Privacy Policy

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (“Society of Antiquaries”, “the Society”, “we,” “us” or “our”) operates this website (the “Site”) from which users can gather information concerning news and services provided by the Society. This Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) covers our treatment of personally identifiable information (personal data) that we collect when you access the Site and when you use the our Services. This forms a part of the broader Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Data Protection Policy (“Data Protection Policy“).

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland knows that you care how information about you is used and shared and we appreciate your trust in us to do that lawfully, carefully and sensibly. The Society complies with the eight basic Data Protection Principles as laid out by the Information Commissioners Office. By visiting this website you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

Controllers of Personal Information
Any personal information provided to or to be gathered by this website is controlled primarily by the office of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, National Museums Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF.

What Personal Information About Customers Does the Society Gather?
The information we learn from customers helps us personalise and continually improve your experience at this Site. We use this information to improve this Site, prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our website and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf.

Here are the types of information we gather

Automatic Information: we receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many websites, we use “cookies” and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses this Site. A number of companies offer utilities designed to help you visit websites anonymously. Although we will not be able to provide you with a personalised experience at this Site if we cannot recognise you, we want you to be aware that these tools exist.

Information from Other Sources: we might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information.

What About Cookies?
Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser to enable our systems to recognise your browser and to provide various features.

The Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies altogether. Additionally, you can disable or delete similar data used by browser add-ons, such as Flash cookies, by changing the add-on’s settings or visiting the website of its manufacturer. However, because cookies allow you to take advantage of some of our website’s essential features, we recommend that you leave them turned on.

Does the Society share the Information it receives?
Information about our customers is an important part of our business and we are not in the business of selling it to others. This website shares customer information only as described below:

Third Party Service Providers: We may employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mail, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links), processing credit card payments and providing customer service. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. Further, they must process the personal information in accordance with this Privacy Notice and as permitted by the UK’s Data Protection Act.

Protection of the Society and Others: We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property or safety of this website, our users or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction. Obviously, however, this does not include selling, renting, sharing or otherwise disclosing personally identifiable information from customers for commercial purposes in a way that is contrary to the commitments made in this Privacy Notice.

With your consent: other than as set out above, you will receive notice when information about you might go to third parties and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information.

Whenever we transfer personal information to countries outside of the European Economic Area in the course of sharing information as set out above, we will ensure that the information is transferred in accordance with this Privacy Notice and as permitted by the applicable laws on data protection.

How Secure Is Information About Me?
We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information you input.

We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of personally identifiable customer information. Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.

It is important for you to protect against unauthorised access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer.

What Choices Do I Have?
As discussed above, you can always choose not to provide information, even though it might be needed to take advantage of this website’s features. You may be able to add or update certain information on certain pages. When you update information, we usually keep a copy of the previous version for our records.

Notices and Revisions
If you have any concern about privacy at the Society, please e-mail us a thorough description and we will try to resolve the issue for you.

Our business changes constantly and our Privacy Notice and the Conditions of Use will change also. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, unless you have instructed us not to, but you should check our website frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Notice applies to all information that we have about you and your account. We stand behind the promises we make, however, and will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of customer information collected in the past without the consent of affected customers.

Examples of Information Collected

Examples of the information we collect and analyse include: the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; e-mail address; password; computer and connection information such as browser type and version; operating system and platform; purchase history, which we sometimes aggregate with similar information from other customers to create features such as Top Sellers; the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our website (including date and time); cookie number; products you viewed or searched for; and any phone number used to call our customer service number. We may also use browser data such as cookies, Flash cookies (also known as Flash Local Shared Objects), or similar data on certain parts of our website for fraud prevention and other purposes. During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.