This page was last amended on 1st February 2024

Westwood Instruments Ltd collects and retains data provided by you (the customer) for the sole purpose of delivering your digital goods (purchases), providing customer support, and for keeping you up to date with future products and updates. By using or placing an order on this website, you agree and consent to the practices described in this policy.

Contact us about privacy concerns or data requests
Please email us at privacy@westwoodinstruments.com

ICO registration
We are a data controller as defined by the GDPR (“A controller determines the purposes and means of processing personal data”). We are registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk/) with registration number ZA932667.

We collect and store the following data on our web server:

Email address
Your email address is required so we have a place to deliver the links to your purchases. When placing an order on our website, you can choose for your email address to be added to our mailing list (hosted by MailChimp), which we may periodically use to email you with announcements of new products, sales, discounts and product updates. You may unsubscribe from the mailing list at any time, although in doing so, you will no longer receive emails regarding updates to products you have purchased.

Purchase
We maintain a record of all your purchases: what date the purchase was made, what items were ordered, how much was paid, payment method (but NOT payment info), and IP address used to make the purchase. This data is necessary for our ecommerce system to fulfill orders, and to allow us to send updates, process refunds, or transfer purchases from one account to another.

Purchases are processed exclusively by two 3rd party payment providers

When purchasing a product from Westwood Instruments using Stripe, you also agree to Stripe’s Privacy Policy.

When purchasing a product from Westwood Instruments using PayPal, you also agree to PayPal’s Privacy Policy.

Payment data is NOT collected or retained by Westwood Instruments. It does not pass through our web server and we have NO access whatsoever to your payment account information.

Cookie Policy
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.  By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies and our Cookie Policy in its entirety.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

We use the following cookies:
Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to 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. We also use a third party service ‘Google Analytics’ which may also use cookies.

Order tracking cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the items you have added to the shopping cart. These cookies are required for our e-commerce platform to work correctly.

Please note that third parties (including, for example, providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies although we cannot confirm this.

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

In accordance with data protection legislation, we will not store your cookies for any longer than we believe is necessary.

Disclosure of your information
Westwood Instruments may share retained data with our licensed contractors on an “as needed” basis. Contractors with access to retained data include the following:

• Customer support representatives, who may look up order information in order to answer questions about a purchase.
• Accountants and bookkeepers, who aggregate order information to produce records for accounting and tax reporting purposes.
• Web developers, who necessarily have access to our order and user database to perform upgrades and maintenance.

These contractors are not permitted to share your data with any other parties. Your data is used by these contractors as necessary to complete the job functions above. Aside from these contractors, Westwood Instruments does not share retained data with any other entities or individuals.

Where we store your personal data
Your data is stored in our database, which is owned and operated by ‘Siteground’ and as such will be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It will also be processed by our data management suppliers operating outside the EEA in order to facilitate our site and data management. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing and processing.

When you place an order on our site, a notification is sent to us by email, containing your name, email address and order contents. We use desktop and mobile devices to access emails and, as such, your data may also be stored on these devices if you place an order or send a message through the contact form on our site.

We also use the following third party services for order processing, data management, productivity and file storage: Google, Stripe, PayPal, Xero, MailChimp, Slack, Crashplan, Pulse Downloader, Zendesk. Your data maybe disclosed to these companies as needed.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

Your rights
You have the right to request access to, deletion of or correction of, your personal data. You also have the right to request that your personal data be transferred to another person. If you wish to exercise these rights at any time, you can do so by contacting us. If you request that we delete your personal data, any record that you purchased from us will be removed, and as a result, you will no longer be able to re-download your purchased products or receive updates.

Changes to our privacy policy
Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.