Privacy Policy

We are committed to protecting your privacy, and this policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it. It also describes your rights regarding your data and lets you know how you can contact us to view or change your personal information held by Black Sand Studio.

This policy also describes other information that may be collected as part of the normal operation of the website.

What personal information do we collect?

You can use this website without disclosing any personal information.

However, you may choose to provide personal information to us through various user-input forms on this website (as well as via email, direct message, or verbally). Depending on the form or nature of the enquiry/submission, this information may include:

  • Your name
  • The names of others in your family or whanau
  • Contact information (for you and others)
  • Personal details about yourself and your family/whanau (age, relationships, gender, life experience etc.)
  • Personal preferences

We do NOT collect information relating to your bank accounts or credit cards. While we do offer various methods for payment for services and/or products either in person or online, the processing of those payments is done independently from our systems and no information is collected by us or redirected to us.

Why do we collect this personal information?

The information you choose to disclose to us is ONLY used for:

  • Communicating with you, either in general terms or specific to a commission
  • Periodic promotions about our services and/or products
  • Providing the best possible service and/or products for you
  • Improving or services and/or products

You may choose not to disclose some personal information to us. In some cases, this may prevent a form from operating (i.e. if it has specific ‘required’ responses). In other cases, the undisclosed information may reduce the efficiency or usefulness of our service to you (i.e. if it results in a misunderstanding between us and you), or may prevent us from communicating effectively with you.

How do we protect your personal information?

No personal information you provide us is sold, published or disclosed to any other party. It is accessible only by staff or contractors who work for us.

However, we do reserve the right to disclose information to law enforcement or other government officials if it is demanded in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringements, or other activity that is illegal or may expose us to legal liability.

Your personal data is retained for as long as it remains useful according to the uses described above. We store your information electronically on secure platforms which incorporate data encryption (both at rest and in transmission) and strict user access controls. These platforms conform to international security and privacy regulations, including full compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In the event of us becoming aware of a breach in the security of your personal information, we will:

  • Immediately take steps to contain the breach (i.e. prevent any further information loss and/or attempt to recover the lost information)
  • Review the nature, extent and risk of harm of the lost information
  • Notify any affected parties (and authorities, if necessary)
  • Fix the cause of the breach and eliminate/minimise the risk of a repeat breach

Collection of other data/statistics

Your use of this website may also result in other data being collected, as summarised in the following sections.

Statistics/Analytics

As part of the normal operation of this website, statistical information about your visit will be collected to help us understand how our site is used and how it can be improved. This statistical information does not identify you personally, but includes data such as…

    • The pages you visited on our website and the links you clicked on
    • The date and time you visited the website
    • The search terms you used
    • The referring website (if any) from which you clicked through to this website
    • Your operating system, for example Windows 10, Mac OS X
    • The type of web browser you use, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome or Mozilla Firefox
    • Other things like your screen resolution and the language setting of your browser.
Cookies

This website generates session cookies for the purpose of monitoring website usage and making repeated use of the website more convenient for you. These cookies do not contain any personal information, and you can disable them or clear them out of your web browser without affecting your ability to use the website.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and other details in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact