Cookies and Privacy Policy

Cookies

Our website uses cookies for a number of reasons: 

• Functional cookies: These enable the website to work using your selections and preferences. eg. Remembering you basket, you account details. We never hold any payment card information. 
• Analytics cookies: These are anonymous cookies that allow us to analyse and improve our website by providing statistics. eg. Are you a new user, what pages you visited. Helps us decide what's popular and what we've got wrong. 
• Advertising cookies: These allow our advertising partners to show you advertisements based on the things you have looked at and are interested in, so if you want to buy them later you can.

You can set up your preferences when you first visit the website, if you want to change them click the cookie icon on the bottom left of the screen. Also, if you want to remove all cookies associated with you, you can visit this page. You will lose all guest information stored on the website. eg. Basket contents, Addresses. If you have an account you can log-in to retrieve your settings.

Browsing data

The cookies used to enable the website to work are anonymous cookies but they link your computer session with data on our servers. This data is stored temporarily on the server and is cleared every 30 days. If an order is placed or you create an account, we will hold on to your data indefinitely so that you can place further orders using the stored details and you can see your old orders. This data is never shared with any third parties and you can request that we remove your personal data if you wish.

Third-party Data-processors on the website

We use a few third-party companies in order to provide a good service to our customers. These are:

LiveChat: A chat box that allows customers to chat with a member of our staff while on the website. The transcripts of these chats are retained on LiveChat’s secure infrastructure. LiveChat Inc. Privacy Policy

Stripe and Paypal: Our payment processors. We send customer billing details to them then they request payment directly from the customer. This is done for security as they are experts in dealing with payments and are fully PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant. They keep hold of some of this data as they need to keep track of transactions to prove that they occurred and to issue refunds. Stripe Privacy Policy  Paypal Privacy Policy

Google Analytics: It gives us anonymous data on the popularity of our site and specific parts of our site so we can measure improvements we make. Google Privacy Policy

Clicky Analytics: Clicky only keeps anonymous data of visitors similarly to google analytics however it gives a more detailed analysis of what customers are doing on the website. Clicky Privacy Policy

Trustpilot Reviews: Customer service and product reviews. When a customer places an order some of their details are sent to Trustpilot (the only personal information sent is email). Trustpilot will send an email to the customer asking about the service and/or product they purchased. The email is not shared and is only accessible by our staff  Trustpilot Privacy Policy

Google and Microsoft Ads: These companies hold information to identify you and what your interests are. They hold this information securely and confidentially, and you may request them to delete it should you wish.

Ordering

Information we take

In placing an order we will obtain the following information about you:

• name
• contact information including phone number and email address
• billing and delivery address and postcode
• items ordered

Your payment information is collected via our payment processor. This data is not stored by us for your protection.

What we do with the information

We require this information primarily to fulfil your order however we also keep it for the following reasons:

• To enable you to make further orders easily (without re-entering all your details).
• So we can supply invoices for the orders.
• The order items are used to update stock and forecast future stock.
• If you request it at checkout, we may occasionally send promotional emails.

This data is kept private on a secure server and is only accessible by Socket Store Staff.

What we do NOT do with the information

We do not sell the information with any third parties and we do not share it other than with our data processors mentioned above.

Removal of personal data

We are happy to remove your personal data if you request us to. We would need to keep the details of what was ordered for stock management but all personal details (name, address, email and phone numbers) can be removed or replaced with anonymous data. This includes data stored on our data-processor services.

In order for us to do this we would need proof that you are the same person as the order/account details. The easiest way is if you contact us with the same email you placed the order(s)/created the account in.

Once this is done you will not be able to access your account (but you can create a new one) and we will not be able to supply you with any invoices for your previous orders.