Individual customers privacy policy
We are committed to protecting the personal information of all of our users. We use secure systems to hold any information. We do not share personal information with third parties except to allow us to take orders and deliver guidebooks and other products and services to our users.
In handling any personal information, Cicerone acts as a data controller. We can be contacted at our offices at Juniper House, Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road, Kendal, Cumbria, LA9 7RL or by Contact Form here. Cicerone is incorporated in England, company number 03690943.
Order processing
To enable us to meet our contractual commitments to buyers, we hold personal information on addresses, contact details including email and phone numbers, and books ordered. We work with our distribution and logistics partner, BookSource, to process and despatch all orders and hold financial records of sales. All information we transmit to BookSource is encrypted. See details on BookSource below – their privacy policy is available on their website.
About BookSource
In common with many other publishers, Cicerone works very closely with a distributor, in our case BookSource who are based in Glasgow. BookSource hold our stock and picks, packs and ship our orders. They also take payment from phone orders (but not website orders which Cicerone does directly with secure payment providers, see below). In addition, they collect and report to us all our sales, royalty and inventory information. BookSource are an extension of our own service and run to the same standards, especially in the area of privacy.
Addresses
We work with a postcode look up service to assist purchasers to fill in address details. This is provided by PCA Predict – whose privacy policy can be found here.
Payments
To take payment the Cicerone website requests credit or debit card or Paypal/wallet type payment information. Cicerone never see this information, card or other details which are securely encrypted and passed directly to our payment providers. We work with the following “payment gateways” to ensure secure payments. These are:
PayPal – their privacy policy can be found here
Stripe – their privacy policy can be found here
Your account at Cicerone
Most online purchases are made through an account at Cicerone which allows you to manage your personal details and select any marketing preferences. Website users buying guides for the first time are invited to open an account when making a purchase. Users with an account already are invited to open their account to smooth the buying process.
Alternatively, through our Guest Checkout facility, you may buy guides from Cicerone without opening an account. However, if you open an account, Cicerone will store your purchase history of guidebooks, eBooks and other products. You can also register guidebooks acquired at other retailers whether online or shops, in the UK or elsewhere.
Having an account allows you to access other Cicerone services, such as the ability to download GPX files, to subscribe for updates to your guides and other services we plan to add in the future. It is also integral to buying eBooks from Cicerone as we need to retain information on guides bought to enable you to download them. We are unable to provide these extra services if you do not have an account.
Accordingly having an account with Cicerone is a contractual condition of accessing these services, and we may contact you from time to time about the account and our services.
Marketing information
Cicerone holds name and address information to mail catalogues and other information about guidebooks, and email addresses to send email newsletters and similar communications on a regular basis. This information is held secure at Cicerone.
This information is held only so that we may communicate information about our guidebooks and other products. It is held on the basis of your consent, so you have the right to be removed from databases at any time, most simply done by unsubscribing.
We use a Newsletter service to compose and distribute newsletters. Newsletter sign ups are recorded in our systems and passed to this service, unsubscribes are recorded. The service allows us to understand how our newsletters are used.
When we mail catalogues we pass name and address information to our mailing house, Cumbria Mailing. They use this information to create mailing forms. They also perform tests on the information to eliminate duplicate information, to remove letters from a mailing where occupants are known to have died, addresses do not actually exist and other checks to ensure more accurate mailings. This information allows us to keep our records up to date.
Communications with users
Cicerone has a healthy dialogue with users of our guidebooks and other services. We welcome this as it helps us improve our guides and the parts of the world we cover. Often this will include update information about changes that have taken place since the guide was published. It is important to confirm such update information before publishing it so we share it with our authors and, with their agreement, we post the information online.
We regard users to have consented to the use of the information provided, in update notes and in due course in our guides, and also to have consented to us passing contact details to our authors. Although it will usually be Cicerone responding to users, sometimes the details can only be resolved by direct communication with authors, where the author has agreed to do this.
Please note that we do not include details of correspondents in update notes or guides. We are happy to do so if you wish, but only with your express consent.
From time to time we may contact selected consumers to research whether our guides are matching your needs. This is generally by email, and may be on a regional basis.
Social media
To help us communicate with users, Cicerone has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other social media platforms. All these services have their own privacy policies.
Cicerone does not take any personal information from users of these social media services. We may communicate directly with users of these services through the mechanisms they make available. Our use of them conforms to any and all regulations.
Website privacy and cookies
Our website is an important part of our communication with our users and we seek to improve it continually through improvements to its design and content. Please see the general website use agreement.
To improve our site we employ standard web evaluation tools. The main tool is Google Analytics. This allows us to understand where visitors come from regionally and geographically and how visitors have come to our site, their movements through it and the points where they have left the site. This uses cookies to collect and report visitor numbers and usage. In addition we use a service named Hotjar to help us ensure that the website is presenting information as well as possible. These companies privacy policies are on their websites.
Where Cicerone deploys Apps to deliver guidebook content, we also use similar tools to help us understand how the App is used and how we can make it better.
Cicerone’s web services are provided entirely from servers based in the European Economic Area. No personal information is passed outside the European Economic Area.
Privacy Rights
You have important rights in relation to any personal information held about you. You can exercise these rights either through managing your account online, unsubscribing or contacting Cicerone using the Contact form here. These rights are:
- The right to be informed that Cicerone holds the personal information and what we do with it – ie this Privacy Policy.
- The right to review the information
- The right to ensure that your information is corrected where it is not right
- The right to restrict usage and the right to object to any information we hold
- The right to withdraw consent (where consent is the basis of holding the information) and the right for the data to be erased.
- In addition, you have the right not to be subject to automated decision making and profiling without notice and, in most cases, your consent. Cicerone does not do this.
These rights are subject to Cicerone’s legal and contractual duties outlined above.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or would like anything clarified, please contact Cicerone here.