Dusty Strings respects your privacy. Most importantly, this means that we safeguard any personal information you choose to share with us, and we will never sell your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes. For specifics on the types of information we collect, what we do with it, and the choices you can make, read on.
We take your privacy very seriously. We do not store sensitive data, and we only collect personally-identifiable information that you voluntarily provide to us. We take all reasonable precautions to safeguard your personal information.
In the terms of the GDPR, we consider it to be in our legitimate interest to collect and store your name, address, phone number, email address, order history, emails you have sent us, website contact forms you have submitted, and comments and reviews you have posted on our website. We use this information to answer your questions, process your orders, provide ongoing customer service, improve our products and website, and research historical trends.
We do not use this information to profile you, and we will never sell or share it without your permission, except as required by law. We do transmit certain information to our trusted partners in order to fulfill our contracts with you. For example, we may share your name, address, and email address with UPS in order to have them ship your order and email you a tracking number.
We are also concerned with safeguarding your time, freedom, and personal space, which means that outside of responding to your direct requests, we will only contact you if necessary for processing an order, or if we legitimately believe it is in your best interest (for example, if we ever need to do a product recall). We do not buy or sell mailing or contact lists, and we do not engage in cold calling. We will not add you to any of our own marketing lists without your express permission. If you choose to subscribe to our email list, you may unsubscribe at any time.
We use an online shopping cart service (Foxy.io) and gateway (Authorize.net) in order to securely process credit card information without ever seeing it or storing it ourselves. (See below for more details.) We do sometimes collect credit card numbers over the phone, and these are destroyed as soon as the charge is processed. Where it is necessary to store a card number for a short period of time, it is kept in a locked location that is accessible only by a small, known group of employees.
You have the right to ask us what information we are storing about you and how we are using it, and you can request that we correct inaccurate information. You may also request to be “forgotten” (i.e. to have all your personal data deleted), but there may be circumstances (such as the legal requirement to keep tax records for a certain period of time) that prevent us from complying with this request. We have the right to ask you for more information in order to verify your identity before responding to such requests.
Dustystrings.com places some small text files called cookies in the browser directory of your computer's hard drive when you visit our website. A cookie contains a record of your visit, which enables certain website functions like shopping carts to be used, and generally provides a quicker and smoother browsing experience. Dusty Strings does not make use of advertising cookies, or otherwise track your activity for the purposes of marketing. We use some essential cookies to enable our website functionality and to provide a satisfying user experience, and we also use anonymous tracking cookies to collect statistics on how our customers use our website.
If you decide to, you can choose settings in your browser to disallow cookies, although in this case some pages may not display properly and certain website functions, such as shopping, may not be available to you. You can also use your browser to delete cookies after leaving our website.
Persistent cookies have an expiration date sometime in the future, and will be stored in your browser until they expire or you manually clear them. Session cookies are set to expire when you close your browser window, although certain browsers may have settings that interfere with this behavior. You may want to check your browser for settings such as Chrome’s “continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed,” which may result in session cookies being stored indefinitely.
Essential Cookies
Our shopping cart service, Foxy.io, places a cookie on your device in order to enable the shopping cart functionality to work. If you disable cookies, the shopping cart will not remember what items you have added to it. This is a session cookie that does not contain any personally-identifying information. The cookie is called fcsid.
Dusty Strings uses Cloudflare for website speed and security. Cloudflare places a cookie on your device that is used to identify trusted web traffic. This cookie is stored for one year and is called _cfduid.
Statistical Cookies
Dusty Strings uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous data about visitors to our website. The types of data collected include what website you came from, what kind of computer or device you are using, your general geographic location, a portion of your IP address (but not the full address), and a number of other similar things. To do this, Google places cookies on your computer. Certain of these cookies assign a unique client ID to your device and browser, which Google uses to recognize you on repeat visits for statistical analysis purposes. This is a randomly-generated number that cannot in any reasonable way be used to identify you personally. The data collected is used only to create aggregate statistics for analyzing how users interact with our site. This allows us to tailor the site to better serve our customers' interests. For more information on Google Analytics' privacy and security policies, visit this link. For information on opting out of Google Analytics' data collection, visit this link. The cookies Google Analytics sets are called _ga, _gat, and _gid. _ga is stored for two years, and the others are session cookies.
Other Third Party Cookies
We use Google’s reCAPTCHA widget to make sure our website contact forms are not being submitted by spam robots. When you check the “I’m not a robot” box before submitting a form, Google places one or more cookies on your computer, which may be used by Google to personalize ads on its advertising network. To be completely honest, we don’t know exactly what else Google might collect through reCAPTCHA, and their privacy policy is fairly broad. If you do not want these cookies to be set, please contact us by phone or email instead of using our website form.
Dusty Strings may collect and store personal information that you voluntarily provide, such as name, address, phone number and email address. This information is used to provide customer service. We will not share, sell or disclose your personal information to anyone else, except as noted under "Other Disclosures" below. We do not use any of this information for marketing purposes. We do store emails and contact form submissions, and we may take notes on a phone call, but phone calls are not recorded.
Please see the above section on cookies for more information about the spam-control widget we use with our online contact forms.
When you purchase something online, Dusty Strings collects and stores your name, address, phone number, email address, payment type (but not credit card details), and order history. This information is used to process your order and to contact you if we have questions about the order. We may send you newsletters and promotional materials, but only if you have voluntarily chosen to receive them. You can contact us at any time to be removed from our email list. We may also share certain information, such as name and address, with trusted partners in order to do things like process payments or arrange the shipping of items you purchase from us. We will not share, sell or disclose your personal information for any other reason, and we take all reasonable precautions to keep your information secure.
The checkout page of our website is securely hosted by FoxyCart.com, which is a PCI Compliant Level 1 Service Provider. This means that all information entered on the checkout page, including credit card details, is secured at the highest standards, and that Dusty Strings itself does not see or store your credit card number. For more information on FoxyCart's security standards, visit this link. FoxyCart will not contact you except with the express permission of Dusty Strings, and FoxyCart will never share or sell your personal information. In order to process transactions, FoxyCart may log your IP address, set cookies (see “essential cookies” section above), and send your encrypted information to a payment processor. FoxyCart also collects anonymous information, used in an aggregate form to calculate statistics. Foxycart's privacy policy can be accessed here.
We reserve the right to disclose your personal information if required to do so by law, or if we believe that such an action is reasonably necessary to protect the rights or safety of our company, employees, customers or the public.
We may provide links to other websites, and those other sites may have different privacy practices than Dusty Strings does. We assume no responsibility for the policies of linked sites, and encourage you to investigate them for yourself.
Our website is appropriate for visitors of any age. However, Dusty Strings does not intend to collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are under 18, you should not enter information on this website, and should ask a parent or guardian to do so for you.
We will occasionally update this Privacy Statement to reflect company and customer feedback, and we encourage you to check back periodically to stay informed of how Dusty Strings is protecting your information.
If you have any questions or concerns, or if you believe that Dusty Strings has not adhered to this statement, please contact us at handcrafted@dustystrings.com or 3450 16th Ave W, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98119.
Last updated: December 10th, 2021
