Privacy policy

June 2023

Important: Yarn is currently in development. All personal data held will be processed securely and responsibly at all stages of development. However, elements of the privacy policy may not apply in full at various stages. For any enquiries concerning which elements of the policy currently apply please contact legal@yarn.family

This website is operated by Yarn Media Ltd whose business address is 29a High Street, West Wickham, Kent, BR4 0LP.

Yarn is committed to protecting and preserving the privacy of our visitors when visiting our site or communicating electronically with us. In particular we strive to protect the privacy of our younger visitors.

This policy sets out how we process any personal data we collect from you or that you provide to us through our website. We confirm that we will keep your information secure and that we will comply fully with all applicable UK Data Protection legislation and regulations (in particular UK GDPR). Please read the following carefully to understand what happens to personal data that you choose to provide to us, or that we collect from you when you visit this site. By visiting our website you accept and consent to the practices described in this policy.

Types of information we may collect from you

We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information about individuals who visit and use our website.

Information you supply to us. You may supply us with information about you by filling in forms on our website. This includes information you provide when you submit an enquiry through our online enquiry form, or if you contact us using the email address provided online. Additionally you will supply us with information if you sign up to receive email updates or newsletters about Yarn. Finally, you may provide us with information when you purchase or renew a Yarn product. The information you give us may include your name, address, email address and credit/debit card details. Through signing up to newsletters, or through the use of Yarn to generate stories, you may also choose to provide the name of your child.

Information our website automatically collects about you. With regard to each of your visits to our website we may automatically collect information including the following:

  • technical information, including a truncated and anonymised version of your Internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, operating system and platform;

  • information about your visit, including terms used to produce yarns (and ongoing text or voice input), what (sub)pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got to the site (including date and time); page response times, length of visit, what you click on, documents downloaded and download errors. We also collect and store the content you create, namely the images, text and audio produced in response to your text or voice input.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website and to store information about your stories. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website. For example, it allows us to continue your yarn as you give new inputs.

How we may use the information we collect

We use the information in the following ways:

Information you supply to us. We will use this information:

  • where requested to provide you with a newsletter, emails or information about Yarn

  • to reply to enquiries, requests or complaints made by email or through the online contact form

  • to provide you with services requested and/or paid for

The legal basis for the collection of personal information such as name and email addresses that you provide to us is consent. When you submit an enquiry or make a request to receive emails you consent to us collecting this information. Where practicable you will be asked to confirm that you are over thirteen years of age.

The legal basis for the collection of financial information is performance of a contract. We are required to collect this information in order to process payment for Yarn’s services. 

Information we automatically collect. We will use this information:

  • to administer our site including troubleshooting and statistical purposes;

  • to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;

  • security and debugging as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure.

This information is collected anonymously and is not linked to information that identifies you as an individual.

Disclosure and handling of your information

Any information you provide to us will either be emailed directly to us or may be stored on secure servers located in the UK or the EU. Trusted third party providers may have access to data to enable the running and management of the website, specifically for the following purposes:

  • Hosting and database

  • Authentication

  • Transactional emails

  • Transcription of your spoken inputs

  • Processing payments

To preserve your privacy, your inputs (spoken or written) used to produce stories are sent anonymously to our AI providers and with no accompanying data (unless you / your child include personal details in the input itself). All our third party providers that handle your personal data are based in the UK or EU and are subject to the same regulations as Yarn. They all meet high data protection and security standards and are bound by contract to keep any information they process on our behalf confidential. Any data that may be collected through this website that third party providers process, is kept secure and only processed in the manner instructed. Third party providers cannot access, provide, rectify or delete any data that they store on our behalf without permission.

Yarn takes its obligation to ensure that services provided through the use of AI are ethical and subject to robust controls. External AI facilitators receive the minimum amount of data required to carry out their functions, and receive no personal data or information from any of Yarn’s customers.

Yarn Media Ltd is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

We do not rent or sell your personal information to anyone. We do not share your personal information with anyone outside of Yarn except for the above trusted third parties for the sole purpose of running our website. 

We will use all reasonable efforts to ensure that your personal data is not disclosed to regional/national institutions and authorities, unless required by law or other regulations. This may include the sharing of information where we have a concern around the safety or wellbeing of a child using Yarn’s services.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access. All financial transactions will be secured by an SSL certificate, which encrypts data passed between your computer and the server.

Personal information will be held for as long as you have a subscription to Yarn, or are a signatory to the newsletter, as appropriate. We will delete data held for the purposes of emailing you information upon you withdrawing your consent (e.g. by unsubscribing). On ending a subscription to Yarn we may retain such personal data as is required to identify you if you choose to resubscribe in the future. You may ask us not to retain this information by emailing legal@yarn.family. General email traffic will be deleted upon any enquiry or request being concluded. By default any information not described above will be deleted after seven years. 

Third party links

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the third party websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Your rights – access to your personal data

You have the right to ensure that your personal data is being processed lawfully (‘Subject Access Right’). Your subject access right can be exercised in accordance with data protection laws and regulations. Any subject access request must be made in writing to legal@yarn.family. We will provide your personal data to you within the statutory time frames. To enable us to trace any of your personal data that we may be holding, we may need to request further information from you. If you have a complaint about how we have used your information, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO’s website (https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/) contains more detail about your data-related rights.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

Contact

Questions, comments, complaints and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to legal@yarn.family