This privacy policy describes how Books Africana collects and processes personal information through this website or our services (together, “Books Africana Services.”)
Controller of personal information: Books Africana Limited, 3rd Floor, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE (“Books Africana”), is the data controller of personal information collected and processed through the Books Africana Services.
What Personal Information we collect
We collect your personal information in order to provide and continually improve the Books Africana Services. The types of information we gather include:
- Information you give us: we receive and store information you provide us when you use the Books Africana Services. For example, your name and address, purchases you make, payment details, competition entries, survey responses, and messages you send us.
- Automatic information: we automatically receive and store certain types of information when you use Books Africana Services, including information about how you’ve used the site and what services you’ve interacted with. Like many websites, we use “cookies” and other unique identifiers, and we obtain certain types of information when your device accesses our website or other content served on our behalf on other websites.
- Information from other sources: we might receive information about you from other sources. For example, we may receive credit history information in order to help prevent and detect fraud, or payment confirmations from payment processors.
Purposes for which we process your personal information
We process your personal information to operate, provide, and improve the Books Africana Services. These purposes include:
- Purchase and delivery of products and services (e.g. processing payments and communicating with you about your orders, or for administrative or operational reasons relating to our service).
- Recommendations and personalisation (e.g. to recommend products that might be of interest to you, and to personalise your experience).
- Provide, troubleshoot, and improve Books Africana Services, and for internal record keeping.
- Comply with legal obligations. In certain cases, we have a legal obligation to collect and process your personal information.
- Communicate with you. We use your personal information to communicate with you in relation to the Books Africana Services via different channels (e.g., by phone, email, chat).
- Advertising. We use your personal information to display interest-based ads for features, products, and services that might be of interest to you. To learn more, please read our Interest-Based Ads notice.
- Fraud Prevention and Credit Risks. We process personal information to prevent and detect fraud and abuse in order to protect the security of our customers, Books Africana, and others. We may also use scoring methods to assess and manage credit risks.
- Purposes for which we seek your consent. We may also ask for your consent to process your personal information for a specific purpose that we communicate to you. When you consent to our processing your personal information for a specified purpose, you may withdraw your consent at any time and we will stop processing of your data for that purpose.
- We may periodically send promotional email about new products, special offers, or other information we think you may find interesting.
- From time to time we may contact you for market research purposes.
Do we share your personal information?
Information about our customers is an important part of our business and we are not in the business of selling our customers’ personal information to others. Books Africana shares our customers’ personal information only as described below and with Amazon.com, Inc. and the subsidiaries that it controls, provided they follow practices at least as protective as those described in this Privacy Policy.
- Third party service providers: We employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include fulfilling orders for products or services, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mail, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links), processing payments, transmitting content, scoring credit risk, and providing customer service. These third party service providers have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. Further, they must process the personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and as permitted by applicable data protection laws.
- Transactions involving third parties: We may offer services or sell product lines jointly with third party businesses, such as discount codes provided by third parties. You can tell when a third party is involved in your transactions and we share customer information related to those transactions with that third party to the extent needed to provide you with the relevant service.
- Protection of Books Africana and others: We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Terms & Conditions and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Books Africana, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
Other than as set out above, you will receive notice when personal information about you might be shared with third parties and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information.
How long do we keep your personal information?
We keep your personal information to enable your continued use of the Books Africana Services, for as long as it is required in order to fulfil the relevant purposes described in this Privacy Policy, as may be permitted by law such as for tax and accounting purposes, or as otherwise communicated to you. If you delete your account, any reviews you have written will not be deleted but default to ‘anonymous’.
Security
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.
What about cookies?
To enable our systems to recognise your browser or device and to provide the Books Africana Services to you, we use cookies. For more information about cookies and how we use them, please read our Cookies notice.
What about third-party advertisers and links to other websites?
Our website may include third-party advertising and contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest easily. 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. Third party advertising partners may collect information about you when you interact with their content, advertising, and services. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
Controlling your personal information
If you have any question or objection as to how we collect and process your personal information, please visit our Contact us page. Please also note:
- If you are a registered user, you can update your personal information by logging in to your account.
- If you don’t want to receive e-mail or other communication from us, you can change your contact preferences by simply clicking “My Account” at the top of the page and click “My contact preferences”. If you do not want to receive commercial marketing communications from us, please select your choices by using the boxes available on that page. Please note you will still receive transactional emails from us. For anything else, please Contact us.
- The Help feature on most browsers and devices will tell you how to prevent your browser or device from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. Because cookies allow you to take advantage of some essential services, we recommend that you leave them turned on. For instance, if you block or otherwise reject our cookies, you will not be able to add items to your Shopping Basket, proceed to checkout, or use any services that require you to sign in. For more information about cookies, see our Cookies notice.
- Subject to applicable law, you have the right to request access to, correct, and delete your personal data, and to ask for data portability. You may also object to our processing of your personal data or ask that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain instances. If you wish to do any of these things, please write to or email us via the Contact us page as soon as possible, or at the above address.
Are Children Allowed to Use Books Africana Services?
Books Africana doesn’t sell products for purchase by children. We sell children’s products for purchase by adults. If you’re under 18, you may use Books Africana Services only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.
Data transfers
Books Africana currently transfers such information outside the EEA for secure storage on its servers located in the United States. Because Books Africana servers are located in the United States, the transfer of all Books Africana data (including the personal details contained in your account) outside the EEA is necessary to enable Books Africana to operate its website and provide products and information to you. Whenever we transfer personal information to countries outside of the European Economic Area, we ensure that the information is transferred in accordance with this Privacy Policy and as permitted by the applicable laws on data protection.
Contacts, Notices & Revisions
If you have any requests concerning your personal information or any queries with regard to our processing please contact us via the Contact us page. You can file a complaint with our supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Our business changes constantly and our Privacy Policy will change too. You should check our website frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account. We stand behind the promises we make, however, and will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of customer information collected in the past without the consent of affected customers.