Privacy Policy

Last updated: 19th October 2026

1. INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the hostinears.com privacy policy. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data.

This privacy policy explains how we collect and use your personal data when you visit our website, place an order, sign up to our emails or get in touch with us. It also explains your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please read this privacy policy carefully, together with any other privacy notices we may give you from time to time, so that you fully understand how and why we use your personal data.

Our website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

2. WHO WE ARE

hostinears.com is the online store of Scott-Samuel Accessories Ltd, a private limited company registered in England and Wales.

Company name: Scott-Samuel Accessories Ltd

Trading as: hostinears.com

Company number: 14087611

Registered office: 12 Wychall Lane, Kings Norton, Birmingham, B38 8TA, United Kingdom

Director: Keira O'Mara

Email: support@hostinears.com

Phone: +44 7564 081633

Scott-Samuel Accessories Ltd is the data controller responsible for this website and for your personal data. This means we decide why and how your personal data is used. When we say "we", "us" or "our" in this policy, we mean Scott-Samuel Accessories Ltd trading as hostinears.com.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or would like to exercise any of your rights, please see Section 13 below.

3. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR DATA

Data you give us directly

You may give us personal data when you:

place an order on our website;

create a customer account;

leave a review or send us feedback;

enter a competition, promotion or survey; or

ask us to send you information.

Data we collect automatically

When you use our website, we may automatically collect information about your device, browsing actions and patterns. We do this using cookies and similar technologies. Please see Section 8 for more details.

Data we receive from third parties

We may receive personal data about you from:

the platform and payment providers that help us run our online store and process payments;

fraud prevention services;

delivery companies, for example tracking and delivery updates;

analytics and advertising providers, such as Google and Meta; and

social media platforms, where you interact with us there.

4. THE TYPES OF PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT

Personal data means any information about you from which you can be identified. It does not include data where your identity has been removed (anonymous data).

Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect the following types of personal data:

Identity Data: your first name, last name, and username or similar identifier.

Contact Data: your billing address, delivery address, email address and phone number.

Financial Data: payment card details. Card payments are processed securely by our payment providers, and we do not store your full card details.

Transaction Data: details of payments to and from you and of the products you have bought from us.

Profile Data: your account login details, your orders, your preferences, feedback and survey responses.

Technical Data: your IP address, browser type and version, time zone setting, location, operating system and other technology on the devices you use to access our website.

Usage Data: information about how you use our website and products.

Marketing and Communications Data: your preferences for receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.

We also use Aggregated Data, such as statistical information about how many visitors view a certain page. This data does not identify you. If we ever combine Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can identify you, we treat it as personal data under this policy.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you, such as information about your health, ethnicity, religious beliefs or political opinions, and we do not collect information about criminal convictions.

If you choose not to give us certain personal data, we may not be able to process your order or provide the service you have asked for.

5. THE LEGAL BASES FOR USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use it:

To perform a contract with you: for example, when you buy from us, we need your details to process and deliver your order.

For our legitimate interests: where it is necessary for us to run and improve our business, provided your interests and rights do not override those interests. For example, fraud checks at checkout or keeping our website secure.

To comply with a legal obligation: for example, keeping records of our sales for tax purposes.

With your consent: for example, where you have agreed to receive marketing emails or to non essential cookies. You can withdraw your consent at any time.

6. HOW AND WHY WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We use your personal data to:

process, pay for and deliver your order, including sending order and dispatch confirmations (performance of a contract);

manage returns, refunds and any questions or complaints (performance of a contract and our legitimate interests);

create and manage your customer account (performance of a contract);

let you know about changes to our terms or this privacy policy (legal obligation and our legitimate interests);

remind you about items left in your basket (our legitimate interests);

ask you to leave a review or take part in a survey (our legitimate interests);

send you marketing emails about our products and offers (your consent, or our legitimate interests where you are an existing customer and have not opted out);

run competitions and promotions (our legitimate interests);

keep our website and business secure and prevent fraud (our legitimate interests and legal obligation);

understand how our website is used and improve it, our products and our marketing (our legitimate interests);

show you relevant adverts on other websites and social media, and measure how well they work (your consent through cookie settings, and our legitimate interests); and

deal with any legal claims or disputes (our legitimate interests).

7. MARKETING AND YOUR COMMUNICATION PREFERENCES

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to understand what products and offers may interest you.

You will receive marketing emails from us if you have signed up to our newsletter, or if you have bought from us and did not opt out of marketing at checkout.

You can opt out of marketing at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing email, or by emailing us at support@hostinears.com. Opting out of marketing does not affect emails about your orders, such as order confirmations and delivery updates.

We will never sell your personal data, and we will always ask for your consent before sharing your personal data with any other company for its own marketing purposes.

You may also see adverts for hostinears.com on websites and social media. Some of these are shown to general audiences and are not based on your personal data. Others may be based on your previous visits to our website, which is known as retargeting. You can control this through your cookie settings and through the ad settings of the platforms you use.

8. COOKIES

A cookie is a small file that is stored on your device by your browser. Our website uses cookies to tell you apart from other visitors, give you a good experience when you browse and help us improve our website.

We use the following types of cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies: these are needed for our website to work properly, for example to let you add items to your basket, log in and pay securely. These cannot be switched off.

Analytical and performance cookies: these help us count visitors and see how people move around our website, so we can improve how it works.

Functionality cookies: these recognise you when you return to our website and remember your preferences, such as items in your basket.

Targeting and advertising cookies: these record your visit, the pages you viewed and the links you followed. We and our advertising partners, such as Google and Meta, use this information to show you relevant adverts and to measure how effective they are.

When you first visit our website, you will be asked to choose which non essential cookies you accept. You can change your choice at any time. You can also block cookies through your browser settings, but if you block all cookies, including strictly necessary ones, parts of our website may not work properly. For more information on managing cookies, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Some cookies are set by third parties, such as advertising networks and analytics providers, which we do not control. You can manage advertising preferences directly with these providers, for example through your Google ad settings or your Facebook and Instagram ad preferences.

9. WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA WITH

We only share your personal data where it is necessary. We may share it with:

our ecommerce platform and website hosting providers;

payment providers and fraud prevention services, to process payments securely;

buy now, pay later providers, where you choose to pay with one of these services at checkout. They will process your data in line with their own privacy notice and may carry out checks to decide whether you can use their service;

couriers and delivery companies, so they can deliver your order;

email marketing, customer service and analytics providers;

advertising partners and social media platforms, in line with your cookie choices;

professional advisers such as accountants, lawyers, banks and insurers; and

HM Revenue and Customs, regulators, law enforcement and other authorities, where we are required to by law.

We require all third parties to keep your personal data secure and to treat it in line with the law. We do not allow our service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes, and they may only process it on our instructions.

If we ever sell, transfer or merge any part of our business, your personal data may be transferred to the new owners, who may use it in the same way as set out in this policy.

10. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

Some of our service providers are based outside the United Kingdom, or store data outside the United Kingdom. Whenever your personal data is transferred outside the UK, we make sure it is given a similar level of protection, for example by only transferring it to countries the UK has confirmed provide adequate protection, or by using contracts approved by the UK Information Commissioner.

11. DATA SECURITY

We have put appropriate security measures in place to stop your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, accessed without permission, changed or disclosed. Access to your personal data is limited to people and service providers who need it for business reasons, and they are required to keep it confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data breach, and we will notify you and the Information Commissioner's Office where we are legally required to do so.

12. HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We only keep your personal data for as long as we need it for the purposes we collected it for, including to meet any legal, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.

By law, we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after the end of the financial year in which the purchase took place, for tax purposes.

If you have signed up to our marketing emails, we will keep your details until you unsubscribe, or until you have not interacted with our emails for a long period, after which we will remove you from our list.

If you have a customer account, we will keep your account details until you ask us to close it, subject to the legal retention periods above.

13. HOW TO CONTACT US ABOUT PRIVACY

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or want to exercise any of your rights, please contact us:

Email: support@hostinears.com

Phone: +44 7564 081633

Post: Keira O'Mara, Scott-Samuel Accessories Ltd, 12 Wychall Lane, Kings Norton, Birmingham, B38 8TA, United Kingdom

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns first, so please contact us before you approach the ICO.

14. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under UK data protection law, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the following rights:

The right to access: you can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.

The right to correction: you can ask us to correct any personal data that is incomplete or inaccurate.

The right to erasure: you can ask us to delete your personal data where there is no good reason for us to keep it. We may not always be able to delete everything, for example where we must keep certain records by law, and we will tell you if this is the case.

The right to object: you can object to us using your personal data where we rely on our legitimate interests. You have an absolute right to object to direct marketing.

The right to restrict processing: you can ask us to pause the use of your personal data in certain situations, for example while we check its accuracy.

The right to data portability: you can ask us to send your personal data to you or to another organisation in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format.

The right to withdraw consent: where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. This does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it.

You will not usually have to pay a fee to exercise any of these rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse to act on your request, if it is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.

We may need to ask you for information to confirm your identity before we act on your request. This is a security measure to make sure personal data is not given to anyone who has no right to receive it.

We aim to respond to all valid requests within one month. If your request is particularly complex, or you have made several requests, it may take longer, in which case we will let you know and keep you updated.

15. THIRD PARTY LINKS

Our website may include links to other websites, plug ins and applications, including social media. Clicking on these links may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these websites and are not responsible for their privacy practices. We encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

16. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated date at the top. Where the changes are significant, we will let you know by email or through a notice on our website.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if any of your details change while you are a customer of ours.