Privacy policy

Last updated on 26-Sep-2021
Effective date 26-Sep-2021

The management and protection of the personal data of visitors/users of our website (https://spongean.com), are governed by the relevant Greek and European legislation and the following terms:

Spongean complies with the General Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and makes every effort to protect your personal data.

We only collect your personal data only when you voluntarily provide your personal data as a visitor/user of this website (https://spongean.com), while we take special care for the data collected with the help of cookie files.

Our Company undertakes to inform you of any changes to the privacy policy. In case of disagreement from your part you must stop and avoid browsing this website.

We cover all personal data, as well as the conditions for collecting, processing and managing it, only to the extent that this concerns your relationship (visitor/ user/ member) with our website. Under no circumstances is the relationship between the visitors/users/members of our website with any service provider that is not subject to the control/ownership of our Company covered by this policy.

Our Company undertakes to make every effort to safeguard the personal nature of your data and will not transfer it to any third party (natural or legal) and for any reason, except where provided by the law and exclusively to the relevant authorities.

In order to carry out transactions through our electronic store and place product orders, you may be asked to disclose some personal information (such as, but not limited to, the name or business name, profession, address home or work, e-mail address, contact number). Our Company keeps and processes the file with this personal information for the sole purpose of executing the orders and transactions that will be concluded through our website for the sale of products. Recipients of this data in the file for the promotion, support and service of the trading relationship, may be the company’s partners (for example transport companies, banks, etc.), as well as authorized employees who mediate for the preparation of orders.

Our Company maintains records of users’ personal data solely for financial, tax and communication purposes. In the context of the continuous improvement of our services and always with strict confidentiality conditions, we may process part or all of the data that you voluntarily as users have provided to us for statistical purposes (e.g. consumer preferences per product mark, by geographical area, by time period, etc.)

The e-mail contact details, which you as a user declare, as part of your transaction with our Company to order or purchase products, may be used to directly promote similar products or services. In any case you may object to the use of your e-mail information to present or promote new products by means of a statement to our Company or by following the instructions contained in each communication separately.

Any other sharing/transmission of your personal data, for example sharing the connection data from the Company’s website, on a third-party social networking site or on a web site such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, pinterest, is only made with your prior express consent.

You reserve the following rights regarding the processing of your personal data by our website:

• The right to be updated about your personal data;
• The right to rectify and supplement your personal data;
• The right to delete your personal data;
• The right to withdraw your consent;
• The right to object to the processing of your data.

• What personal data we collect and how.
• Why we collect the data and how we use it.
• What we do to safeguard and protect them.
• To whom we can pass the data on and why.
• What procedures have we put in place to exercise your rights.
• In addition, we have established a Policy for the use of Cookies.

For more details please see below:

1. What personal data we collect and how

Personal data is any information related to a natural person and allows us to identify you, such as: name, contact details, order number, payment details and some information related to access to our website (e.g. username, etc.).

Specifically, we may collect the following categories of data:

• Name, home address, email address, phone number.
• Order history on our website, as well as information related to your preferences (e.g. product sizes, colors, brands, etc.)
• Part of the information related to the use of credit/debit cards (e.g. cardholder name, approval or rejection of the transaction by the partner Bank).
• Information about the use of the services of our trusted partners (e.g. delivery of your order through a partner courier company).
• Information about your use on our website (e.g. when your account is linked to the website, if you have placed a product in your cart, etc.).
• Information and messages that you exchange with us as part of your service (e.g. contact forms, emails, chats, etc.), including communication through the pages we maintain on electronic social networks.
• IP address of the device you used to access our website, as well as a range of information that may be linked to it (depending on your settings), such as the location of the device, the source through which you were directed to our website ( e.g. Google search) etc.

The way the above personal data is collected is when you visit our website, create a user account, place orders or use other tools related to our activity ( e.g. chat, telephone communications, email, participation in contests, product evaluations, etc.).

2. Why we collect the data and how we use it.

Your data is collected for the sake of service, communication, accounting/legal reasons, marketing, protection and security.

In particular we use the data for the following reasons:

• Service: for the shipment of products ordered from our website and the satisfaction of your requests (e.g. sending an order in gift packaging, receiving at specific days and times, etc.) under the sale agreementwe conclude with you for each of your orders.
• Contact: To send updates about the progress of your order and to resolve any problems related to it.
• Accounting/ legal reasons: For the conclusion of saleagreement and the issuance of the required documents for the sale and transport of the products.
• Marketing: To send information material, provide personalized information and service, participate in customer loyalty programs and/ or product evaluation, the most user-friendly experience (e.g. customizing content to your interests, avoiding re-entering your information, providing your order history, etc.).
• Protection & Security: To avoid malicious actions on the website, to cooperate with banking institutions to avoid credit card fraud, to cooperate with the authorities (tax, judicial, etc.) if this Required.

Please note that your data is processed only on the condition that we have the legal basis to do so under this policy. Services that require user profile creation (e.g. order registration) ask for your consent each time.

We do not wish to retain your data for longer than is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it is processed. However, please note that we may need to maintain them in order to fulfil our legal obligations (e.g. tax audits) or to respond to complaints/questions and protect our legal rights in the event of a claim.

When we no longer need your personal data, we safely delete it. We are also looking at the possibility of minimising them over time, and whether we can keep them anonymous so that they can no longer be associated with natural persons. In this case, we may use them without further notice.

3.  What we do to safeguard and protect them

We follow strict security procedures when registering and storing your personal data, as well as protecting it from loss or destruction. The data you provide to us is protected by SSL encryption technology.

All payment details are registered directly in the secure environment of “Braintree” or “Paypal”, without any intervention or processing of our own. The credit/debit details you use are not visible by our company, except for a non-usable portion of them (e.g. owner name, approval/rejection, etc.).

We may disclose your data to our trusted third-party partners for the purposes set out in this Policy. We require all third parties to have appropriate technical and operational security measures in place to protect your personal data, in accordance with current law.

4. To whom we may transfer the data and why

Some of your personal data may be shared with third-party affiliates that provide services to our company, to the extent necessary to provide their services.

The usual third-party data recipients are:

• Government authorities and regulators overseeing our operation and complying with legal requirements.
• Freight forwarders used to ship orders.
• Reliable providers of services with whom we cooperate to conduct our activities, such as web hosting service providers, marketing and email/sms services, customer surveys and targeted marketing campaigns.
• Credit and debit card companies that facilitate your payments to us and investigate fraud incidents.
• Legal and other professional counselors, courts and law enforcement agencies in order to exercise our legal rights.
• Social networks and other websites that may be linked to our website (e.g. social sharing, links, etc.).
• Suppliers and market analysts who receive statistical data, but which are in no way personalised to specific individuals.

5. What procedures have we put in place for you to exercise your rights.

Under certain circumstances and by law, you have the right to:

Find out if we retain your personal data and, if so, what that data is and why we retain/use it.

Request access to your personal data by receiving a copy of your data that we legally retain.

Request the correction of your personal data that we hold. As long as you maintain a user account on our website you can make the corrections directly on the website.

Ask for your personal data to be deleted where there is no need to continue processing it.

Object to the processing of your personal data for newsletter purposes by removing your registration from our mailing list.

Oppose automated decision-making, such as creating profiles, that should not be the subject of automated decision-making using your personal data or profile.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or another party in electronic and structured form in order to transfer the data to another corresponding body.

Withdraw your prior consent to collect, process and transmit your personal data for a specific purpose. After we receive the notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will cease to process your information for the purpose or purposes for which you originally agreed, unless we have other legal basis to do so legally (e.g. accounting obligations).

If you wish to exercise any of these rights you may request so with an email notice from your registration email on our website, to our email: [email protected].

Also, for some of your rights there are automated procedures, such as deleting your email from the newsletter recipient list that exists in each message.

IP Addresses

The IP address is determined by the Internet Service Provider that provides the connection through which your computer connects to the Internet and then to our website. Our Company can locate the IP address through which the computer or any other electronic device accesses the Internet and then our website, and this information is used for statistical purposes. The IP address is held for technical reasons, as well as for issues related to the security of the Spongean’s systems. The IP address of the user with which he or she visited our Website may be handed over to the police or the pertinent judicial authorities, upon their request.

Hyperlinks

With the help of appropriate links within our website third party websites can be accessed. The placement of these links is for the sole purpose of facilitating you during your browsing on our website. It is by no way an indication of acceptance or approval of the content of the web pages listed by link. The link leads to a different website, the browsing of which is subject to the terms of use of this website. Our Company bears no responsibility whatsoever for the content and privacy policy of the websites listed by link. Access using the links provided on our website takes place under the sole responsibility of the user himself or herself.

Login from social media

Users of our website may register or log into their customer account using the identity they maintain on facebook’s social networking platform or their google account.

In order for the Facebook or google authentication process to take place, the user’s IP address is transmitted to the respective provider of the social network or service. Our Company has no effect on the purpose and manner of facebook or google’s collection and further processing of data. For more information on this topic, you should read Facebook’s and Google’s privacy policy.

Contact, request for information, withdraw consent, delete

You may at any time and at no cost object to the use of your personal data for the future, request their complete deletion, or request information about the data stored by our Company for your person. You do not have to follow a specific form of communication. For example, you can send an email to [email protected] or use the contact form found on our website.

Data Security

Our Company has adopted technical and organizational measures for the lawful collection, processing and effective protection of your data from loss, alteration or third-party access to them. The security procedures and measures we follow and implement are constantly improved in order to be modern and to follow technological developments.

Update and modification

We reserve the right to modify/update individual parts of this Policy without any prior notice. Please always read our Privacy Policy before using our website to be informed of the current version of our Policy in case any modifications or updates have been made.

This policy was introduced to help you better understand how we use your personal information, explains in detail the types of personal information we collect, what we use it for and who we may share it with. If you have any further questions please feel free to contact us by email: [email protected] or by phone at +30 210 9425594.

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