-in to use their services.
Skeinwalker Knits does not sale, trade or rent personal information with / to third parties.
Skeinwalker Knits might have access to non-personal information such as website traffic statistics. This is anonymous data and as such is not listed on this page.
Mailing list: The Explorers Weekly and other Skeinwalker Knits emails
Our email service provider is MailerLite. Their Privacy Policy is here: https://www.mailerlite.com/privacy-policy/ and their Anti-spam Policy is here: https://www.mailerlite.com/anti-spam-policy.
Skeinwalker Knits does not receive detailed personal information when users subscribe or unsubscribe to Skeinwalker Knits emails. However, as MailerLite stores the data that you provide when you subscribe (such as your email address at the very least), Skeinwalker Knits has access to this information (and uses it to send emails). An important part of The Explorers Weekly and other Skeinwalker Knits emails is to provide news, inspiration, behind the scenes updates, promotions, contests or giveaways, KALs, challenges and so on to subscribers via email. In some cases, personalized emails or coupon codes can also be sent using your email address.
Skeinwalker Knits does not redistribute, sale, trade or rent email information with / to third parties.
Test knitters
If you have been a test knitter for Skeinwalker Knits, you have probably sent your email address to receive the draft pattern either directly or via DropBox. DropBox Privacy Policy is here: https://www.dropbox.com/privacy.
Skeinwalker Knits keeps a record of past test knitters to be able to send the final pattern and possibly new test knit requests. Three years after the last contact, this data is anonymized.
Winners
If you have been a winner in one of Skeinwalker Knits contests, giveaways, KALs, challenges, etc., you might have sent your email address to receive your gift / prize and possibly, your snail mail address.
Skeinwalker Knits keeps a record of winners to be able to send the gift / prize. Three years after the last contact, this data is anonymized.
Pattern & eBook sales
Sales are provided by Ravelry and Payhip. You can read their privacy policy here: https://www.ravelry.com/about/privacy, https://payhip.com/privacy.
As a seller on Ravelry or Payhip, I receive a copy of each download email that gets sent out after purchase – these emails are sent automatically by Ravelry or Payhip, and it is done so that sellers have proof of delivery. Ravelry or Payhip store your email address, which may be linked to your Ravelry or Payhip account if you are a member. To fulfil legal and accounting requirements, I am required to keep this sales information for seven years. Past this period, I keep a record of the sales figures and anonymous data.
Payments and transactions
All payments are processed through Ravelry or Payhip and then (possibly) through PayPal and you can read their privacy policy here: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full.
I receive notifications of payment emails from Paypal so that sellers have proof of payment. Paypal stores at least your email address. To fulfill legal and accounting requirements, I am required to keep this sales information for seven years. Past this period, I keep a record of the sales figures and anonymous data.
Website
Skeinwalker Knits website is built and hosted by Vimexx. No personal information is kept on our website.
This website may keep track of the pages our users visit to determine what services are the most popular. This data may be used to deliver customized content and advertising to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.
Contact form and direct email
When you get in touch with me, Skeinwalker, you are required to provide your email address so that I can reply to you. Generally, I do store these emails within my own email provider so that I have a record of our discussion should you get in touch again about an issue, or should there be a need for me to act or make amendments to any information within a pattern, ebook, or on this website. These emails are never shared, and your details remain private.
Cookies
Ravelry or Payhip (the pattern stores), MailerLite (the mailing list provider), PayPal (the payment processor) and Vimexx (the website host) all use cookies for their needs, such as to remember whether you’ve left a comment before or have an item in your shopping cart. Cookies can be deleted as per your request via your browser. You could even use a browser extension to do this automatically for you (such as Cookie AutoDelete for Firefox). Please check their cookie policy.
For more information about the cookies we might use, please see our cookie policy.
Other Outlets
My knitting patterns are also available from Loveknitting. You’ll need an account on their website to make purchases from them. Check their Privacy Policy here: https://www.loveknitting.com/privacy-policy.html.
I receive no payment, order details or personal information from any of these companies, only monthly or quarterly statements of earnings. No personal information is kept.
Finally
Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at aline (at) skeinwalker (dot) com. It is very important that your information is accurate and up to date.
The long version: Read on for all the (legal) details:
What personal data do we collect, for what purpose and on what ground do we process it
We may process the following categories of personal data about:
Communication Data that includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defense of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
Customer Data that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, and purchase details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.
User Data that includes data about how you use our website and services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back- ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business.
Technical Data that includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyze your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
Marketing Data that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our promotions such as competitions, prize draws and giveaways, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
We may use Customer Data, User Data, Technical Data and Marketing Data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. Our lawful ground for this processing is legitimate interests which is to grow our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).
Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a product or service you have ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time.
We will only use your personal data for a purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary. For more information on this please email us at aline (at) skeinwalker (dot) com.
We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.
Sensitive Data
We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offenses.
We do not carry out automated decision making or any type of automated profiling.
How we collect your personal data
We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site or by sending us emails). We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for more details about this.
We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU, advertising networks such as Facebook-based outside the EU, such as search information providers such as Google based outside the EU, providers of technical, payment and delivery services, such as data brokers or aggregators.
Marketing communications
Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).
Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, we may send you marketing communications from us if (i) you made a purchase or asked for information from us about our goods or services or (ii) you agreed to receive marketing communications and in each case you have not opted out of receiving such communications since. Under these regulations, if you are a limited company, we may send you marketing emails without your consent. However, you can still opt out of receiving marketing emails from us at any time.
Before we share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes we will get your express consent.
You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by logging into the website and checking or unchecking relevant boxes to adjust your marketing preferences OR by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or OR by emailing us at aline (at) skein (dot) com at any time.
If you opt out of receiving marketing communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided as a result of other transactions, such as purchases, warranty registrations etc.
Disclosures of your personal data
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:
Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers
Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.
Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.
We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
International transfers
Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.
Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:
We will only transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or
If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place.
If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.
Data security
We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorization. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they must keep it confidential.
We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.
Data retention
We will only retain your personal data 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.
When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.
For tax purposes, the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for seven years after they stop being customers.
In some circumstances, we may anonymize your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
Your legal rights
Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.
You can see more about these rights here: https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-3/
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at aline (at) skeinwalker (dot) com.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.
If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain. We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.
Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
Cookies
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.
Anti-spam policy
We have a no spam policy and provide you with the ability to opt-out of our communications by selecting the unsubscribe link in the footer of all e-mails. We have taken the necessary steps to ensure that we are compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 by never sending out misleading information. We will not sell, rent or share your information.
Children’s online privacy protection act compliance
We do not knowingly collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age in compliance with COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), and our website and its content is directed to individuals who are at least 13 years old or older.
Notification of changes
We may use your contact information to inform you of changes to the website or our services, or, if requested, to send you additional information about us. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify or otherwise alter our website, its content and this Privacy Policy at any time. Such changes and/or modifications shall become effective immediately upon posting our updated Privacy Policy. Please review this Privacy Policy periodically. Continued use of any of information obtained through or on the website or its content following the posting of changes and/or modifications constitutes acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at aline (at) skeinwalker (dot) com.
Privacy Policy Updated February 13th, 2024.
Contact Details
Full name of legal entity: Skeinwalker Knits
Email address: aline (at) skeinwalker (dot) com