Privacy policy and cookies

This privacy policy sets out how Book Tokens Ltd. uses and protects any information that you give when you use our websites.

Book Tokens Ltd. is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using our websites, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

We may change this policy by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

Privacy policy

We may collect the following information (where you have given it to us):

  • your name
  • your contact information including email address
  • your demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests
  • other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers

We will use the information you provide to:

  • fulfil your requests – such as competition entries, participation in campaigns and provision of information
  • process sales transactions, handle orders, deliver products and communicate with you about orders
  • provide a personalised service to you when you visit our websites – this could include customising the content and/or layout of pages for individual users
  • record any contact we have with you
  • identify contributors, prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our websites
  • to carry out research on the demographics, interests and behaviour of users. This research may be carried out internally by our employees or we may ask another company to do this work for us. We will use this research to inform our marketing and advertising decisions or to create lookalike audiences for advertising purposes, as well as to improve our products and services. We will only send marketing information to you if you have opted in to receive communications from us, or consented to the relevant advertising cookies on our site
  • communicate with customers
  • if you have agreed to it, provide you with information that we think may be of interest to you, using third parties to process your data in order to send communications

We will only share your information if:

  • we are legally required to do so by a law enforcement agency or if compelled by an order of the Court or we believe it is necessary to protect or defend our rights
  • we are working with a specialist partner such as a mailing house, newsletter agency, marketing agency, IT specialist or research firm that is carrying out work on our behalf. We may for instance ask them to send mail, emails, carry out research or analysis and process card payments. We only choose partners we can trust.

Information is stored by us and our selected providers on computers located in the UK and Europe. We may also store information in paper files.

We place great importance on the security of all personal information and we have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. While we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss of data will not occur while it is under our control or whilst it is being transferred, we use our best efforts to try to prevent this.

We never sell or share your information to other organisations to use for their own purposes.

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites.

We will retain your personal information for as long as we deem it necessary for the purposes outlined above. We will keep different types of data for different amounts of time, as detailed below. For the purposes of this policy, ‘interaction’ is defined as any action taken on our website or emails, e.g. entering a competition, opening an email, changing email preferences. All timescales outlined in this policy are effective as of 25th May 2018.

  • If you do not have a full account (with password), we will retain your information for 2 years after the date of your last interaction.
  • If you have an account with a password, we will retain your data for 8 years after the date of your last interaction.
  • We may store customer service and marketing emails for up to 4 years. 

Book Tokens Ltd. do not retain credit card information.

After the above time periods have elapsed without any interaction, we will delete all personal information associated with your account. If you would like your data to be deleted before this time period has elapsed, we are able to do this under your Right to Be Forgotten, providing you have no active orders being processed (if so, we would advise on the earliest date at which such a request could be fulfilled). Please note that once data has been deleted, it cannot be retrieved and you will lose all Caboodle Points, reward claim history, gift card information and other benefits associated with your account.

You can unsubscribe from our marketing emails at any time by following the link at the footer of our emails, or by logging into your account. If you place an order directly with us, we will send you emails to update you on the status of that order, regardless of your opt-in status; these emails are for information only and will not be used for marketing purposes.

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may share your personal information with third parties in order to facilitate the dispatch of competition prizes – if so, this will be clearly stated in the terms and conditions of each relevant competition, and your data will be shared securely.

If you would like to know what personal information we store, or request that we remove your data, please get in touch using the contact details below.

If you are resident in the United Kingdom, submit a subject data request online or please write to us at:

Book Tokens Ltd.

6 Bell Yard

London

WC2A 2JR

If you are resident in the Republic of Ireland:

Submit a subject data request online, or contact the EU GDPR Representative at:

Adam Brogden

Instant EU GDPR Representative Ltd

Office 2, 12A Lower Main Street

Lucan

Co. Dublin

K78 X5P8

contact@gdprlocal.com

00 353 15 549 700

By submitting your information, you consent to the use of that information as set out in this policy. If we change our privacy policy, we will post the changes on this page, and may place notices on other pages of the website, so that you may be aware of the information we collect and how we use it at all times. Continued use of the service will signify that you agree to any such changes.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file which is placed on your computer's hard drive when you visit a website. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the site owners, such as which pages you find useful or not. A web browser normally deletes session cookies when it quits. A cookie does not give us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.  Cookies are used on this site to maintain functionality as you move between pages.

Book Tokens Ltd.’s websites use first-party cookies, which allow us to distinguish you from other users. They maintain functionality as you move between pages and help us to improve our sites. We also use some widely-used third-party social media plugins as marketing tools, and to provide convenience tools for our visitors, which create cookies.

There are different types of cookies on our sites. Some of these, used for marketing purposes or to enable third-party plug-ins, are optional. Others are necessary for the functioning of the sites, and as such you can’t turn these off – however, these do not collect personal information about you. You can review your cookie preferences using the links at the bottom of each of our sites.

Please note, if you choose to have your browsers refuse cookies completely by changing your browser settings (rather than those on our sites), this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our sites.

 

The types of cookie we collect are as follows:

 

STRICTLY NECESSARY

These cookies cannot be turned off as they are required in order for our website to work.

 

FUNCTIONAL

These cookies are used to remember information that changes the way the website looks or behaves, such as our bookshop search map, the Hidden Books Game, and your cookie settings. Because of this, these cookies cannot be turned off.

 

ANALYTICS

These cookies help us improve our website performance by collecting and reporting on anonymous information about how visitors use it, such as which pages are most visited and how users move around the website.

 

MARKETING

These cookies are used to help us decide which National Book Tokens products and information are most relevant to you. We use this information to tailor our marketing and ads on websites and platforms, such as on mobile or social media.

Company Purpose Category More information
National Book Tokens This cookie is automatically set when you land on the website. It enables functionality between pages and is essential for parts of the site to operate. It is held temporarily and is deleted when you close your web browser. It does not contain personally identifiable information and is anonymous. STRICTLY NECESSARY  
National Book Tokens These cookies are used to set and store your cookie preferences and determine the country from which a user is visiting our websites. FUNCTIONAL  
Google reCAPTCHA These cookies help us detect abusive traffic on our websites. We use them to prevent false form and competition entries. FUNCTIONAL More information about Google reCAPTCHA
Read Google's privacy information
OpenStreetMap These cookies are used to deliver maps on our websites, such as "Find a Bookshop" map. FUNCTIONAL More information about OpenStreetMap
Read OpenStreetMap's privacy policy
Woobox These cookies are used in some of our quizzes and competitions, which are designed with a third-party plug-in called Woobox. They are necessary for the competitions to operate and for the users to submit their entries. FUNCTIONAL Find more information about Woobox and its privacy policy
Scandit For generating mobile wallet versions of National Book Token gift cards and e-Gift cards a third-party scanning software is used to scan the barcode (Scandit). When using the barcode scanner the following types of data are collected by the third party; IP address, device model, operating system and version, and Scandit software version and scan count. This data is used for debugging, statistical analysis, performance monitoring, improvements, and license compliance purposes. The scan engine results, namely, the barcode data, will not be collected. FUNCTIONAL Find more information about Scandit and its privacy policy
Google Analytics These cookies generate statistical data on how visitors use our websites and their behaviour. This helps us to count the number of visitors, which pages they visited, where they have come from and if they used different devices and channels, so we can improve the way our websites work. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form. We report on this activity in aggregate, and use this information solely for the purposes of monitoring and improving our website. ANALYTIC Find more details on the cookies set by Google Analytics: Google Code
Read an overview of Google's Privacy Policy
Google Ads and Google Campaign Manager 360 These cookies enable Book Tokens Ltd. to measure advertising campaign performance and gather information using Google Ads remarketing, re-engagement, or similar audiences features, in order to reach people who previously visited our websites with personalised ads, matching the right people with the right messages. MARKETING Find more details about Google Advertising
You can opt-out of Google's use of cookies or device identifiers by visiting Google's Ads Settings
You can also go to AdChoices to control ads from ad networks that are customised to your likely interests based upon previous web browsing activity.
Google Analytics In addition to data collected through standard Google Analytics, we might also enable data collection for additional features like cross-device audiences and insights. Google Analytics will collect visitation information and associate it with Google information from accounts of signed-in users who have consented to this association for the purpose of ads personalisation. This Google information may include end-user location, search history, YouTube history and data from sites that partner with Google – and is used to provide aggregated and anonymised insights into users' cross-device behaviours. MARKETING Find more details on the cookies set by Google Analytics: Google Code
Read an overview of Google’s Privacy Policy
Hotjar >Hotjar is a behaviour analytics and user feedback service that helps us understand the behaviour of our website users and get their feedback, helping us improve our site's performance and user experience. MARKETING Find more information about Hotjar and its privacy policy
Flashtalking These cookies enable Book Tokens Ltd. to measure advertising quality and effectiveness and personalized ad creative messaging. While this technology looks at a number of data signals, it does not collect sensitive data from a user's device. All data is securely stored and protected using industry-certified security and encryption protocols. MARKETING Find more information about Flashtalking and its privacy policy
Edit your Ad choices
Microsoft Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising capture how users interact with our website through behavioural metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve our site's performance, user experience, and market our products. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimization and security purposes. MARKETING Find more information about Microsoft and its privacy policy
Edit your Ad choices
X (formerly Twitter) These cookies enable Book Tokens Ltd. to use advertising features in X (formerly Twitter) such as audiences, conversions, targeting and optimisation as well as to measure X Analytics data. MARKETING Find more details about X and its privacy policy
Meta These cookies enable Book Tokens Ltd. to use advertising features in Meta such as audiences, conversions, targeting and optimisation as well as to measure Meta Analytics data. This helps us understand how our users move between devices when accessing our websites, measure our Meta advertising results and to ensure that our Meta advertising is seen by our users most likely to be interested in such advertising, by analysing which content a user has viewed and interacted with on our websites. MARKETING Find more details about Meta’s privacy settings and Meta Pixel
Edit your Meta ad preferences and revoke consent.

 

Last updated: January 2024

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