structure of this policy
1. important information and who we are
2. categories of data subjects (a) customers (b) visitors to our website (c) business contacts
3. disclosures of your personal data
4. data security
5. your legal rights
6. further information
1. important information and who we are
The Fine Art Society established in 1876 has built its business on the trust of its customers, clients and visitors. We endeavour to understand our clients’ interests in art, we value and protect their privacy, and we recognise their right to keep personal information private. In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applicable from the 25th of May 2018 and any other applicable data protection laws (the "Data Protection Laws"), this policy sets out the basis on which any personal data that you give us or which we collect from you, when: you purchase a work of art from us or consign to us; attend any of our events at the gallery or at an art fair; contact us directly by telephone; visit or register on our website, or sign up for our print or online publications or newsletters, is processed by us. We aim to ensure that any personal data we hold about you is accurate and kept up-to-date at all times. To assist us in ensuring that your information is up to date, do let us know if any of your personal details change at the following email address: art@thefineartsociety.com and we shall promptly correct or delete any data found to be incorrect. data controller For the purpose of the Data Protection Laws, the controller of your personal data is The Fine Art Society Ltd, 6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ (the "Fine Art Society" or the "Controller").
2. categories of data subjects
(a) customers
The following section of this policy sets out how the Controller will process personal data on behalf of our customers. We may hold personal data about customers which is provided to us by you directly as a result of your interaction with us (e.g. by completing application forms, through our website, telephone calls and/or corresponding with us) or which is provided to us by third parties. In connection with your custom, we may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you: contact details (including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address), bank account details (this information is only stored for the processing of payment and is deleted once payment is processed), when browsing our website, your IP address, your browser type and language, information in relation to your purchase of our artwork or use of our services, and/or information about you that you give us in person at our events and art fairs. Your personal data may be processed by The Fine Art Society or its sub-processors (or any of their affiliates, agents, employees, delegates or sub-contractors) for the following purposes:
a) to communicate with you about artworks, artists and events that we think you may find interesting;
b) to implement and fulfil transactions and obligations arising from any agreements entered into between you and us. The information is also used in the administration of our website and for internal operations (i.e. troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes), and for security, legal and regulatory obligations.
The legal basis on which we rely to process your personal data is: (a) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; and/or (b) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the Controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child; and/or where such processing is being carried out on the basis that it is necessary to pursue The Fine Art Society's legitimate interests, such legitimate interests are not overridden by your interests, fundamental rights or freedoms. Such processing may include the use of your personal data for the purposes of sending you electronic marketing communication, in relation to which you can at any time unsubscribe by following the instructions contained in each marketing communication. The Fine Art Society do not anticipate being required to obtain your consent for the processing of your personal data as listed above. If The Fine Art Society wish to use your personal data for other purposes which do require your consent, The Fine Art Society will contact you to request this. We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements and to main appropriate records in respect of a work's provenance. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. Where we are permitted to send you direct marketing communications we may retain your contact information necessary for this purpose, for as long as you do not unsubscribe from receiving the same from us. If you opt out from marketing, we will retain your information only to enable us to respect your wishes to not be contacted for marketing purposes.
(b) visitors to our website
The following section of this policy sets out how The Fine Art Society may process personal data (as a controller) about visitors to its website. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which you provide to us though our website: name, address, email address, telephone numbers, and technical data. We do not collect any sensitive personal data or special categories of personal data about you through our website (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences. We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through: direct interactions with you, including by filling in forms. This includes personal data you provide when you subscribe to our publications and/or request marketing to be sent to you. Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, and other similar technologies. [Technical data from analytics providers [such as Google based outside the EU]. We will use your personal data in the following circumstances: where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (including in relation to the sending of electronic marketing communications) and where your interests and fundamental rights are not overridden by those interests, or where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation. Your personal data may be processed by The Fine Art Society or its sub-processors (or any of their affiliates, agents, employees, delegates or sub-contractors) for the following purposes:
• to send you updates, newsletters, or invitations to events and other electronic marketing communications which we will do (a) on the basis of our legitimate interests or if we are sending electronic marketing communications to corporate subscriber email addresses (eg name@company.com) or (b) with your consent;
• to use data analytics to improve our website, marketing, customer experiences on the basis of our legitimate interests; • to comply with legal or regulatory requirements;
• to scan and monitor emails sent to us (including attachments) for viruses or malicious software, to process and encrypt personal data to protect and manage email traffic, and to store personal data on our systems to pursue our legitimate interests including for document retention purposes; and
• such other actions as are necessary to manage the activities of the The Fine Art Society, including by processing instructions and enforcing or defending the rights and/or interests of The Fine Art Society in order to comply with our legal obligations and/or to pursue our legitimate interests. If we consider it necessary to obtain your consent in relation to the use your personal data, we will contact you to request this consent. In such circumstances, we will provide you with full details of the personal data that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. If you decide to provide your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, although that will not affect the lawfulness of processes based on consent before its withdrawal.
To withdraw your consent or to opt out of receiving marketing communication, please contact us at art@thefineartsociety.com or by following the unsubscribe instructions included in each electronic marketing communication.Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law. We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Where the Website provides links to other websites, The Fine Art Society is not responsible for the data protection/privacy/cookie usage policies of such other websites, and you should check these policies on such other websites if you have any concerns about them. If you use one of these links to leave our website, 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 a linked website and such websites are not governed by this policy. You should always exercise caution and review the privacy policy applicable to the website in question.
Cookies: A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular website. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences. We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our Website by tailoring it to the needs of users. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes. Overall, cookies help us provide a better website by enabling us to monitor which pages users find useful and which they don’t. A cookie does not give us access to a user’s computer or any information about them, other than the data they choose to share with us. The browsers of most computers, smartphones and other web–enabled devices are usually set up to accept cookies. If your browser preferences allow it, you can configure your browser to accept all cookies, reject all cookies, or notify you when cookies are set. Each browser is different, so check the “Help” menu of your browser to learn about how to change your cookie preferences. However, please remember that cookies are often used to enable and improve certain functions on our website. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly.
For further details on cookies (including how to turn them off) can be found at www.allaboutcookies.org
(c) business contacts
The following section of this policy sets out how The Fine Art Society may process personal data (as a controller) about its business contacts and (current, previous and/or potential) service providers (and employees of service providers) and data subjects that have provided a business card to, or have corresponded with, an employee of The Fine Art Society. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which you provide to us including: name, date of birth, address, email address, telephone numbers, place of work, and job title. We do not collect any sensitive personal data or special categories of personal data about you through our website (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences. We will use your personal data in the following circumstances: where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (including in relation to the sending of electronic marketing communications) and where your interests and fundamental rights are not overridden or where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
Your personal data may be processed by The Fine Art Society or its sub-processors (or any of their affiliates, agents, employees, delegates or sub-contractors) for the following purposes:
• to hold your personal data on our system and to contact you on the basis of the legitimate interests of The Fine Art Society (including in connection with using the services that you provide);
• in respect of suppliers, to allow us to process payments and orders in respect of any goods and services provided;
• to send you updates, newsletters, or invitations to events and other electronic marketing communications which we will do (a) on the basis of our legitimate interests or if we are sending electronic marketing communications to corporate subscriber email addresses (eg name@company.com) or (b) with your consent;
• to comply with legal or regulatory requirements;
• to scan and monitor emails sent to us (including attachments) for viruses or malicious software, to process and encrypt personal data to protect and manage email traffic, and to store personal data on our systems to pursue our legitimate interests including for document retention purposes; and
• such other actions as are necessary to manage the activities of The Fine Art Society, including by processing instructions and enforcing or defending the rights or interests of The Fine Art Society in order to comply with their legal obligations and/or to pursue their legitimate interests. If we consider it necessary to obtain your consent in relation to the use your personal data, we will contact you to request this consent. In such circumstances, we will provide you with full details of the personal data that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent.
If you decide to provide your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, although that will not affect the lawfulness of processes based on consent before its withdrawal. To withdraw your consent or to opt out of receiving marketing communication, please contact us at art@thefineartsociety.com or by following the unsubscribe instructions included in each electronic marketing communication. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
Where such processing is being carried out on the basis that it is necessary to pursue The Fine Art Society's legitimate interests, such legitimate interests do not override your interests, fundamental rights or freedoms. Such processing may include the use of your personal data for the purposes of sending you electronic marketing communication, in relation to which you can at any time subscribe by following the instructions contained in each marketing communication. We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
3. disclosure of your information
We will not disclose personal information we hold about you to any third party except as set out below. We may disclose your personal data to other members of our group, to third parties who are providing services to us, including, transportation, framing or restoration service providers. We may also disclose personal data we hold to third parties: (a) in the event that we sell or transfer any business or assets, in which case we may disclose personal data we hold about you to the prospective and actual buyer, or transferee, of such business or assets (which, for the avoidance of doubt, may include our records of provenance); and/or (b) if we are permitted by law to disclose your personal data to that third party or are under a legal obligation to disclose your personal data to that third party.
4. data security
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online, but we cannot guarantee the security of any data it collects and stores.
5. Your Rights
In certain circumstances, you may have one or more of the following rights: to request access to or a copy of any personal data which we hold about you; to rectification of your personal data, if you consider that the information we are holding is inaccurate; to ask us to delete your personal data, if you consider that we do not have the right to hold it; to withdraw consent to our processing of your personal data (to the extent such processing is based on previously obtained consent e.g. for marketing purposes); to ask us to start sending you marketing messages; to unsubscribe from receiving marketing messages at any time, thereby disabling any further such e-mail or other communication from being sent to you; to restrict processing of your personal data; to data portability (moving, copying or transferring your personal data to another organisation (including in connection with direct marketing); to object to your personal data being processed in certain circumstances; and to not be subject to a decision based on automated processing and to have safeguards put in place if you are being profiled based on your personal data. Any request from you for access to or a copy of your personal data must be in writing and we will endeavour to respond within a reasonable period and in any event within one month, unless we require more time, in which case we will notify you within the 30 working day period. If on request we provide you with more than one copy of any information, this may be subject to a reasonable fee. We may also charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at art@thefineartsociety.com
6. further information
Contacting The Fine Art Society
Questions, comments and requests regarding this policy are welcomed and should be addressed to art@thefineartosciety.com. If you have any concerns about our use of your personal data or you believe that we may not be processing your personal data in accordance with the Data Protection Laws, you also have the right (as a UK resident) to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (the "ICO"), which regulates and supervises the use of personal data in the UK, via their helpline on 0303 123 1113. You can find the ICO's website at https://ico.org.uk/. changes to this policy We encourage users to check this page for any changes to stay informed about how we are helping to protect the personal information we collect. Any changes we make to our policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.
© The Fine Art Society
Data Protection and Privacy Policy December 2023
