Privacy Policy

Privacy policy

Type of website: Ecommerce
Effective date: 28th day of February, 2025

L.B. Benson (the “Site”) is owned and operated by Lauren Benson dba Emerald Moon Press. Lauren Benson is the data controller. After reviewing this policy, if you have additional questions, want more information about our privacy practices, or would like to make a complaint, please contact L.B. by e-mail at lbbensonauthor@gmail.com.

Contact information:

Emerald Moon Press

PO Box 212

Driftwood, TX 78619

lbbensonauthor@gmail.com

The Site may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy was last updated February 28, 2025.

PURPOSE:

This Privacy Policy describes how L.B. Benson (the “Site” or “we”) collects, uses, and discloses your Personal Information when you visit or make a purchase from the Site.

This Privacy Policy applies in addition to the terms and conditions of our Site.

CONSENT

By using our Site users agree that they consent to the conditions set out in this Privacy Policy.

When the legal basis for us processing your personal data is that you have provided your consent to that processing, you may withdraw your consent at any time. If you withdraw your consent, it will not make processing completed before you withdrew your consent unlawful.

You can withdraw your consent by by contacting us via email, contact form, or by unsubscribing from our emails.

LEGAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING

We collect and process personal data about users in the EU only when we have a legal basis for doing so under Article 6 of the GDPR.

We rely on the following legal basis to collect and process the personal data of users:

  • Users have provided their consent to the processing of their data for one or more specific purposes.

SECTION 1: COLLECTING PERSONAL INFORMATION

When you visit the Site, we collect certain information about your device, your interaction with the Site, and information necessary to process your purchases. We may also collect additional information if you contact us for customer support. In this Privacy Policy, we refer to any information about an identifiable individual (including the information below) as “Personal Information”.

Personal Data We Collect

We only collect data that helps us achieve the purpose set out in this Privacy Policy. We will not collect any additional data beyond the data listed below without notifying you first.

See the list below for more information about what Personal Information we collect and why.

Device Information:

  • Purpose of collection: to load the Site accurately for you, and to perform analytics on Site usage to optimize our Site.
  • Source of collection: Collected automatically when you access our Site using cookies, log files, web beacons, tags, or pixels.
  • Disclosure for a business purpose: shared with our shop processor, PayPal via WooCommerce, our shipping providers, and if you elect to sign up for our newsletter, our newsletter service provider, MailChimp.
  • Personal Information collected: version of web browser, IP address, location and time zone, cookie information, clicked links, visited pages, abandoned carts/checkouts, and other activities that describe how you interact with the Site 

Order Information:

  • Purpose of collection: to provide products or services to you to fulfill our contract, to process your payment information, arrange for shipping, and provide you with invoices and/or order confirmations, communicate with you, screen our orders for potential risk or fraud, and when in line with the preferences you have shared with us, provide you with information or advertising relating to our products or services.
  • Source of collection: collected from you.
  • Disclosure for a business purpose: shared with our shop processor, WooCommerce via PayPal, our shipping providers, and if you elect to sign up for our newsletter, our newsletter service provider, MailChimp.
  • Personal Information collected: name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers, debit cards, Venmo or PayPal emails, etc.), email address, and phone number.

Customer Support Information:

  • Purpose of collection: to aid in resolving any customer inquiries or issues in a timely manner, communicate updates about previous orders, and when in line with the preferences you have shared with us, update you on newly released products.
  • Source of collection: collected from you.
  • Disclosure for a business purpose: when in line with the preferences you have shared with us, shared with our newsletter service provider, MailChimp.

SECTION 2: SHARING PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will not sell or share your data with other third parties, except to help us provide services and fulfill our contracts with you, and in the following cases :

Links to other websites

If you follow hyperlinks from our Site to another Site, please note that we are not responsible for and have no control over their privacy policies and practices.

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, 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 such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

SECTION 3: USING PERSONAL INFORMATION

We currently only process and ship orders within the United States. This section will be updated should electronic items, like ebooks, become available worldwide. We use your personal Information to provide our services to you, which includes: offering products for sale, processing payments, shipping and fulfillment of your order, and keeping you up to date on new products, services, and offers.

LAWFUL BASIS

Pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), if you are a resident of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), we process your personal information under the following lawful bases:

  • Your consent;
  • The performance of the contract between you and the Site;
  • Compliance with our legal obligations;
  • To protect your vital interests;
  • To perform a task carried out in the public interest;
  • For our legitimate interests, which do not override your fundamental rights and freedoms.

SECTION 4: RETENTION OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

When you place an order through the Site, we will retain your Personal Information for our records unless and until you ask us to erase this information. For more information on your right of erasure, please see the ‘Your Rights’ section below.

AUTOMATIC DECISION MAKING

If you are a resident of the EEA, you have the right to object to processing based solely on automated decision-making (which includes profiling), when that decision-making has a legal effect on you or otherwise significantly affects you.

We DO NOT engage in fully automated decision-making that has a legal or otherwise significant effect using customer data.

Our processor WooCommerce uses limited automated decision-making to prevent fraud that does not have a legal or otherwise significant effect on you.

Services that include elements of automated decision-making include:

  • Temporary blacklist of IP addresses associated with repeated failed transactions. This blacklist persists for a small number of hours.
  • Temporary blacklist of credit cards associated with blacklisted IP addresses. This blacklist persists for a small number of days.

STORAGE DURATION

User data will be stored until the purpose the data was collected for has been achieved.

You will be notified if your data is kept for longer than this period.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR DATA

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

While we take all reasonable precautions to ensure that user data is secure and that users are protected, there always remains the risk of harm. The Internet as a whole can be insecure at times and therefore we are unable to guarantee the security of user data beyond what is reasonably practical.

SECTION 5: YOUR RIGHTS

GDPR

For users in the European Union, we adhere to the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”). For users in the United Kingdom, we adhere to the GDPR as enshrined in the Data Protection Act 2018.

We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer as we do not fall within the categories of controllers and processors required to appoint a Data Protection Officer under Article 37 of the GDPR.

If you are a resident of the EEA, you have the right to access the Personal Information we hold about you, to port it to a new service, and to ask that your Personal Information be corrected, updated, or erased. If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us through the contact information listed at the beginning of this policy. 

Your Personal Information will be initially processed in Ireland and then will be transferred outside of Europe for storage and further processing, including to Canada and the United States. For more information on how data transfers comply with the GDPR, see Shopify’s GDPR Whitepaper: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/privacy/GDPR.

You can view more details about your GDPR rights in our GDPR Privacy Policy.

CCPA

If you are a resident of California, you have the right to access the Personal Information we hold about you (also known as the ‘Right to Know’), to port it to a new service, and to ask that your Personal Information be corrected, updated, or erased. If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us through the contact information above. 

You can view more details about your CCPA rights in our CCPA Privacy Policy.

Children

We do not knowingly collect or use personal data from children under 16 years of age. If we learn that we have collected personal data from a child under 16 years of age, the personal data will be deleted as soon as possible. If a child under 16 years of age has provided us with personal data their parent or guardian may contact our privacy officer.

Access, Modify, Delete, or Challenge the Data Collected

If you would like to know if we have collected your personal data, how we have used your personal data, if we have disclosed your personal data and to who we disclosed your personal data, if you would like your data to be deleted or modified in any way, or if you would like to exercise any of your other rights under this privacy policy and applicable laws & regulations, please contact lbbensonauthor@gmail.com.

Opt-Out of Data Collection, Use or Disclosure

In addition to the method(s) described in the above section Access, Modify, Delete, or Challenge the Data Collected, we provide the following specific opt-out methods for the forms of collection, use, or disclosure of your personal data specified below:

  • You can opt-out of the use of your personal data for marketing emails. You can opt-out by clicking “unsubscribe” on the bottom of any marketing email.

SECTION 6: COOKIES

A cookie is a small amount of information that’s downloaded to your computer or device when you visit our Site. Its purpose is to collect data relating to the user’s browsing habits. We use a number of different cookies, including functional, performance, advertising, and social media or content cookies.

Cookies make your browsing experience better by allowing the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login and region selection). This means you don’t have to re-enter this information each time you return to the site or browse from one page to another. Cookies also provide information on how people use the website, for instance whether it’s their first time visiting or if they are a frequent visitor.

We use the following types of cookies on our Site:

Analytical cookies: Analytical cookies allow us to improve the design and functionality of our Site by collecting data on how you access our Site, for example data on the content you access, how long you stay on our Site, etc; and 

Third-Party Cookies: Third-party cookies may be created by a website other than ours. You can read about WooCommerce’s privacy policy and use of cookies here: https://woocommerce.com/document/privacy-payments/#how-payment-providers-use-data and here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-cookies/.

HOW WE USE COOKIES

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added, and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. 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 analyze data about webpage traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

COOKIES NECESSARY FOR THE FUNCTIONING OF THE STORE (and their duration) can be found here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-cookies/.

REPORTING & ANALYTICS:

The length of time that a cookie remains on your computer or mobile device depends on whether it is a “persistent” or “session” cookie. Session cookies last until you stop browsing and persistent cookies last until they expire or are deleted. Most of the cookies we use are persistent and will expire between 30 minutes and two years from the date they are downloaded to your device.

You can control and manage cookies in various ways. Please keep in mind that removing or blocking cookies can negatively impact your user experience and parts of our website may no longer be fully accessible.

Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can choose whether or not to accept cookies through your browser controls, often found in your browser’s “Tools” or “Preferences” menu. For more information on how to modify your browser settings or how to block, manage or filter cookies can be found in your browser’s help file or through such sites as: www.allaboutcookies.org.

Additionally, please note that blocking cookies may not completely prevent how we share information with third parties such as our advertising partners. To exercise your rights or opt-out of certain uses of your information by these parties, please follow the instructions in the “Behavioral Advertising” section above.

DO NOT TRACK

Do Not Track (“DNT”) is a privacy preference that you can set in certain web browsers. However, there is not yet a consistent industry understanding of how websites should respond to DNT signals. We do not track the users of our Site over time and across third party websites and therefore do not respond to browser-initiated DNT signals.

SECTION 8: CHANGES

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons.

When we amend this Privacy Policy we will update the “Effective Date” at the top of this Privacy Policy. We recommend that our users periodically review our Privacy Policy to ensure that they are notified of any updates.

If necessary, we may notify users by email of changes to this Privacy Policy.

SECTION 9: COMPLAINTS

As noted above, if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail or by mail using the details provided under “Contact” above.

If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you have the right to lodge your complaint with the relevant data protection authority.

Last updated: February 28, 2025