Privacy & Cookies

1. INTRODUCTION

We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our service users.  In this policy we explain how we will handle your personal data through your use of our site www.starkexportfocus.co.uk or if you sign up for any of our services.

Stark Export Focus Ltd (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice) are the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data.

Contact Details

This website is owned and operated by Stark Export Focus Ltd.  Our company is registered in England and Wales registration number 5826348, and our registered office is St George’s Court, Winnington Avenue, Northwich, Cheshire CW8 4EE.

Our Data Protection Manager is Becky Stark.

Email address: becky@starkexportfocus.co.uk

Postal address: 60 Hafod Park, Mold, Flintshire CH7 1QW.

Telephone number: 07870 539907

Making Complaints

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We kindly ask that before any complaints are lodged with the ICO, that you contact us first to try and resolve any issues you may have so that we can try to resolve it for you.

2. WHAT DATA DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

We may process certain types of personal data about you as follows:

Contact Information – such as your name, address, telephone number and email address.

Financial information – such as your bank account details and payment related data.

Technical Information – this may include your IP address, browser details, location analytics, login details and any other technology information you use to access this site.

Usage Data– this may include information about how you use our website, products and services.

Marketing and Communications Data this may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us.

Any other personal information you may provide to us in the process of us providing you with our services.

Sensitive Data – with reference to the General Data Protection Regulation/Data Protection Act 2018, 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 offences.

3. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We collect data about you through a variety of different methods including:

• Direct interactions we may have with you by communicating by phone, email and post
• Enquiries submitted via our website

From automated technologies or interactions as you use our website from analytics engines and cookies (see section 11 regarding our use of cookies).

• Automated technologies or interactions: As you use our site, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and usage patterns. We collect this data by using cookies, server logs and similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites that use our cookies.
• Third parties or publicly available sources: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
  • analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU;
  • advertising networks such as Facebook based outside the EU; and
  • publicly available sources such as Companies House

4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We will only use your personal data when legally permitted. The most common uses of your personal data are:

• To provide you with the services we offer as a business
• To provide you with information you have requested from us
• To keep you updated on our business, offers and any news we may have
• To manage our relationship with you as an existing or potential client
• To fulfil any legal or contractual obligations we may have which require the processing of personal data
• We will not provide your personal data to any third parties for the purpose of direct marketing.
• Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal ground for processing your personal data, other than in relation to sending marketing communications to you via email. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by emailing us at becky@starkexportfocus.co.uk

• Purposes of processing your personal data

Set out below is a description of the ways we intend to use your personal data and the legal grounds on which we will process such data. We have also explained what our legitimate interests are where relevant.

We may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground, depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please email us at becky@starkexportfocus.co.uk if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

If we need to use your personal data for a purpose unrelated to the purpose for which we collected the data, we will notify you and we will explain the legal ground of processing. We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above:

• Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
• Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom and other relevant jurisdictions who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

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.

6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

Where possible, we ensure that your data is stored within the European Economic Area (EEA).

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.

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 implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission; 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
• Where we use providers based in the United States, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the US

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.

Please email us at becky@starkexportfocus.co.uk if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.

7. DATA SECURITY

We take the security of your information extremely seriously.  In order to protect your data, we implement a risk-based approach to adopt the strongest organizational and technical controls in order to protect confidentiality, integrity and availability of your data.  We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

8. 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.

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 unauthorised 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.

By law we must keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information.

In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:

• 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.
• Right to withdraw consent.

You may exercise these any of these rights by raising a subject access request with us.  You can do this by contacting the data protection manager.

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 will not charge you for making a request and will make all reasonable efforts to respond to you within 30 days.  Sometimes it may take longer than 30 days to gather all information we may hold on you; in this situation we will keep you updated at all times.

10. 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.

11. COOKIES

Our website uses some third-party cookies to track the use of it. This allows us to better understand patterns on our website and how we can develop and improve it, as well as analysing the traffic on our site for marketing or advertising purposes.

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

• This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as your IP address, how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content and communicate with visitors.

For more information on Google Analytics, see the official Google Analytics pages.

• From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that our website is delivered. When we are still testing new features, these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on our websites whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies. The method for doing so differs with each browser, the following guides for the most common internet browsers detail the processes for doing this:

• https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en(Google Chrome)
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences(Mozilla Firefox)
• https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies(Internet Explorer)
• https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21411(Safari)
• https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edge-and-privacy(Microsoft Edge)

Blocking cookies may impact your experience on our website as you may not be able to make full use of the features on it.