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Privacy and Cookies Policy

Serif Statement of Privacy

Welcome to Affinity from Serif. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully as you agree to be bound by it while using the Affinity website.

‘Serif’, ‘Affinity’ and ‘Affinity Spotlight’ are trading names of Serif (Europe) Ltd (“we”, “our” or “us”) registered in England number 2117968 with registered offices at: The Software Centre, 12 Wilford Ind Est, Nottingham NG11 7EP, UK. Telephone: UK - 0845 345 6770 Intl.- +44 115 914 2000.

This Privacy Policy, together with our Terms and Conditions, and any documents it references, set out the basis on which any Personal Data (as defined below) or which you provide to us will be processed by us as a result of using or interacting with the Affinity website (“Our Website”). We aim at all times to process and collect your data lawfully, transparently, fairly and without adversely affecting your rights as a Data Subject (as defined below).

Please read the following carefully to understand our practices and procedures. We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time without notice. When we do we will update the “Last Updated” date. It is therefore important that you regularly review this Privacy Policy to ensure you are updated as to any changes.

Where this document is translated into a language other than English, in the event of any dispute arising with respect to its interpretation, the English language version shall prevail.

Definitions

In this policy the following terms shall have the following meanings:

Data Protection Legislation: up to but excluding 25 May 2018, the Data Protection Act 1998 and thereafter:

  1. unless and until the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR) is no longer directly applicable in the UK, the GDPR and any national implementing laws, regulations and secondary legislation, as amended or updated from time to time, in the UK; and then
  2. any successor legislation to the GDPR or the Data Protection Act 1998.

Data Subject: a natural identifiable person.

Personal Data: has the meaning set out in the Data Protection Legislation, being as at the data of this policy, any data which identifies a natural person (by way of example, name, address, phone number and so on).

Who controls the Personal Data that is collected?

For the purpose of the Data Protection Legislation, the data controller and data processor is Serif (Europe) Ltd, a limited liability company registered in England with company number 2117968, whose registered office is at The Software Centre, 12 Wilford Ind Est, Nottingham NG11 7EP.

If you have any queries relating to our use of your personal information or any other related data protection questions, you can contact our nominated Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@serif.com or write to us at Data Protection Officer, Serif (Europe) Ltd, 12 Wilford Ind Est, Nottingham NG11 7EP.

If you are not satisfied with any action taken by us or response given, you have the right to complain to Information Commissioner at ico.org.uk, or help line telephone number: 0303 1231113.

In the event that Serif, its parent company or trading names and brands are subject to a change of ownership, the control and permissions that you have granted us with regard to your Personal Data will be transferred to the new owner.

How do we collect Personal Data?

Our Website:
  • When you visit Our Website, we use cookies (see below for more information about cookies) to collect website usage information such as the type and version of browser and operating system you use. Cookies are not used to store personal details such as your name and address.
  • When you sign up to receive our newsletters, or to take part in our free public betas, or download a free trial of our software, or make a purchase on Our Website, or sign up to the Affinity Forum, an account is created which may include your name, email address, IP address, and other Personal Data. Please do not share your username or account details with any third party; we will not be liable in such circumstances for any data breach or loss.
  • When making a physical purchase, we may need to collect your shipping address. With your consent, we will also store some details related to your payment method to speed up your checkout experience in the future. You’ll be able to remove these details at any time via your account. When making any store purchase your IP address will be used to save your location/region for tax and statistical purposes.
  • We may use “image tracking” to ascertain whether you do or do not read our email communications.
  • If you: (a) complete one of our enquiry forms on Our Website; (b) enter into a contract with us for our services; (c) report a problem with Our Website; or (d) otherwise correspond with us, we may collect your name, address (including e-mail address), other contact details, phone numbers, identification and bank details.
Our applications:

Affinity applications collect some anonymous information, for example usage data, application name and version number, language and OS version but no Personal Data. This is used to ensure correct content is shown in the welcome screen of the applications and to help notify you of product updates. Using the “My Account” feature within the application collects additional personal information to facilitate the functions, including data about your hardware.

We will also collect crash report data, but only if you choose to submit it to us at the time.

In addition to this our beta versions of the applications will automatically send additional data to help diagnose issues including GFX card information, Direct X data, CPU info and platform patches.

Why do we process and store your Personal Data?

We will only ever collect and use your Personal Data in accordance with Data Protection Legislation. Our grounds for processing your Personal Data are as follows:

  • Consent

    In some cases, we will process your Personal Data based on obtaining your express consent for us to do so, for example when signing up to receive our newsletter. Where this applies, we will always offer you the opportunity to withdraw your consent for this processing at any time.

  • Contract

    It may be necessary for us to capture and store your Personal Data to fulfil our contractual obligation to you. For example, we may need to retain a copy of your email address where it forms part of the product license you purchase from us.

  • Legitimate Interests

    Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation there is a concept of “legitimate interests” as a justification for processing your Personal Data, where we have good and fair reasons to do so in ways which do not adversely affect your interests and rights.

    Our legitimate interests for processing your Personal Data are:

    • To enable you to access and use Our Website, to provide access to your purchases and product keys, and to provide customer support where required.
    • To provide a personalised checkout experience on our store. We will use your country and geolocation data to display relevant services, and pricing in your local currency.
    • To personalise our communications with you.
    • To detect and prevent fraud and abuse of Our Website and store, and to help keep our services secure.
    • To improve the quality of your experience on Our Website. We are always working to improve Our Website and our products, and may use certain demographic information such as your account country and language preference to help us achieve this.

Where do we store Personal Data?

Website Data

We store all Personal Data collected via Our Website on secure servers administered by Amazon, located in the Republic of Ireland (ROI).

We use Sentry for error and performance monitoring of our websites, and some personally identifiable data may be processed as part of that monitoring. Sentry, Inc. is an online global service provider. For more information on how Sentry processes personal data, please see Sentry’s Privacy Policy.

Payments

We use Digital River to process payments made via our store. When you make a payment, we will pass your order details to Digital River to enable them to complete the transaction. Digital River will store some of your details as a reference against your transaction in case we need to process a refund or provide support, and for fraud prevention purposes.

Digital River, Inc. and its subsidiaries is an online global reseller services provider. For more information, see Digital River’s Privacy Policy.

Any card payments processed prior to 7 November 2023 were processed (and stored) via our previous payment solutions provider Braintree.

Braintree is a U.S. based company certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework. For more information, see Braintree’s Privacy Policy.

Any card payments processed prior to 2 September 2019 were processed (and stored) via Stripe, which is also a U.S. based company certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework. See Stripe’s Privacy Policy for more information.

Order Fulfilment and shipping

We use Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) service to fulfil orders for physical goods such as our workbooks. When you order one of our workbooks, your name and address details will be passed to Amazon, who will use this information to ship your order to you. Amazon will store some of your details to help us track your order and provide support where required.

For more information:

Email Communications

Some of our email communications are administered through MailChimp (www.mailchimp.com), and we may store some of your Personal Data - including your name, email address and contact preferences - on a MailChimp server. Mailchimp may process and store your data outside the EEA.

MailChimp is a U.S. based company and is certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework. For more information, see MailChimp Privacy Policy.

Do we share Personal Data?

We will not share your Personal Data with third parties without having obtained your consent. We will only disclose your Personal Data, without your consent or without notice, if required to do so by law or if in good faith we believe that such action is necessary to:

  • Conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on us.
  • Protect and defend our lawful rights and property.
  • Act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of our customers and the public.

How can you gain access to Personal Data?

If you have an Affinity Store account, you can access your personal data by visiting https://store.serif.com/account/.

You can also request and obtain details of the Personal Data we may hold about you by emailing us at dataprotection@serif.com, or writing to us at the following address:

Data Protection Manager
Serif
12 Wilford Ind Est
Nottingham
NG11 7EP

When contacting us, please quote your name and email address. We would be grateful if you could also provide brief details of the information required as this will help us to accurately respond to your request.

For the protection of all our customers, we will take all reasonable steps to confirm your identity before providing you with details of any Personal Data we may hold about you.

We will to respond to all such requests within 30 days.

How can you make changes to your Personal Data?

If you find that that any of the Personal Data we hold for you is incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to request that we rectify these errors.

If you have an Affinity Store account, you can make changes to your Personal Data by visiting https://store.serif.com/account/ and navigating to your ‘Account Details’ page.

You can also request we update your Personal Data by emailing dataprotection@serif.com. Please include as much detail as possible regarding the changes you wish to make, as this will help us in dealing with your request.

We will respond to all such requests within 30 days.

Your right to be forgotten

You can request that we delete your account and any Personal Data we have collected from you by emailing us at dataprotection@serif.com. Please provide your name and email address to help us with your request. Please note that we may not be able to delete your data if we are obliged to retain it to fulfil a legal or statutory obligation.

Please be aware that once deleted, your account will no longer be accessible and cannot be restored so you should ensure that anything that is accessed via your account that you wish to keep is backed up before proceeding.

We will respond to all such requests within 30 days.

How secure is your Personal Data?

We recognise that people are increasingly concerned about the protection of Personal Data from misuse and abuse, and about privacy in general. We constantly review and enhance our technical, physical and managerial procedures in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of Personal Data in order to protect it from unauthorised access, accidental loss and/or destruction.

Where necessary, we use industry standard 128-bit secure sockets layer (SSL) technology to encrypt sensitive data.

It is important for you to remember to protect yourself against unauthorised access by guarding your password. For example, if you use a shared computer, make sure you logout or close your browser whenever you leave the computer.

Do we transfer Personal Data overseas?

The Internet is a global environment. Using the Internet to collect and process Personal Data involves the transmission of data on an international basis. Although the data we collect from you is stored in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), data transferred to third parties to perform our contract may be transferred to third parties outside the EEA. By browsing Our Website and communicating with us you acknowledge and agree that your Personal Data may be transferred overseas. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Do we monitor and/or record communications?

Monitoring or recording of your calls, emails, and other communications may take place in accordance with UK law, and in particular for business purposes, such as for quality control and training, and in order to prevent or detect crime. Please visit the following website for further information: ico.org.uk.

Children

We do not knowingly collect Personal Data from anyone under the age of 13. If you are a parent or guardian of a child under the age of 13 and believe he or she has disclosed personal information to us, please contact us at dataprotection@serif.com.

Where processing of Personal Data is based on consent, if we learn that this data belongs to someone under the age of 13, we will cease processing and will take reasonable measures to delete the applicable information from our records, unless the consent is provided by a parent or guardian.

Cookies

Cookie Law: means the relevant parts of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

Cookie: A cookie is a small text file that is placed on to your computer via your web browser when you visit a website. Cookies are used to save certain information and are only used to store data. They are not used to do anything harmful like start a process or infect your computer.

Our Website, like many others, stores and retrieves information on your browser using cookies. This information is used to make the site work as you expect it to. It is not personally identifiable to you, but it can be used to give you a more personalized web experience. All Cookies used by Serif (Europe) Ltd on Our Website are used in accordance with current Cookie Law.

What cookies do we use?

There are a number of essential cookies that are stored as soon as you visit our website. There are also other non-essential cookies, including first-party ones from Google Analytics and third-party ones from other websites. Before these non-essential cookies are placed on your computer or device, you will be shown a cookie compliance statement, requesting your consent to set those cookies. By giving your consent, you are enabling us to provide you with the best possible experiences and services to you.

Essential Cookies used on Our Website

Essential Cookies are vital to enable you to browse around our websites. Without these Cookies, services like the ability to sign in, add items to cart, or complete purchase cannot be provided.

  • preferred_locale/locale
    Stores your language preference. It is set whenever you change your language (or locale) or visit a page on the site that auto-redirects you to a localized version of the page. This cookie expires after 1 year.
  • serif_allow_analytics
    Stores a datestamp when you accept the Marketing and Analytics cookies. This cookie expires after 1 year.
  • serif_manage_cookies_viewed
    Stores a datestamp after you’ve saved a cookie settings preference. This cookie expires after 1 year.
  • session
    Enables the webserver to identify you the user and improve your browsing experience. This cookie expires at the end of your session.
  • shopping_session_id
    Stores a unique shopping reference that allows a user to create a basket over any website under the serif.com domain. This cookie expires at the end of your session.

The following also set essential cookies in order to allow our Store checkout to function.

Cookies used on the Affinity Forum are listed on the Forum cookie page.

Cookies used on the Affinity Spotlight are listed on the Spotlight cookie page.

Non-essential Cookies

First party cookies identify unique users through individual sessions (visits). There are a few third-party websites that also use cookies on our behalf, like social networking sites. Google Analytics uses first party cookies and saves anonymous statistical data that we use to improve your experience on our site. If you consent to these cookies, basic mode of Google consent will be implemented.

ZoomInfo

We may use services provided by ZoomInfo to help identify businesses that visit our Volume Licensing pages.

ZoomInfo collects business contact and similar information related to individuals when they are working in their professional or employment capacity, and uses this information to create professional profiles of individuals and profiles of businesses.

See the ZoomInfo Privacy Policy for more information.

Webgains

We work together with cooperation partners who promote our products on various platforms on the Internet (“Affiliate Marketing”). The cooperation partners receive remuneration for this placement activity. To make sure we credit these partners appropriately, we work with Webgains to track relevant information (such as IP address, order details and transaction IDs) using cookies.

Removing cookies

Cookies don’t stay around forever and your web browser will eventually delete them. When a website stores a Cookie, it states how long the Cookie should stay on the computer for – this can be for the current visit only or for a period of time, for example one week. Our main Cookie Session_ID only stays on your computer while you are on Our Website. It is automatically removed when you leave Our Website.

You can choose to delete our, or any website’s, Cookies from your web browser at any time (for help on how to do this, go to www.aboutcookies.org.uk). You can also set your web browser to not accept any Cookies if you wish. You will still be able to view Our Website, but some of the personalised features may not work correctly.

Questions

If you have any questions about our Privacy and Cookies Policy, please get in touch.

Last Updated: 13 March 2024

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