Privacy Notice

Who are we?

We are Ofwal Limited, a private limited company, registered in Ireland under company registration no. 678677, having its registered office at Block 4, First Floor, Swords Business Park, Swords, Co. Dublin, Ireland. We supply books, magazines and newspapers to outlets and online in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

This notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) the data controller is Ofwal Limited (“Eason”)

Our Data Protection Officer; can be contacted by email at [email protected].

What personal information do we collect from you?

You may give us personal data by:

Corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. We ask you to disclose only as much information as is necessary to provide you with our products or to submit a question/suggestion/comment in relation to our website or products.
Filling in forms on www.easons.com or www.easonschoolbooks.com (our website) such as the “contact us” form.
Completing a transaction on www.easons.com or www.easonschoolbooks.com (our websites).
Using our loyalty portal and our reward program card. The type of personal information you may include is your name, address, phone number, email address and date of birth.
When using our customer care help desk at www.easonhelpcentre.com.
Signing in or registering to use our online store. The type of personal information you may include is your name, address, phone number, email address, date of birth (optional), bank details.
Applying to work with us. The type of information you may provide in your CV, a cover letter, your name, address, e-mail address and phone number. CVs should include information relevant to your employment history and education (degrees obtained, places worked, positions held, relevant awards, and so forth). We ask that you do not disclose sensitive personal information (e.g. gender, height, weight, medical information, religion, philosophical or political beliefs, financial data) in your application.

What information about you do we obtain from others?

When you use our goods, engage with us as a franchisee or apply to work with us, we may obtain the following categories of personal data from others:

Recruitment agencies (Candidates);
Credit score companies (Franchisees).

Why do we collect this information?

We collect the information in order to provide you with products, to market our services, to improve our website and to recruit staff.

We will use this information:

Customer:

To set you up as a customer on our systems;
To liaise with you about products that we are sending you;
To deliver information about our products, where you have subscribed to receive same.

Franchisees:

To set you up as a corporate client on our systems;
To deliver information about our products, where you have subscribed to receive same;
To ensure payment of our invoices.

Wholesale Customers:

To set you up as a wholesale customer on our systems;
To deliver information about our products, where you have subscribed to receive same;
To ensure payment of our invoices.

Candidates:

To create a candidate profile for you if you are a prospective employee;
To process employment applications, including by assessing qualifications, verifying information, conducting reference or other employment-related checks, and notifying you of future opportunities that might be of interest to you.

Website users:

To facilitate your use of our online store and loyalty portal;
To administer and improve our website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
As part of our efforts to keep our website safe and secure;
To measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
To make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our website about services that may interest you or them.

The legal bases for the processing of your data are:

That you have provided consent for the processing for one of more specified purposes such as marketing for example when you subscribe to receive our newsletter;
Processing necessary for the performance of a contract which you have entered into with us or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract;
Processing necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject;
Processing necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests which we pursue in providing you with quotes and proposals about our services prior to contract where such interests are not overridden by your interests or fundamental rights or freedoms which require the protection of your information.

Who do we share this information with?

We may share your personal data with our selected business associates/suppliers and contractors to provide you with our services. For example, these business partners may include our web hosting provider and our IT service providers.

In addition, we may disclose your personal information to third parties:
In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets;
If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case information held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets;
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your information in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect our rights, property, or safety, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
As part of a project with other companies in the Eason Group.

Disclosure of your information

We may also share your information with selected third parties including:

Business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you.

How long do we keep your information?

The time periods for which we retain your information depends on the type of information and the purposes for which we use it. We will keep your information for no longer than is required or permitted.

What are your rights with respect to you personal data?

You have the following rights:

The right to access the personal data we hold about you.
The right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data about you without undue delay.
The right to have us erase any personal data we hold about you in circumstances such as where it is no longer necessary for us to hold the personal data or, in some circumstances, if you have withdrawn your consent to the processing.
The right to object to us processing personal data about you such as processing for profiling or direct marketing.
The right to ask us to provide your personal data to you in a portable format or, where technically feasible, for us to port that personal data to another provider provided it does not result in a disclosure of personal data relating to other people.
The right to request a restriction of the processing of your personal data.

Where our processing of your personal data is based on your consent to that processing, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time but any processing that we have carried out before you withdrew your consent remains lawful.

You may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority with respect to our processing of your personal data. The local Supervisory Authority in Ireland is the Data Protection Commission. The website is www.dataprotection.ie.

Security Statement

We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of the information that you provide to Eason. We have put in place multiple technical and physical security measures in place to prevent any loss of security to your information. The collection, transmission and storage of information can never be guaranteed to be completely secure, however, we have taken steps to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your information.

Our website is fully compliant with the requirements set out in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards version 2.0 (PCI DSS 2.0). We do not hold special category or sensitive payment data when users interact with our site.

Secure Sockets Layer, or 'SSL', is the security technology used by Eason for encrypting a link between a web server and a browser. All data passed between our web server and your browser remains completely private and secure. For example, using SSL, your computer and ours agree to transpose whatever we are sending into an unintelligible hash of characters.

Through using SSL, we can ensure that your valuable personal data is fully encrypted when you interact with our site. Without this information on your computer or ours, no one can understand our encrypted communication.

Our SSL certificates are issued by a leading certificate authority, Symantec. Symantec TM is the world’s leading provider of SSL certificates. Symantec helped lead the development of Extended Validation (EV) and has issued more EV SSL certificates than any other Certificate Authority.

Marketing

Our marketing activities, through Eason newsletters, social, loyalty communications, contain genuine, valid money saving offers and promotions that may be active on Eason for a defined period of time. Spam, or content of a poor quality is never distributed to our subscribers. By notifying you of these offers, we always aim to do so in a non-intrusive, high quality manner.

Consent

To subscribe to the direct marketing from Eason, you must explicitly consent to do by either populating our sign up form on our website, or by updating your subscription preferences in either your Eason Account Summary or while completing a purchase at the Eason checkout. You will never receive our marketing communications unless you have explicitly provided your consent to Eason. When you provide your explicit consent to subscribe to our marketing, we will use your details to send you updates on Eason's offers, products and services which we identify as being relevant to you.

Unsubscribe

To unsubscribe from the Eason email database, simply click on the unsubscribe link located at the bottom of every marketing email or update your preferences in your Eason account. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] indicating 'Unsubscribe' in the subject line with your request to unsubscribe and we will action this for you within 1 business day. We respect your right to not receive our marketing even after consent and subscription, and we have made unsubscribing as easy as possible for you. Should you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to drop us a line at [email protected]

What will happen if we change our privacy notice?

This notice may change from time to time, and any changes will be posted on our website and will be effective when posted. Please review this notice each time you use our website or our services.

Website: Privacy & Data Use

In order to provide you with a smooth, efficient and personalised experience, we collect some information relating to your usage of our site. This allows us to provide services and features that most likely meet your needs, and to customise our service to make your experience easier and quicker. Please note, the following cookie policy applies to Easons.com and all subdomains, including secure.easons.com (used for your Shopping Basket).

Cookies

Cookies are tiny text files stored on your computer when you visit certain web pages. At Easons.com we use cookies to keep track of what you have in your basket, and to remember you when you return to our site.

Please note that cookies can't harm your computer. We don't store personally identifiable information such as credit card details in cookies we create, but we do use encrypted information gathered from them to help improve your experience of the site.

Please see our Cookie Policy HERE for full details and how to manage cookies.

How can you contact us?

Our Data Protection Officer; Ray Walsh can be contacted by email at [email protected].

3rd Parties

We have set out below a list of third parties with whom your data may be shared with during normal business practices (eg. processing orders, payments processed by Sageby, postal address provided to An Post etc. Eason staff may also have their data processed by HR related or insurance companies as listed below. Email address or personal information will not be shared with 3rd parties for them to use for their own marketing purposes.

Third party name	Description of services provided
Other companies in the Eason Group (Ofwal Limited, Eason Ltd, Eason Holdings plc and Eason & Son (NI) Ltd)	In order to operate our organisation effectively
Kelleher	Insurance brokers
CPL and Hayes	Recruitment agencies
RSA	Insurance Products
Invesco	Pensions & Investments
Simply Personnel	Human Resources Software
An Post	Postal service
PWC	Auditor services
Microsoft Outlook	Email services
Learnupon	Cloud based management software
Easycoms	Internal Communications Tool
Edays	Human Resource Management Software
Micropay	HR software
Sage	Payroll software
Securitas	Security services
Manguard	Security services
Thorntons	Waste management services
An Garda Siochana	Law Enforcement
Savvy	Loyalty platform supplier
Microsoft AX	ERP System
ERP	Ecommerce database
Tibus (Belfast)	Website Hosting provider
Paypal	Online payment provider
Gardners UK	3^rd Party Logistics
Snipp	Loyalty card database
Wordpress	Marketing services
Apparatus	Website Development Partner
Realex	Credit card services
Desk.com	Service desk software
Salesforce	Service desk software
Barclays UK	Banking
IWACS	Warehouse management system
Masterlink	3^rd Party Logistics
Episerver	eCommerce CMS & Email platform
Microsoft azure	Cloud provider
Microsoft exchange	Email server