Policy version: April 2025
This website is provided by Whyte and Mackay Limited (‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’). We are the controller of personal data obtained via our website, meaning we are the organisation legally responsible for deciding how and for what purposes it is used.
This privacy policy applies on a global basis but principally follows the requirements under data protection legislation in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States. If you are a resident of California, please see the section entitled “California Privacy Rights”, for more information about the rights you have under California law.
We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share any information relating to you (your personal data) in connection with your use of our website. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or a relevant regulator in the event you have a complaint.
We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we are subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). We are also subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) in relation to goods and services we offer to individuals in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Given the nature of our website, we do not expect to collect the personal data of anyone under 18 years old. If you are aware that any personal data of anyone under 18 years old has been shared with our website please let us know so that we can delete that data.
This privacy policy is divided into the following sections:
What this policy applies to
This privacy policy relates to your use of our website only.
Throughout our website we may link to other websites owned and operated by certain trusted third parties. Those third party websites may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy policies. For privacy information relating to those third party websites, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate.
Personal data we collect about you
The personal data we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website. We will collect and use the following personal data about you:
We collect and use this personal data for the purposes described in the section ‘How and why we use your personal data’ below.
How your personal data is collected
We collect personal data from you:
How and why we use your personal data
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, e.g.:
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your personal data, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We will carry out an assessment when relying on legitimate interests, to balance our interests against your own. You can obtain details of this assessment by contacting us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
The table below explains what we use your personal data for and why:
What we use your personal data for |
Our reasons |
Create and manage your account with us |
To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract |
Providing services to you and process and deliver your order |
To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract |
Conducting checks to identify you and verify your identity or to help prevent and detect fraud against you or us |
For our legitimate interests, i.e. to minimise fraud that could be damaging for you and/or us |
To enforce legal rights or defend or undertake legal proceedings |
Depending on the circumstances: —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations —in other cases, for our legitimate interests, i.e. to protect our business, interests and rights |
Customise our website and its content to your particular preferences based on a record of your selected preferences or on your use of our website |
Depending on the circumstances: —your consent as gathered e.g. by our cookies management tool —see ‘Cookies’ below —where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price If you have provided such a consent you may withdraw it at any time (this will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal data in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn) |
Retaining and evaluating information on your recent visits to our website and how you move around different sections of our website for analytics purposes to understand how people use our website so that we can make it more intuitive or to check our website is working as intended |
Depending on the circumstances: —your consent as gathered—see ‘Cookies’ below —where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price If you have provided such a consent you may withdraw it at any time by using our cookies management tool (this will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal data in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn) |
Communications with you not related to marketing, including about changes to our terms or policies or changes to our services or other important notices |
Depending on the circumstances: —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations —in other cases, for our legitimate interests, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price |
Protecting the security of systems and data used to provide the services |
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations We may also use your personal data to ensure the security of systems and data to a standard that goes beyond our legal obligations, and in those cases our reasons are for our legitimate interests, i.e. to protect systems and data and to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us |
Statistical analysis to help us understand our customer base |
For our legitimate interests, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price |
Updating and enhancing customer records |
Depending on the circumstances: —to perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations —where neither of the above apply, for our legitimate interests, e.g. making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers |
Marketing our services to existing and former customers |
Your consent as gathered - See ‘Marketing’ below for further information Otherwise, for our legitimate interests, i.e. to promote our business to existing and former customers |
To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey or feedback |
For performance of a contract with you It is also necessary for our legitimate interests to study how customers use our products, to develop them and grow our business |
Marketing
We will use your personal data to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about our products and services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new products or services.
When we collect your personal data for direct marketing purposes you provide consent to receive direct marketing and we rely on such consent as our lawful basis for the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
We otherwise have a legitimate interest in using your personal data for marketing purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal data’). This means we do not need your consent to send you marketing information. If we change our marketing approach in the future so that consent is needed, we will ask for this separately and clearly.
You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails. If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes for example relating to order confirmations for a product.
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you ask us to provide further products and/or services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations outside the Whyte and Mackay Limited group for marketing purposes.
For more information on your right to object at any time to your personal data being used for marketing purposes, see ‘Your rights’ below.
Who we share your personal data with
We routinely share personal data with:
We only allow those organisations to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We also impose contractual obligations on them to ensure they can only use your personal data to provide services to us and to you.
We or the third parties mentioned above occasionally also share personal data with:
We will get your express consent before we share your personal data with any third party for their own direct marketing purposes.
Collection, Disclosure, Sale, and Sharing of Personal Information California
The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), provides California residents with rights to receive certain disclosures regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of information about them, as well as rights to know/access, delete, correct, and limit the use and disclosure of personal information.
The following chart contains categories of personal data, as listed in the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (the “CCPA”), of personal information we collect, the categories of sources of that information, and whether we disclose, sell, or share that information to service providers or third parties, respectively.
Categories of Personal Information |
Source |
We disclose to |
We sell to |
Identifiers, such as personal information, name, contact information, online identifiers |
You; our social media pages; third party subscription service providers; data brokers |
Service providers Data analytics partners |
Not sold |
Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law, such as sex, age, date of birth, disability, medical conditions and other sensitive data |
You |
Service providers |
Not sold |
Commercial information, such as transaction information, purchase history and financial details |
You |
Service providers |
Not sold |
Internet or network activity information, such as browsing history, online behaviour, and interactions with our and other websites, applications and systems |
You; our analytics and advertising partners |
Advertising partners |
Not sold |
Geolocation data, such as device location and IP location |
You; our analytics and advertising partners |
Service providers Advertising partners |
Not sold |
Audio, electronic, visual and similar information, such as images and audio, video or call recordings created in connection with our business activities |
You |
Service providers |
Not sold |
Inferences drawn from any of the personal information listed above to create a profile or summary about, for example, an individual’s preferences and characteristics |
You; our analytics and advertising partners |
Service providers Advertising partners |
Not sold |
Professional or Employment Related information such as currently employer or job title |
You |
Service providers |
Not sold |
Education Information such as education history and level of education |
You |
Service Providers |
Not sold |
Content of Communication such as phone calls, emails, text messages and photos |
You |
Service Providers |
Not sold |
Entities to whom we disclose information for business purposes are service providers, which are companies that we engage to conduct activities on our behalf. We restrict service providers from using personal information for any purpose that is not related to our engagement.
Entities to whom we “sell” or with whom we “share” information are third parties. Under the CCPA, a business “sells” personal information when it discloses personal information to a company for monetary or other benefit. A business “shares” personal information when it discloses personal information to a company for purposes of cross-context behavioural advertising.
Under California Civil Code section 1798.83, California residents have the right to request and receive information once a year from Whyte and Mackay about the personal information we have disclosed to third parties for their marketing purposes during the previous calendar year, and a description of the categories of personal information shared. To make such a request, please see (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
Who we share your personal data with—further information
If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
How long your personal data will be kept
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
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, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
Following the end of the of the relevant retention period, we will delete or anonymise your personal data. In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see ‘Your Rights’ below for further information.
Transferring your personal data out of the UK and EEA
The EEA, UK and other countries outside the EEA and the UK have differing data protection laws, some of which may provide lower levels of protection of privacy.
It is sometimes necessary for us to transfer your personal data to countries outside the UK and EEA. In those cases we will comply with applicable UK and EEA laws designed to ensure the privacy of your personal data.
As we are based in the UK we will also transfer your personal data from the EEA to the UK.
Under data protection laws, we can only transfer your personal data to a country outside the UK/EEA where:
Where we transfer your personal data outside the UK we do so on the basis of an adequacy regulation or (where this is not available) legally-approved standard data protection clauses recognised or issued further to Article 46(2) of the UK GDPR. In the event we cannot or choose not to continue to rely on either of those mechanisms at any time we will not transfer your personal data outside the UK unless we can do so on the basis of an alternative mechanism or exception provided by UK data protection law and reflected in an update to this policy.
Any changes to the destinations to which we send personal data or in the transfer mechanisms we rely on to transfer personal data internationally will be notified to you in accordance with the section on ‘Changes to this privacy policy’ below.
If you would like further information about data transferred outside the UK/EEA, please contact us.
Transferring your personal data out of the USA
Your information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and by using the services you understand that your information may be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (e.g. computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use our website.
For further information on cookies, our use of cookies, when we will request your consent before placing them and how to disable them, please see our Cookie policy.
Your rights
You generally have the following rights, which you can usually exercise free of charge:
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they do and do not apply, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below). You can also refer to the guidance from the UK’s Information Commissioner on your rights under the UK GDPR.
If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please contact us—see below: ‘How to contact us’. When contacting us please:
Keeping your personal data secure
We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine need to access it.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
How to complain
Please contact us if you have any queries or concerns about our use of your personal data (see below ‘How to contact us’). We hope we will be able to resolve any issues you may have.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner in the UK.
The UK’s Information Commissioner may be contacted using the details at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or by telephone: 0303 123 1113.
See a list of EEA data protection supervisory authorities and their contact details.
Changes to this privacy policy
We may change this privacy policy from time to time—when we make significant changes we will take steps to inform you.
How to contact us
You can contact us by email or post if you have any questions about this privacy policy, the information we hold about you, to exercise a right under data protection law, or to make a complaint.
Our contact details are:
Whyte and Mackay Ltd, 319 St Vincent Street, Glasgow, G2 5RG, Scotland, United Kingdom