Privacy and security
Privacy and security
Introduction
Welcome to the Muscle Foods (“Muscle Food”) Privacy Policy.
Muscle Food respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This Privacy Policy will tell you how we use your personal data when you visit our website.
A Glossary, Section 12 is included at the end of this Privacy Policy to explain the meaning of some of the terms used within it.
1. IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE
Purpose of this Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy details how Muscle Foods collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through the website when you sign up to receive our marketing material, purchase a product or service or take part in a competition.
Muscle Foods is not intended for sale to children under the age of 18 years old and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
It is important that you read this Privacy Policy together with any other privacy notice on our website from time to time so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data.
Who we are
Muscle Foods Ltd is the Data Controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy).
Our registered and operating locations:
-
United Kingdom:
- Muscle Foods Limited, company number 09019725. Address is 23-25 Park Lane Business Centre, Park Lane Old Basford, Nottingham, NG6 0DW.
You can contact us through our customer contact pages in the ‘How to contact us’ Section 11 of this policy.
Changes to this Policy
We may need to update this Policy at any time and without notice, where we do this we will notify you by including notifications on the website.
This Policy was last updated on 1st September 2023.
2. THE LAWFUL BASES WE USE TO PROCESS DATA
We will only ever process your information when we have a lawful basis to do so. The lawful bases includes;
Contract – where we process your information to fulfil a contractual arrangement we have made with you.
Consent – where we have asked you to provide explicit permission to process your data for a particular purpose
Legitimate Interests – where we rely on our interests as a reason for processing, generally this is to provide you with products and services in the most secure and appropriate way.
Legal Obligation – where we have a statutory or other legal obligation to process the information, such as for the investigation of crime or to adhere to Food Safety, Consumer Rights standards, regulations and/or legislations, and other regulatory and/or legislative requirements in force from time to time.
3. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
When you place an order, we will require your name, email address, billing address, delivery address, telephone number, credit/debit card details or PayPal details. Without this information we will not be able to process your request, notify you of your order acceptance and provide you with delivery of products.
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identifiable characteristics have been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows:
- Identity Data includes first name and last name.
- Contact Data means the data we use to contact you including your billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone number.
- Financial Data means the data we use to process your payments for your orders including your payment card details. We do not store or process your Financial Data ourselves, they are processed and stored via one of our contracted third party service providers. Payment card details are encrypted in your browser and securely transfer this data to our third-party payment provider to process payments.
- Transaction Data means details about transactions you have made on our website including the payments to and from you along with other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
- Technical Data means details about the device(s) you use to access our website including your internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
- Profile Data includes your username (email address) and password, your login data, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
- Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services. This includes your browsing patterns and information such as how long you might spend on one of our webpages and what you look at and for on our website, the click stream to and from our website, page response times and page interaction information such as scrolling, clicks and mouseovers.
- Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.
We also collect, use and share aggregated and/or anonymised data (“Aggregated Data”) such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
If You Fail to Provide Personal Data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may be unable to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, where you do not provide suitable delivery instructions to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us, ensuring you are suitably notified if this is the case.
Ensuring Personal Data is Accurate
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us and periodically review your account settings on our website.
4. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including:
Direct interactions. We may collect your Identity Data, Contact Data, Transaction Data, Profile Data, Financial Data and Marketing and Communications Data when using our website, filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- purchase a product through our websites
- create an account on our websites;
- request marketing to be sent to you;
- enter a competition; or
- give us feedback
- Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Usage Data and Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies.
THIRD PARTY SOURCES OF DATA/DATA SHARING:
musclefood.com may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the Privacy Policy of the websites you visit.
We collect from and share data with the following third parties:
- Essential Service Providers: Sometimes, other businesses give us data about you which we may need for our legitimate interests of conducting business with you and on occasion they are necessary to perform our contract with you. We also engage third party contractors to provide us with technical or delivery services that are related to your account with us.
- Professional Advisers and Investors: We may also share your data with professional advisers such as our lawyers, accountants and insurers to manage risks and legal claims, and/or as part of our relationship and obligations to our investor organisations.
- Group: Muscle Foods Ltd is part of the GPS Food Group and we may share your data within our group in order to improve our products and services and to support internal processes and procedures shared across the group. We may wish to sell or transfer company ownership or reorganise the business ownership, we may also expand our group of companies. When any of the above occurs, we will inform impacted parties making available any changes to privacy arrangements.
- Law Enforcement/Legal Compliance: We will cooperate with requests from organisations with criminal investigation powers within the UK including but not limited to those permitted by The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Investigatory Powers Act 2016. This may include disclosing your personal information to government or law enforcement agencies, or private parties, when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is required by law or when we, in our discretion, believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our legal rights, or those of third parties and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, fraud reduction or legal process served on us. In such cases, we may raise or waive any legal objection or right available to us. These uses of your data are in our legitimate interests of protecting our business interests. We may also use your data and share it with the recipients listed in this Privacy Policy for the purpose of complying with our legal obligations.
We require all third parties to protect the confidentiality of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party Data Processors to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
6. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We only use your personal data when the law allows us to and where we have a lawful basis to do so.
Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending you any direct marketing communications. You have the right to withdraw consent to receive marketing at any time by visiting our preference centre detailed within the ‘manage accounts’ section.
Purposes For Which We Will Use Your Personal Data
We have set out below, a description of all the ways we intend to use your personal data. Where appropriate we identify our legitimate interests in doing so.
|
Purpose/Activity |
Type of data |
Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest |
|
To register you as a new customer |
(a) Identity (h) Marketing and Communications |
Performance of a contract with you. |
|
To process and deliver your order, including:
|
(a) Identity |
Performance of a contract with you. We may also use some of the data related to your queries for our legitimate interests of ensuring our customer service quality standards are met. |
|
To collect and recover money owed to us in respect of your order |
(a) Identity |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us). |
|
To carry out fraud assessments |
(a) Identity |
Necessary for our legitimate interests of ensuring payments are not fraudulent |
|
To notify you in relation to our legal obligations and documents, including changes to our terms or Privacy Policy |
(a) Identity |
Necessary for our legitimate interests of ensuring our customers are updated on these changes. |
|
To help us improve our offering to you as a customer, including asking you to leave a review or take a survey, or provide customer insights |
(a) Identity |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to improve our offering to our customers, to develop them and grow our business). |
|
To enable you to partake in a prize draw or competition |
(a) Identity |
Performance of a contract with you to fulfil the promotion and run the competition/prize draw. We may also subsequently use your entries for the legitimate interests of understanding our customer base more effectively. |
|
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) |
(a) Identity |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise). |
|
To deliver relevant website content, advertisements and other marketing material to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you |
(a) Identity (e) Technical |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business to inform our marketing strategy and to improve our offering to you). Please note that where cookies are used for this purpose, this is covered separately by our Cookies Policy. |
|
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences |
(e) Technical |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy). Please note that where cookies are used for this purpose, this is covered by our Cookies Policy. |
|
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you |
(a) Identity (c) Profile |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business, and to improve our offering to you). |
We may on occasion profile our customers for the purposes of targeting marketing and where this is done, this is undertaken for our legitimate interests of ensuring our marketing is relevant to its audience. For example, we may classify an appropriate audience for a promotion by what products on our website they have previously looked at or expressed an interest in.
MARKETING
We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you. We only use the data you provide to us directly for this purpose along with the Aggregated Data provided to us by our analytics partners and we do not track what other websites you may visit after visiting our site, though in common with most websites, we may register the site which referred you to our site (e.g. a search engine).
We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.
All marketing is sent to you based upon an explicit opt in and we will only send you marketing where you have told us you are happy for us to do so. You can manage how you receive marketing messages, and how often you receive them, using our preference centre detailed within the ‘manage accounts’ section.
Where you have not previously bought from us but have registered your details with us (for example by entering a competition or signing up for a newsletter), we will only send you marketing communications if you opted into receiving marketing at the time, you may withdraw at any time by following the unsubscribe link in the communication or by contacting us through our customer contact pages in the ‘How to contact us’ Section 11’ of this policy.
We may also share certain data with third party social media platforms in order to show you targeted ads when you visit them. We do this by:
- the use of cookies which capture your visits to our website; and
- we may also provide these platforms with your email address to create ‘audiences’ of users fitting within a certain demographic/category so that we can target our marketing. Please check your social media platforms’ terms for more details of these services. This is in our legitimate interests of sending you direct marketing. See ‘Opting out’ below for details of how you can adjust your marketing preferences.
Opting Out
You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by logging into your account and adjusting your settings in your Customer Preference Centre, by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.
Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not change our legal basis to use your personal data provided to provide the product/service purchase, or related correspondence, and we will continue to process such data in accordance with this Privacy Policy and only ever as permitted by law.
Change of Purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
7. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
Whilst we are based in the UK, some of our external third parties are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data may involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
- We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission. For further details, see European Commission: Adequacy of the protection of personal data in non-EU countries.
- Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe. For further details, see European Commission: Model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries.
- Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the US. For further details, see European Commission: EU-US Privacy Shield.
Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.
8. DATA SECURITY
Our website deploys a number of security measures to protect your information when you place an order or access your account information. Whilst using musclefood.com our data is encrypted in transit between you and us, this minimises the risk of the data being exfiltrated before it is received by our systems.
We have appropriate security measures in place to reduce the likelihood of your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know and are only permitted to process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
In addition we have procedures in place to respond to, and recover where possible from any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
You acknowledge that the Internet is not a completely secure medium for communication and, accordingly, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you send to us (or we send to you) via the Internet. We are not responsible for any damages which you, or others, may suffer as a result of the loss of confidentiality of such information.
9. DATA RENTENTION
How long will you use my Personal Data for?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary and whilst we consider you a customer.
We consider you to be a customer:
- As long as you are receiving a frequent recurring order from us.
- For a maximum of three years from the point you made your last purchase from us.
- During anytime we are managing a customer service request for you.
- Whilst you are signed up to and receiving our newsletter.
Retention of data will only ever be used to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it and where permitted by law to do so. This includes for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data as part of your legal right to be forgotten, see ‘Your Legal Rights’ Section 10 below for further information.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
10. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s supervisory authority for data protection issues https://ico.org.uk. To raise a concern, please go to https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/raising-concerns/ for information on how to do this. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so, where applicable, please consider contacting us directly in the first instance using the contact details in the ‘How to contact us’ Section 11.
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:
- Request access to your personal data (known as a ‘data subject access request’). To receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you (known as the ‘right to data rectification’) to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
- Request erasure of your personal data (known as the ‘right to be forgotten’) to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply the law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
- Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
- Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
- Request the transfer of your personal data (known as the ‘right to data portability’) to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data (known as the ‘right to withdraw consent’). However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us via our customer contact pages in the ‘How to contact us’ Section 11 of this policy.
You do not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances and have a lawful basis to do so.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
Once we have received sufficient information from you regarding your access request, we will agree a timescale with you to inspect the data which will be based upon the time period for which the data is requested (e.g. previous 6 months). Dependent upon the time period, the data may be made available to you in stages.
For your information, some data may need to be redacted in order to protect the privacy of other data subjects.
Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
11. HOW TO CONTACT US
Should you need to contact us please write to:
Data Protection
Muscle Foods
23-25 Park Lane
Nottingham
NG6 0DW
To contact us, please use the links below:
Muscle Food:
- England, Scotland & Wales: support@musclefood.com
Prepped Pots:
- England, Scotland & Wales: support@preppedpots.com
Goal Plans:
- England, Scotland & Wales: support@goalplans.com
12. GLOSSARY
Lawful Basis
‘Legitimate Interest’ means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to provide our services/products. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where the impact on you is outweighed by our business interest (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
‘Performance of Contract’ means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
‘Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation’ means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.
Third Parties
External Third Parties
Cloud storage providers - we use cloud computing platforms that securely store our data, including customer personal data.
Email service providers - in order to send you marketing content and transactional emails, we share your details with our email service providers.
Social Media Platforms - We may make your name and email address available to companies in order to advertise and market our services to you through other platforms on the internet (e.g. Facebook).
Analytics tools - we use analytics tools to track the way that users interact with our website.
Profiling tools - we use profiling tools to understand how you engage with our website and show you content we think will be most relevant to you, based on our understanding of your interests and preferences.
Payment providers - in order to facilitate any payments made on our site, we facilitate the sharing of your Financial Data with payment providers.
Delivery providers - in order to package and mail your orders to you, it is necessary to share your information with delivery providers.
Marketing and insights providers - marketing and insights tools allow us to understand our customers better so that we may provide website improvements, products and customer service experience. We may share certain information about our customers to facilitate this process.
Customer service platforms - when you interact with our customer service team, your details are shared with our customer service platform providers.
Feedback forms - when you make a purchase, we sometimes engage a third party to send out feedback forms on our behalf.