Privacy Policy

Welcome to Vuse.  This Privacy Notice explains what we do with your personal information when you are visiting vuse.com/jm/en (“Website”). It describes how we collect, use and process your personal information, and how, in doing so, we comply with our legal obligations to you. Your privacy is important to us, and we are committed to protecting and safeguarding your rights.

For the purpose of applicable data protection legislation British American Tobacco Carreras Limited, S.A., Jamaica Branch, (“we”, “our” or “us”) is the ‘controller’ of your personal information. This means we decide why and how your personal information is used and are responsible for protecting it.  Please refer to the end of this notice for our contact and company information.

We may amend this Privacy Notice from time to time. Please visit this page regularly as we will post any changes here. Where appropriate, we may also notify you of the changes by email. Please see further the section Changes below.

If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of this Privacy Notice, you may have legal rights which we have described below where relevant.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

We collect personal information that you submit to us online through the Website, information that you provide to us when you contact or otherwise communicate with us. This information includes:

• technical information about your visit, including details of your visits to and browsing of the Website, traffic data, information about the device you use to access the Website, your Internet Protocol (IP) address used for connecting the device to the Internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, geolocation, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform (collectively “Device Data”).

We also collect information about how you use our Website through the use of cookies and similar technologies. For more information on how we use cookies, see our Cookie Policy. For details on the legal bases on which we rely to be able to use and process your personal information, see the following section “How do we use your information?”.

HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

The purposes for which we use your personal information and the lawful basis under data protection laws on which we rely to do this are explained below.– to send you advertising and marketing communications by email;

• to use data from your device for analytical and research purposes;
• to use any personal information we receive through the use of non-essential browser cookies on your device (please see our Cookie Policy for more information), and;
• to identify and record when you have received, opened, forwarded or engaged in our electronic communications or on our Website (see our Cookie Policy for more information);
• you can withdraw your consent at any time. Please see the Advertising and Marketing section below for more details.

We may use certain cookies and obtain personal information that is essential to enable you to access and use the Website and to provide the Website in accordance with our terms of use. We will use your personal information to comply with our legal obligations, including where the law requires us to:

• to identify when you contact us;
• to verify the accuracy of the data we hold about you;
• to remember if you have given your consent for cookies to be used on your device;
• to comply with a request from you in relation to the exercise of such rights (for example, where you have asked us not to contact you for advertising and marketing purposes, we will keep a record of this on our suppression lists in order to comply with your request);
• to verify that you are old enough to use the Website (please see Verifying your age for more details), and;
• to respond to or assist public authorities, regulatory bodies, courts or the police or other criminal investigative bodies;

We may use and process your personal information where necessary to pursue the following legitimate interests (whether ours, in connection with our business, or those of a third party), for the following purposes:

• to respond to correspondence you send us and to fulfill requests you make to us;
• processing necessary for us to respond to changing market conditions and the needs of our visitors;
• analyze, evaluate and improve our Website to make your visit and use of the Website more useful and enjoyable (in general, we will use data that is amalgamated from many people so that you are not personally identifiable);
• to ensure that the content of the Website is presented in the most effective way possible for you;
• for processing necessary for us to operate the administrative and technical aspects of our business efficiently and effectively;
• to administer the Website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, testing, statistical purposes;
• to verify the accuracy of the data we hold about you and to create a better understanding of you as a visitor or customer, including linking your personal information with other information or records that we, our group companies or third party data providers hold over you;
• for network and information security so that we can take measures to protect your information against loss or damage, theft or unauthorized access;
• to correspond or communicate with you regarding administrative, legal and business matters;
• for the purposes of corporate restructuring or reorganization or sale of our business or assets;
• for the efficiency, accuracy or other improvements of our databases and systems, for example by combining systems or consolidating the records we have about you;
• to enforce or protect our contractual or other legal rights or to initiate or defend legal proceedings;
• for our internal purposes, such as quality control, Website performance, system administration and to evaluate the use of the Website, so that we can offer you improved services;
• for other general administration, including the management of your queries, complaints or claims, and to send you service messages.

VERIFYING YOUR AGE

As this Website relates to vaping and vaping products, we are legally required to ask visitors to confirm that they are over 18 years of age. You may not use the Website if you are a minor.

AUTOMATED DECISION MAKING

We do not anticipate that any decision that has a legal or significant effect on you will be made using purely automated means, however, we will update this Privacy Notice and inform you if this position changes.

SHARING YOUR INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES

We will share your information primarily to ensure that we provide you with the most exciting and up to date products. We may share your information with any of the following groups:

• any of our group companies, where necessary for administration or audit purposes or for any of the purposes mentioned above, and in accordance with data transfer laws;
• tax, audit or other authorities, where we believe that we are required by law or other regulation to share this data (for example, due to a request from a tax authority or in connection with any anticipated litigation);
• third party service providers who perform functions on our behalf;
• third party market research providers;
• IT providers where we have an appropriate data processing agreement (or similar protections) in place, and;
• if any of our group companies merge with or are acquired by another company or company in the future, we may share your personal information with the new owners of the company or company, as well as with insolvency practitioners or administrators , if they are involved (and provide you with notice of this disclosure).

We may share the non-personal aggregated statistics data about visitors to the Website with third parties for analytics and statistical purposes.

WHERE WE STORE YOUR INFORMATION

Your personal information may be transferred outside of Jamaica to the third parties described in Sharing your information with third parties.

We want to make sure that your personal information is stored and transferred in a way which is secure. We will therefore only transfer data outside of Jamaica where it is compliant with data protection legislation and the means of transfer provides adequate safeguards in relation to your data, for example:

• through an intra-group agreement between BAT entities, which incorporates the current standard contractual clauses adopted by competent bodies for the transfer of personal information to jurisdictions without adequate data protection laws;
• through a data transfer agreement with a third party, which incorporates the current standard contractual clauses adopted by competent bodies for the transfer of personal information to jurisdictions without adequate data protection laws;
• by transferring your data to a country where a competent body has determined the adequacy of the data protection levels of that country through its legislation;
• when it is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract between us and a third party and the transfer is attributable to the purposes of said contract; either
• where you have consented to the transfer.

Where we transfer your personal information outside Jamaica and where the country or territory in question does not maintain adequate data protection standards, we will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Notice. You can ask to see these by contacting us using the contact details below.

HOW WE SAFEGUARD YOUR INFORMATION

We care about protecting your information. That's why we put in place appropriate measures that are designed to prevent unauthorised access to, and misuse of, your personal information.

We are committed to taking all reasonable and appropriate steps to protect the personal information that we hold from misuse, loss, or unauthorised access. We do this by having in place a range of appropriate technical and organisational measures, including encryption measures and disaster recovery plans.

If you suspect any misuse or loss of or unauthorised access to your personal information please let us know immediately by contacting our Head of Legal and External Affairs using the details provided at the end of this notice.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will apply our normal procedures and comply with legal requirements to protect your information, we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted to the Website and any transmission is at your own risk.

The Website may from time to time contain links to and from other websites. If you follow a link to any of those websites, please note that those sites ought to have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for those sites or for their privacy policies. Please check those privacy policies before you submit your information to those websites.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION

We will keep your information relating to orders you have placed with us as required by law or other regulation (for example, because of a request by a tax authority or in connection with any anticipated litigation).

If you have signed up to receive our advertising and marketing emails: We will store your personal information for as long as you are subscribed to our advertising and marketing email list. If you unsubscribe or are removed from our advertising and marketing list, we will keep your email address on our suppression list to ensure that we do not send you advertising and marketing emails.

If you have contacted us with a complaint or query, we will retain your personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary to resolve your complaint or query.

Exceptions to the above are when:

• we have carefully considered whether we need to retain your personal information beyond the periods described above to potentially establish, bring or defend legal proceedings or to comply with a legal or regulatory requirement;
• we actually file or defend a legal claim or other proceedings during the period that we retain your personal information, in which case we will retain your personal information until those proceedings have been concluded and no further appeal is possible;
• you exercise your right to require us to retain your personal information for a period longer than the stated retention period (from which you cannot be identified) and keep it for analytical and statistical purposes.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have a number of rights in relation to your information under data protection law. In relation to certain rights, we may ask you for information to confirm your identity and, where applicable, to help us to search for your personal information. Except in rare cases, we will respond to you within one month from either: (i) the date that we have confirmed your identity; or (ii) where we do not need to do this because we already have this information, from the date we received your request.

Right to object

This right enables you to object to us processing your personal information where we do so for one of the following reasons:

• where we rely on our legitimate interests to do process your information;
• to enable us to perform a task in the public interest or exercise official authority;
• to send you direct marketing materials and where your right to withdraw consent does not apply; or
• for scientific, historical, research, or statistical purposes.

Except for the purposes for which we are sure we can continue to process your personal information, we will temporarily stop processing your personal information in line with your objection until we have investigated the matter. If we agree that your objection is justified in accordance with your rights under data protection laws, we will permanently stop using your personal information for those purposes. Otherwise we will provide you with our justification as to why we need to continue using your personal information.

Right to withdraw consent

Where we have obtained your consent to process your personal information for certain activities (for example, for marketing), you may withdraw this consent at any time and we will cease to use your personal information for that purpose unless we consider that there is an alternative legal basis to justify our continued processing of your data for this purpose, in which case we will inform you of this condition. If you withdraw your consent, our use of your personal information before you withdraw is still lawful.

To withdraw your consent to marketing communications, please use the unsubscribe tool in the relevant communication or update your preferences in the account section on the Website.

Right of access (‘Data Subject Access Requests’)

You may ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you at any time, and request us to modify, update or delete such information. If we provide you with access to the information we hold about you, we will not charge you for this unless permitted by law. If you request further copies of this information from us, we may charge you a reasonable administrative cost.  Where we are legally permitted to do so, we may refuse your request.  If we refuse your request we will always tell you the reasons for doing so.

If you would like to request access to your information, it would assist us with dealing with your request if you could use the subject heading ‘Data Subject Access Request’, or quote this over the phone, when contacting us. Please note that this is not mandatory and we will still deal with any requests without this reference.

Right to erasure

You have the right to request that we erase your personal information in certain circumstances. Normally, this right exists where:

• the data is no longer necessary;
• you have withdrawn your consent to us using your data, and there is no other valid reason for us to continue;
• the data has been processed unlawfully;
• it is necessary for the data to be erased in order for us to comply with our obligations under law; or
• you object to the processing of your data and we are unable to demonstrate overriding legitimate grounds for our continued processing.

We would only be entitled to refuse to comply with your request for erasure in limited circumstances and we will always tell you our reason for doing so.

When complying with a valid request for the erasure of data we will take all reasonably practicable steps to delete the relevant data.

Right to restrict processing

You have the right to request that we restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances, for example if you dispute the accuracy of the personal information that we hold about you, you object to our processing of your personal information for our legitimate interests or you require us to keep it in connection with legal proceedings. If we have shared your personal information with third parties, we will notify them about the restricted processing unless this is impossible or involves disproportionate effort. We will, of course, notify you before lifting any restriction on processing your personal information.

We may only process your information whilst its processing is restricted if we have your consent or are legally permitted to do so, for example for storage purposes, to protect the rights of another individual or company or in connection with legal proceedings.

Right to rectification

You have the right to request that we rectify any inaccurate or incomplete personal information that we hold about you. If we have shared this personal information with third parties, we will notify them about the rectification unless this is impossible or involves disproportionate effort. You may also request details of the third parties to whom we have disclosed the inaccurate or incomplete personal information. Where we think that it is reasonable for us not to comply with your request, we will explain our reasons for this decision.

You can access and update certain parts of your information by logging into your account on the Website.

Right of data portability

If you wish, you have the right to transfer your personal information between service providers where we rely on your consent or the performance of your contract as the lawful basis to use that information. In effect, this means that you are able to transfer the details we hold on you to another third party. To allow you to do so, we will provide you with your data in a commonly used machine-readable format so that you can transfer the data. Alternatively, we may directly transfer the data for you if technically possible.

Rights relating to automated decisions

In certain circumstances, you may contest a decision made about you based purely on automated processing and where the processing is not required by law. You may also ask us to stop making such decisions using automated processing alone.

Right to complain

You have the right to file a complaint with your competent authority in Jamaica.

How to exercise your rights

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us on the details provided under How to contact us. Please note that we may keep a record of your communications to help us resolve any issues that you raise.

CHANGES

We may make changes to this Privacy Notice at any time by posting a copy of the modified notice on the Website or, where appropriate, by sending you an email with that notice.  Any changes will take effect 7 days after the date of our email or the date on which we post the modified terms on the Website, whichever is the earlier.

HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, including your rights in relation to your personal information, please contact the person in charge of legal affairs or by mail to British American Tobacco Carreras Limited, S.A., a duly incorporated company in accordance with the laws of Jamaica. 

If you wish to contact us with any general question or concern, you can send us an email to info.jm@vuse.com. 

When contacting us by email or post, please use the subject heading "Data Protection Query" so that we can direct your query to the appropriate department and deal with it promptly.