Privacy Notice

It would be helpful to start by explaining some key terms used in this notice:

We, us, our: World of Books Limited, World of Books Group Ltd and the World of Books - Sell Your Books brand.

Our World of Books Limited company registration number is 06437594, and our World of Books Group Ltd company registration number is 07464694, our registered office is at Mulberry House, Woods Way, Goring-By-Sea, West Sussex, BN12 4QY, United Kingdom.

The Shopiago brand is not included within the scope of this notice.

Personal data: Any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.

Special category personal data: Personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership Genetic and biometric data (when processed to uniquely identify an individual) Data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation.

Data subject: The individual who the personal data relates to.

Websites: World of Books Limited - www.worldofbooks.com
World of Books - Sell Your Books - www.worldofbooks.com

Apps: The World of Books - Sell Your Books app that you may use when using the services.

The personal data we collect about you depends on the particular products and services we provide to you. We will collect and use the following personal data about you:

• your name and contact information, including email address and telephone number
• location data, if you choose to give this to us
• your billing information, transaction information and some payment card information
• your contact history, purchase history and saved items
• information from accounts you link to us, eg Facebook
• Information about how you use our website, IT, communication and other systems
• your responses to surveys, competitions and promotions
  
  

We collect and use this personal data for the purposes described in the section ‘How and why we use your personal data’ below. If you do not provide personal data we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing products and services to you.

We collect most of this personal data directly from you— in person, by telephone, text or email and/or via our Websites and Apps. However, we may also collect information:

• from publicly accessible sources, eg Companies House or social media sites;
• from a third party with your consent,
• from cookies on our Websites—for more information on our use of cookies, please see our cookie policies for World of Books and World of Books - Sell Your Books.
• from our reception logs;

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, eg:

• where you have given consent;
• to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
• for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
  
  

or.

• for our legitimate interests or those of a third party.
  
  

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.

The table below explains what we use your personal data for and why.

What we use your personal data for	Our reasons
Providing products and services to you	To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
Preventing and detecting fraud against you or us	For our legitimate interest, ie 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, ie to protect our business, interests and rights
Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies	To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Ensuring business policies are adhered to, eg policies covering security and internet use	For our legitimate interests, ie to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service to you
Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control	For our legitimate interests , ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you
Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information	Depending on the circumstances: —for our legitimate interests, ie to protect trade secrets and other commercially valuable information; —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, eg in relation to our financial performance, customer base, product range or other efficiency measures	For our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you
Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems	Depending on the circumstances: —for our legitimate interests, ie to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us; —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Protecting the security of systems and data used to provide our products and 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, ie to protect systems and data and to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us
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; —for our legitimate interests, eg making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing orders and new products
Statutory returns	To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Marketing our products and services to: —existing and former customers; —third parties who have previously expressed an interest in our products and services;	For our legitimate interests, ie to promote our products and services to potential, existing and former customers or where we have obtained your express consent.
External audits and quality checks, eg for ISO and B Corp and the audit of our accounts	Depending on the circumstances: —for our legitimate interests, ie to maintain our accreditations so we can demonstrate we operate at the highest standards; —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
To share your personal data with members of our group and third parties that will or may take control or ownership of some or all of our business (and professional advisors acting on our or their behalf) in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency. In such cases information will be anonymised where possible and only shared where necessary	Depending on the circumstances: —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations; —in other cases, for our legitimate interests, ie to protect, realise or grow the value in our business and assets

Purpose	Processing operation	Lawless basis relied on under the UK GDPR and EU GDPR	Relevant categories of personal data
Communications with you not related to marketing, including about changes to our terms or policies or changes to the products or other important notices (other than those addressed above)	Addressing and sending communications to you as required by data protection laws, ie: —the UK GDPR or Data Protection Act 2018;	Processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject (Article 6(1)(c))	—your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number; —your account details (username)
Communications with you not related to marketing, including about changes to our terms or policies or changes to the products or other important notices (other than those addressed above)	Addressing and sending communications to you about changes to our terms or policies or changes to the products or other important notices	Our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)), which is to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you	—your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number —your account details (username)
Processing your order or returns and refunds	If you have purchased from World of Books, preparing and sending your order to you in accordance with our contract with you. If you have used World of Books - Sell Your Books’ services, receiving the goods and matching them to your trade	Processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)) so that we can send you products that you have purchased from World of Books or identify the goods that you have sent us as part of a trade with World of Books - Sell Your Books.	—your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number; —your account details (username) —your billing information, transaction information and some payment card information
Assisting with customer service enquiries,	Dealing with your enquiries and providing a response	Processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) or is necessary for the performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)) It is in our legitimate interest to process your personal data so that we can provide a response to your enquiry.	—your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number; —your account details (username)
Personalising repeat visits to our Websites	Using your personal data to tailor our Websites in a way that benefits you by providing relevant information based on your previous visits to the Websites, such as wish lists, account details, favourites categories and products you may be interested in.	Processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) or you have given consent to the processing of your personal data (Article 6(1)(a)) It is in our legitimate interest to process your Personal Data so that our Websites are personalised when you visit again because it allows us to provide the best experience for you as a customer	—your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number; —your account details (username) —location data, if you choose to give this to us —your purchase history —information about how you use our website
Marketing communications with you related to other products or services that may be of interest to you	We may contact you via email or post about other products or services that we provide which we think may be of interest to you.	Processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller (Article 6(1)(f)) or the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data (Article 6(1)(a)) It is in our legitimate interest to contact you about other products or services that may be of interest so that we can keep you informed about our latest products and services.	—your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number; —your account details (username) —location data, if you choose to give this to us —your contact history, purchase history and saved items —information from accounts you link to us, eg Facebook —information about how you use our website, IT, communication and other systems

As part of the statistical analysis we undertake (detailed in the “How and why we use your personal data” section above), we may collect special category data of a small number of customers who have volunteered to take part in our customer research activities. The data collected may include racial or ethnic origin data, information on political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health, and information relating to sexual orientation. We rely on the following conditions for processing this special category data: where you have given your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a) UK GDPR and EU GDPR) and where processing relates to personal data that has been manifestly made public (Article 9(2)(e) UK GDPR and EU GDPR).

You do not have to provide us with this information if you do not wish to. If you decide to provide us with this data, but later decide you would like to withdraw this consent, you can do so by speaking directly with a member of the Wob team or by emailing data@worldofbooks.com.

We may 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 and services.

We 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 usually need your consent to send you marketing information although we may seek your consent in some circumstances. Where 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:

• contacting us at marketing@worldofbooks.com for World of Books Limited or sell@worldofbooks.com for World of Books - Sell Your Books;
• using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails; or
• updating your marketing preferences on your account or in our Preference Centre.
  
  

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you ask us to provide further products and services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

We will not share your information for marketing purposes with any of our group companies unless you tell us we can. We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

We routinely share personal data with:

• our group companies;
• third parties we use to help deliver our products and services to you, eg payment service providers, warehouses and delivery companies;
• other third parties we use to help us run our business, eg marketing agencies or website hosts;
• third parties approved by you, eg social media sites you choose to link your account to or third party payment providers;
• our banks;
• 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:
• our and their external auditors, eg in relation to the audit of our or their accounts, in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations;
• our and their professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors), in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations;
• law enforcement agencies, courts, tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
• other parties that have or may acquire control or ownership of our business (and our or their professional advisers) in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency—usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of any of your personal data will be bound by confidentiality obligations.

If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please visit our ‘List of Recipients of Personal Data and International Transfers’ here which provides more detail about the recipient, the processing operation and the categories of your personal data that are shared.

Personal data may be held at our offices and those of our group companies, third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above (see above: ‘Who we share your personal data with’).

Some of these third parties may be based outside the UK. For more information, including on how we safeguard your personal data when this happens, see below: ‘Transferring your personal data out of the UK’.

We will not keep your personal data for longer than we need it for the purpose for which it is used. If you no longer have an account with us or we are no longer providing goods or services to you, we will delete or anonymise your account data after seven years. If you do not have an account or otherwise use our services, we only store your personal information for two years.

Information on how long we store cookies is set out in our Cookie Policy which can be found here for World of Books and here for World of Books - Sell Your Books.

Under the UK GDPR, we will only transfer your personal data to a country or international organisation outside the UK where:

• the UK government has decided the particular country or international organisation ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy decision’);
• there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for data subjects; or
• a specific exception applies under data protection law
  
  

If you would like further information about data transferred outside the UK, please contact us.

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 notice’ below.

More details about the countries outside the UK to which your personal data is transferred are set out in our ‘List of Recipients of Personal Data and International Transfers’ which can be found here.

Under the UK GDPR, you have the following rights:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. You may also do this yourself through the My Account dashboard (if you are a registered customer).
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
  
  

The above rights are not absolute, and in certain circumstances we may refuse to comply with your request to exercise them. In those cases we will inform you of our refusal and our reasons for it. In some circumstances, we may also charge you for our cost of complying with your rights, but only where permitted to do so by law (and where we have given you notice that we will do so).

If you have a complaint about the usage of your information, please contact us using the details in the ‘How to contact us’ section.

We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your personal data will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures 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.

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.

This privacy notice was published on 24 March 2022 and last updated on 01 November 2024.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time—when we do we will inform you via our website or other means of contact such as email.

You can contact us by post, email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you, to exercise a right under data protection law or to make a complaint.

Our contact details are shown below:

Address: World of Books, Mulberry House, Woods Way, Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex, BN12 4QY United Kingdom
Email address: Contact us by email at data@worldofbooks.com for World of Books Limited.
Telephone number: 01903 507 544

If you would like this notice in another format (for example audio, large print, braille) please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ above).