Privacy Policy - Bernhard and Company

1.0 Our core beliefs regarding user privacy and data protection

User privacy and data protection are human rights
We have a duty of care to the people within our data
Data is a liability, it should only be collected and processed when absolutely necessary
We loathe spam as much as you do!
We will never sell, rent or otherwise distribute or make public your personal information unless strictly necessary for us to complete a service requested by you.

2.0 Relevant legislation

Along with our business and internal computer systems, this website is designed to comply with the following national and international legislation with regards to data protection and user privacy:

This site’s compliance with the above legislation, all of which are stringent in nature, means that this site is likely compliant with the data protection and user privacy legislation set out by many other countries and territories as well. If you are unsure about whether this site is compliant with your own country of residences’ specific data protection and user privacy legislation you should contact our data protection officer (details of whom can be found in section 9.0) for clarification.

3.0 Personal information that this website collects and why we collect it

This website collects and uses personal information for the following reasons:

3.1 Site visitation tracking

Like most websites, this site uses Google Analytics (GA) to track user interaction. We use this data to determine the number of people using our site, to better understand how they find and use our web pages and to see their journey through the website.

Although GA records data such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, none of this information personally identifies you to us. GA also records your computer’s IP address which could be used to personally identify you but Google do not grant us access to this. We consider Google to be a third party data processor (see section 6.0 below).

GA makes use of cookies, details of which can be found on Google’s developer guides.

Disabling cookies on your internet browser will stop GA from tracking any part of your visit to pages within this website.

In addition to Google Analytics, this website may collect* information (held in the public domain) attributed to the IP address of the computer or device that is being used to access it.

3.2 Our blog

Should you choose to add a comment to any posts that we have published on our blog, the name and email address you enter with your comment will be saved to this website’s database, along with your computer’s IP address and the time and date that you submitted the comment. This information is only used to identify you as a contributor to the comment section of the respective blog post and is not passed on to any of the third party data processors. Only your name will be shown on the public-facing website although if the supplied email address is linked to a Gravatar account, your Gravatar photo will also be displayed.

Your comment and it’s associated personal data will remain on this site until we see fit to either 1.) remove the comment or 2.) remove the blog post. Should you wish to have the comment and it’s associated personal data deleted, please email us here using the email address that you commented with.

If you are under 16 years of age you MUST obtain parental consent before posting a comment on our blog.

NOTE: You should avoid entering personally identifiable information to the actual comment field of any blog post comments that you submit on this website.

3.3 Contact forms and email links

Should you choose to contact us using the contact form on any of our page or an email link, none of the data that you supply will be stored by this website or passed to / be processed by any of the third party data processors defined in section 6.0. Instead the data will be collated into an email and sent to us over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Our SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted using SHA-2, 256-bit cryptography before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by our local computers and devices.

3.4 Email newsletter

If you choose to join our email newsletter, the email address that you submit to us will be forwarded to MailChimp who provide us with email marketing services. We consider MailChimp to be a third party data processor (see section 6.0 below). The email address that you submit will not be stored within this website’s own database or in any of our internal computer systems.

Your email address will remain within MailChimp’s database for as long as we continue to use MailChimp’s services for email marketing or until you specifically request removal from the list. You can do this by unsubscribing using the unsubscribe links contained in any email newsletters that we send you or by requesting removal via email. When requesting removal via email, please send your email to us using the email account that is subscribed to the mailing list.

If you are under 16 years of age you MUST obtain parental consent before joining our email newsletter.

While your email address remains within the MailChimp database, you will receive periodic (approximately three times a year) newsletter-style emails from us.

3.5 Our eCommerce shop

Collection and processing of your data on our website is done so in order to fulfil purchases, orders, refunds, returns, customer support requests, warranty claims and in order for you to create an account within our online store. This is required to meet our legal obligations, ensure we are able to fulfil your orders and requests and our legitimate interests in developing our relationship with you as our customer.

The type of data we will collect and process includes your identity, contact details, profile, financial, transactional and marketing preferences.

As part of this process, the data collected may also be shared with the third party data processors listed below:
Stripe
Apple Pay
PayPal
APC Couriers
Mailchimp
Freshchat
Odoo – Our CRM, billing, accounting, manufacturing, warehouse management software.

This data will be retained for a period of 7 years following the customer’s last transaction.

4.0 How we store your personal information

As detailed in section 3.2 above, if you submit a comment to a blog post published on this website some personal information will be stored within this website’s database. This is currently the only occasion where personal data will be stored on this website. This data is currently stored in an identifiable fashion; a limitation of the content management system that this website is build on (WordPress). In the near future we aim to change the storage of this data to a pseudonymous fashion meaning that the data would require additional processing using a separately stored ‘key’ before it could be used to identify an individual.

Pseudonymisation is a recent requirement of the GDPR which many web application developers are currently working to fully implement. We are committed to keeping it as a high priority and will implement it on this website as soon as we are able to.

5.0 About this website’s server

Our website is hosted by Rocket.net and uses the Content Delivery Network (CDN), Cloudflare Enterprise.

Some of the data centre’s more notable security features are as follows:

3m rota-spike security fence and perimeter anti ram barriers
Blast proof anti-intruder shielded external windows and doors
Proximity access locks on all external and internal doors
Interlocked man-trap doors with biometric iris scanners to gain access into data floors
Server cabinets have locked doors (no open racks)
Perimeter and internal IP CCTV system monitored 24×7
24×7 on-site security guards with static and mobile patrols
All on-site personnel are security vetted to BS7858 standard
Only authorised security cleared staff are allowed into the facility
Redundant and uninterruptible power supplies
Rocket.net utilise ISO-27001/ISO27001:2013 facilities

All traffic (transferral of files) between this website and your browser is encrypted and delivered over HTTPS.

6.0 Our third party data processors

We use a number of third parties to process personal data on our behalf. These third parties have been carefully chosen and all of them comply with the legislation set out in section 2.0. All 3 of these third parties are based in the USA and are EU-U.S Privacy Shield compliant.

Google (Privacy policy)
Mailchimp (Privacy policy)
Gravatar (Privacy policy)

7.0 Data Breaches

We will report any unlawful data breach of this website’s database or the database(s) of any of our third party data processors to any and all relevant persons and authorities within 72 hours of the breach if it is apparent that personal data stored in an identifiable manner has been stolen.

8.0 Data Controller

The data controller of this website is: Bernhard & Co Ltd, a UK Private limited Company with Company Number 1806190 and UK VAT number GB705346941.

Whose registered office is:
Bernhard and Company Ltd,
7a Eastfield Road
Rugby
Warwickshire
CV21 3AT
England

9.0 Data Protection Officer

Steven Nixon
Director, Bernhard & Company Ltd.

10.0 Changes to our privacy policy

This privacy policy may change from time to time inline with legislation or industry developments. We will not explicitly inform our clients or website users of these changes. Instead, we recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes. Specific policy changes and updates are mentioned in the change log below.

10.1 Change Log

25th April 2023 – updated registered office address.

Our Privacy Policy