Privacy Policy + Cookies

OVERVIEW

Caroline on Design, LLC (“us”, “we”, “our”, “website”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it. As an online business and service provider, it is sometimes necessary for us to collect information about you. The purpose of this privacy policy is to inform you of what personally identifiable information we may collect when you use our website, and how it may be used.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

1. Information that you voluntarily submit to us, such as your name or email address through a contact form, subscribing to our newsletter, leaving a comment, or providing information when ordering a product or service.
2. Information that is automatically collected about you via your computer’s internet browser when you visit our website. This may include the device with which you access our website, your IP address, your operating system, and your internet browser.
3. Information about how you use our website or our services. This includes your referring website, pages you viewed, how frequently you visit our site, your browsing actions and patterns, which links you clicked on, etc.

The information we automatically collect is used for statistical data and does not include personal information. We use this data to improve our website and your overall experience. Only to the extent that you voluntarily provide personal information to us will our systems associate the automatically collected information with your personal information.

WHO WE ARE

Data Controller: Caroline on Design, LLC
Correspondence location: Illinois, United States
Email correspondence: hello@carolineondesign.com

HOW AND WHY WE COLLECT INFORMATION

We collect your information in order to support your user experience on our website. If you sign up for our newsletter, purchase a product or service, or send a contact form, we collect your information.

We use this information to track your preferences and to keep you informed about the products or services you have selected to receive and any related products and/or services. It is only when you explicitly seek products or services that you are required to provide information.

If you do not live in the European Union and opt to receive free resources, purchase products, or purchase services, we will automatically enroll you to receive our free email newsletter. You can unsubscribe to our newsletter at any time via the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of every email we send.

If you live in the European Union and opt to receive free resources, purchase products, or purchase services, we will only enroll you to receive our free email newsletter if you affirmatively consent to it.

DEFINITION OF PERSONAL DATA

‘Personal data’ is any information that allows us to identify you personally. This includes your name, email address, postal address, phone number, etc. We will always attempt to gain your explicit consent to providing personal data before we collect it, although this may not be the only legal basis on which we collect the data.

Other information, such as your broad geographical location or computer’s IP address, typically do not allow us to identify you directly. IP addresses, in and of themselves, do not allow us in any way to identify you as an individual.

ANONYMOUS DATA

From time to time, we may use anonymous data, which does not identify you alone or when combined with data from other parties. This type of anonymous data may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Examples of this anonymous data may include analytics or information collected from cookies.

PUBLICLY VISIBLE INFORMATION

If you leave a comment on our website, certain information may be publicly visible. Your email address will never be available publicly. At your option, you may add an avatar, a profile description, and/or a link to your website. You may also choose to link to your social media accounts. Users may see your username, avatar, profile description, and website or social media information.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION

In general, we do not sell, rent, lease or otherwise transfer any information collected whether automatically or through your voluntary action.

We may disclose your personal information to our subsidiaries, affiliates, and service providers for the purpose of providing our services to you.

WHO WE SHARE DATA WITH

We share data only on a strict ‘need-to-know’ basis for all data that we work with. This is especially true for any personal data. The only people/organizations that are granted access to personal data are:

• Employees and partnering businesses of Caroline on Design, LLC who provide design and/or support services;
• Our webhosting supplier (currently Bluehost) who provide the physical server infrastructures that our website operates on;
• Our cloud storage and technology supplier (currently Backup Buddy) whose services we use for secure backup storage.

We use a very limited number of third-party providers, but some are essential for the physical hosting environments and cloud services.

HOW YOUR DATA IS PROTECTED

We use commercially reasonable methods to ensure the security of the information you provide to us and the information we collect automatically. This includes working only with reputable third-party companies. Email is not recognized as a secure medium of communication, so we request that you do not send private information to us via email. Doing so is allowed, but at your own risk. Credit card information and other sensitive information is never transmitted via email.

COOKIES and WEB BEACONS

Cookies and web beacons allow us to better understand how users are using our website and other related services. These are essentially small data files placed on your computer or other devices that allow us to know when you have visited a particular page or performed a particular action on our website.

Cookies

Like many commercial websites, we may log information using cookies, which are small text files stored in the memory of your browser or device when you visit a website. Cookies allow a website to recognize a particular device or browser.

We may use the following types of cookies to collect information about you when you use our website:

Session Cookies which expire when you close your browser;
Persistent Cookies which stay on your browser until deleted so a website can remember your preferences or actions across multiple sites;
Third-Party Cookies that are set by a third party site separate from our website.

There are many ways that you can influence how cookies are used on your device. Most commercial browsers allow you to set preferences for whether to allow or block website cookies. You may also delete already set cookies at any time via your Internet browser or other software programs.

Web Beacons

Web beacons are small graphic images (also known as pixel tags or clear GIFs) that may be included on our sites and services that typically work in conjunction with cookies to identify our users and user behavior.

THIRD-PARTY USE OF INFORMATION

We may share your information with third parties where you explicitly authorize us to share your information. Additionally, we may use third-party service providers to service various aspects of our website. Each third-party service provider’s use of your personal information is dictated by the respective privacy policies.

We currently use the following third-party service providers:

Google Analytics: this service tracks use on our website, and provides information such as referring websites and user actions on our site. This helps us to better understand what people look at on our website.

When people visit our website, information about their usage (e.g. length of time spent on site, pages viewed) is sent in an anonymous form to Google Analytics (which is controlled by Google).

Google Analytics may capture your IP address, but no other personal information is collected by Google Analytics. There is no way to identify individuals from the data sent to us by Google Analytics. Since analytics information is not personal data, we do not specifically ask for your prior consent.

Mailchimp: this service is used for delivery of email updates and newsletters. We store your name and email address for purposes of delivering such communications. Please refer to Mailchimp’s privacy policy for further information.

Bluehost: this is our current hosting provider for our website. Please refer to Bluehost’s privacy policy for further information.

Backup Buddy: this service provides secure backup storage of our website content. Please refer to Backup Buddy’s privacy policy for further information.

Except when required by law, we will not sell, distribute, or reveal your email addresses or other personal information without your consent.

WEBSITE CONTACT FORMS

When you complete a contact form on our website, we will collect some personal information, such as your name, email address, and other contact details. This is required for us in order to respond to your request.

If you do not use or submit an online form on our website, no data will be collected in this regard.

NEWSLETTERS

You may subscribe to our newsletter on our website. All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels. The pixel is embedded in emails and allows us an analysis of the success of online marketing campaigns. The tracking pixel allows us to see if and when you open an email and which links within the email you click. Also, this allows us to adapt future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behavior will not be passed on to third parties.

Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter may opt-out of receiving these communications by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the e-mail. You may also contact hello@carolineondesign.com to be removed from our mailing list.

AFFILIATE PROGRAM PARTICIPATION

We may engage in affiliate marketing, which is done by embedding tracking links into our website. If you click on a link for an affiliate partnership, a cookie will be placed on your browser to track any sales for purposes of commissions. All website pages and posts are clearly identified when affiliate links are used.

Caroline on Design, LLC participates in the RewardStyle (also referred to as LIKEtoKNOW.it) affiliate program. As part of the RewardStyle program, we may post customized links, provided by RewardStyle, to track the referrals to affiliated retailer websites. This program utilizes cookies to track visits for the purposes of assigning commission on these sales. Please refer to RewardStyle’s privacy policy for further information.

VISITOR’S GDPR RIGHTS

If you are within the European Union, you are entitled to certain information and have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation. Those rights include:

• We will retain information you choose to provide to us until: (a) you ask us to delete the information, or (b) we decide to stop using our existing data providers, or (c) we decide that the value in retaining the data is outweighed by the costs of retaining it.
• You have the right to request access to your data that we store and the right to either rectify or erase your personal data.
• You have the right to seek restrictions on the processing of your data.
• You have the right to object to the processing of your data and the right to the portability of your data.
• To the extent that you provided consent to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
• We require information that is only reasonably required to enter into contract with you. We will not require you to provide consent for any unnecessary processing as a condition of entering into a contract with us.
• You have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority that has jurisdiction over issues related to the General Data Protection Regulation.

CONTACT INFORMATION

At any time, please contact Caroline on Design at hello@carolineondesign.com for questions related to this privacy policy.