Privacy - Professional Idiot

Professional Idiot Privacy Policy

Last Updated: December 22, 2023

Your privacy is extremely important to all of us at Professional Idiot Inc. and its affiliates, related companies, officers and directors (“Professional Idiot”, “we”, “us” or “our” as appropriate).

This Privacy Policy sets out our practices with respect to our collection, use, disclosure and other processing of the personal data (as defined below) of individuals (“you” or “your” as appropriate) who interact with us, including when visiting or viewing our website, buying/ordering our products, subscribing to our newsletter, or sharing a link with a friend or on social media (collectively, “Services”). This Privacy Policy describes what personal data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and what security measures we use to safeguard it, as well as the rights you may have with respect to your personal data.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our policies and practices for collecting, processing, and storing your information. By using our Services, you acknowledge that we will be collecting, sharing and using your personal data as described in this Privacy Policy, and you consent to those practices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Services or otherwise interact with us.

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. Your continued interaction with us after we make changes indicates that you accept and consent to those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates. Where required by applicable laws, if the changes we make are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice or obtain your consent to any new ways that we collect, use, and disclose your personal data. Please see the section entitled “Changes to this Privacy Policy” below for more information.

1. What is “personal data”?

In this Privacy Policy, the term “personal data” means any information that relates to you as an identified or identifiable natural person. It includes “personal information” “personally identifiable information” and “personal data” as each of those terms are defined in applicable privacy and data protection laws. It may also include other types of more technical information, but only when this information can be used to identify a natural person. Information that is aggregated or anonymized and cannot be associated with an identifiable natural person is not considered to be personal data.

2. What data do we collect?

We may collect the following data when you interact with us:

Contact information, such as your name, email and postal address, telephone number, or account information (for example, if you have created an account on our website).
Demographic data, such as date of birth.
Data in relation to your purchases, including products ordered, sizes, shipping address, method of payment, e-mail, gift cards or discounts, phone number and the name / postal address of the order recipient.
Transactional information, such as history of purchases made using a payment or credit card and information generated by your participation in our loyalty program, as applicable (e.g. the number and amount of transactions by type, location/store of purchase, product code information, brand, quantity purchased, date, time, payment method used, promotional offers used in connection with the transaction, loyalty program points balance and actions associated with your account such as referring friends or providing your birthday).
Data in relation to your use of our customer service, including live chat.
Data in relation to customer surveys and/or offers.
Technical information and metadata, including your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, information about your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our website, IP address and usage details (including pages visited and use of our website features, account login and logoff times, object loss metrics, test processes, button and action data and related information).
Geolocation information, such as may be collected when you use our website.
Data collected through technologies in our stores, including CCTV or other types of video cameras and sensors, if it can identify you as an individual.
Any other information you provide to us.

3. How do we collect data from you?

We collect personal data in a variety of ways, including:

Directly from you, such as when you visit our stores (including through our point-of-sales systems), or interact with us by mail, email, over the telephone, through our website or in any other direct manner, for instance when you make a purchase, give us feedback on our stores and the products for sale in our stores, participate in a survey, or make a request to our customer service.
Through technologies used in our stores, such as video surveillance, sensors or other similar types of systems that we may use from time to time.
Through technologies we use online, such as when you interact with our websites, marketing emails, social media accounts, online advertising, or through the use of our or a third party’s technologies, which include cookies, web beacons or single pixel gifs or analytics engines.
The technologies we use include:
- Cookies, which are small text files that are saved on your computer when you visit a website so that information can be saved between visits, such as your login credentials or language preferences.
- Web beacons and single pixel gifs, which are small image files that have information about you, such as your IP address, that can be downloaded when you visit a website or open an e-mail. This allows us to understand your online behaviour, monitor our email delivery, and provide you with interest-based advertising. These tools also allow our third-party tracking tools to gather information, such as your IP address, and provide this back to us in an anonymized, aggregate form.
- Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, which uses cookies to analyze your use of our website, to create reports about visitor and user activities for us and to provide further services associated with the use of our website.

Third parties involved in providing these technologies may use tracking methods such as but not limited to cookies to achieve their own business goals and purposes by relating and combining information about your usage of our website to any other personal data they may have collected on you. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of third parties as well.

4. How do we use your data?

We may use the personal data we collect to provide you with our products and Services, to manage our business operations, to communicate offers and information we think might interest you, to conduct research, and as otherwise permitted or required by law. More specifically, we may use your personal data for the following purposes:

Providing Products and Services. We use your personal data in order to provide our services, including such purposes as:
verifying your identity;
processing your transactions, such as product purchases, exchanges or returns;
taking or verifying instructions from you;
creating, administering, and maintaining your account;
managing your participation in any Professional Idiot events, contests or sweepstakes; and
fulfilling your requests and responding to your inquiries.
Managing Our Operations. We use your personal data to manage our operations, including:
deploying and managing our information technology applications and systems, including managing our website;
maintaining our services;
notifying you of changes to our services, terms, conditions or policies and to provide you administrative messages, updates, legal notices, technical notices or security alerts;
meeting our contractual and legal obligations (including accounting, taxes and other legal or regulatory compliance obligations);
maintaining the security of the public, our users and our employees;
processing employment applications; and
protecting ourselves and third parties from errors and fraud.
Marketing. We use your personal data to inform you about news, products, services, surveys or special offers that we believe may be of interest to you. We may do this by communicating with you in a variety of ways, such as by email, telephone, direct mail, text message or through social media.

If you no longer wish to receive electronic marketing messages, please let us know by following the unsubscribe directions provided in our electronic marketing messages.

Research and Analytics. We may use your personal data in order to conduct research and data analytics by tracking and analyzing current or previously collected information for the following purposes:
improving or developing new services;
managing and improving our operations;
understanding our customers’ interests and priorities and tailoring our services;
measuring the effectiveness of our marketing and promotional activities; and
understanding how visitors interact with our website and ensuring it functions properly.

When possible, we will use your information in an aggregated and/or anonymized format.

5. How do we share your data?

In addition to the specific situations described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, we share or disclose information with third parties or in the circumstances provided below:

Affiliates. We work closely with our group of companies to provide you with products and services, so we may need to share personal data with them to complete your transactions or make our products available to you. It also helps each entity within the group to comply with applicable laws, regulations and requirements and ensures that your information is consistent, accurate and up-to-date.
Fulfilment and delivery partners. For instance, if you are located outside of the United States and Canada, you are purchasing the products directly from Global-e, which handles the processing of your credit card, the collection of your payment and the delivery of your products. You can consult their privacy policy by clicking here.
Service providers. We use service providers and suppliers to provide you with our Services and manage our operations. Among other things, service providers may help us to administer our website and our operations, conduct surveys, and provide technical support, assist us with our marketing efforts and conduct research. We also use service providers to provide you with functionalities, such as online chats, or shopping carts.
Marketing partners. When we conduct interest-based advertising, we use marketing cookies that may be provided by third parties. These third parties provide us with aggregated data and collect behavioral information from our website in exchange.
Financial partners. If you decide to finance your purchase with a financial partner such as Klarna, we will share with them information relating to your purchase. These financial partners are independent from us and are not our service providers. They will share your personal data with their banking institutions. You can learn more about Klarna’s privacy practices by clicking here.
Business Transactions. If another company acquires, or plans to acquire, our company, business, or our assets, or if we undergo a reorganization or financing of parts of our business (including proceedings of insolvency or bankruptcy), we may share information with other parties to the transaction, including at the negotiation stage.
As Permitted or Required by Law. Applicable laws may permit or require the use, sharing, or disclosure of personal data without consent in specific circumstances. These circumstances include situations where it is necessary to disclose information in response to subpoenas, warrants, or court orders, or in connection with any legal process, or to comply with relevant laws. We may also share your information in order to establish or exercise our rights, to defend against a legal claim, to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding possible illegal activities, suspected fraud, safety of person or property, or a violation of our policies. If this happens, we will not share more personal data than is reasonably required to fulfill that particular purpose.

Other than as listed above, we may, with your implied or express consent, or if another legal basis or a consent exception applies, share or disclose your personal data with third parties, in accordance with applicable laws.

6. Cross-border Transfers

Your personal data may in some cases be transferred to jurisdictions outside the jurisdiction in which you are located or where you reside, to our affiliates, to our service providers for processing, or to other third parties as described in this Privacy Policy. As a result, you understand that your personal data will be subject to the laws of other jurisdictions than the jurisdiction in which you are located or where you reside and may be available to foreign government authorities under lawful orders and laws applicable in such jurisdictions. Regardless of the company or person who processes your information and where it is processed, we will take steps to protect your information in accordance with applicable data protection laws and this policy.

7. Third Parties

Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, services, social networks, or applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow the third party to collect or share data about you. If you follow a link to a third-party website or engage a third-party plugin, please note that these third parties have their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. We do not control these third-party websites, and we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

If you share a third party’s personal data with us, for purposes of sending them information about a product, or shipping them a gift or other item, you represent and warrant that you have obtained the relevant consent from that third party and that we are authorized handle such information in the same way we handle personal data pursuant to this Privacy Policy.

8. Interest-based advertising

Interest-based advertising (also known as targeted or behavioural advertising) means that your preferences and interests are collected through cookies or otherwise, and then used to serve you advertising and marketing materials that are relevant to you (based on those preferences and interests).

Without interest-based advertising, you would still be getting ads when browsing the Internet. However, these ads would not be personalized based on your preferences and interests – and so, they would be less relevant to you, and less effective for us.

We use Google Ads and Google’s DoubleClick to provide you with ads based on your browsing history and search requests. We use Google AdSense to experiment with the efficiency of advertising across channels. We also use cookies such as AppNexus which collects behavioral data about your shopping and habits online. AppNexus makes this information available to other advertisers through real-time-bidding, which is a system that allows them to pay to provide you with advertising that is relevant to your habits. Social media are also used as part of our online interest-based advertising. For instance, we use Facebook’s tracking pixel to identify visitors for personalized advertising. These cookies allow us to serve relevant ads about our products to returning visitors and those which are likely to re-engage with us.

Rakuten Advertising may collect personal data when you interact with our digital property, including IP addresses, digital identifiers, information about your web browsing and app usage and how you interact with our properties and ads for a variety of purposes, such as personalization of offers or advertisements, analytics about how you engage with websites or ads and other commercial purposes. For more information about the collection, use and sale of your personal data and your rights, please use the below links.

9. Children/COPPA

We do not knowingly solicit, collect or process information from children who (a) are residents or citizens of the European Union and under the age where consent of a parent or legal guardian is required for the processing of personal data of children including email addresses and IP addresses, as well as certain uses of cookies; (b) users who are under the age of thirteen (13) and residents or citizens of any other country; or (c) are residents of or located in Quebec and under 14 years of age (each of (a), (b) or (c), an “Age-Barred Individual”). In compliance with United States regulations regarding online privacy for children, Professional Idiot does not knowingly solicit or collect information from children under the age of thirteen (13) or any other Age-Barred Individual. If we learn we have collected or received personal data from an Age-Barred Individual, we will delete or anonymize that data. Age-Barred Individuals are not permitted to have an account, use any Professional Idiot website or app, or interact in any manner with Professional Idiot. By using the website and Services and/or making a purchase/submitting an order, you thereby confirm that you are thirteen (13) years old or older, and not an Age-Barred Individual in your jurisdiction.

10. Data access for California residents

If you are a resident of California, you may request that we provide you with the information that we have shared with third parties for electronic/online direct marketing purposes, if such sharing has occurred; such information can be provided to you once a year free of charge, and will cover information shared during the past twelve (12) months. Information will be provided within thirty (30) days of your request, or we will inform you that we need additional time to fulfill your request. Please contact [email protected] in connection therewith. If you are a California resident and wish to make such a request, please provide sufficient information for us to determine if this applies to you, attest to the fact that you are a California resident and provide a current California address for our response. You may make this request in writing to us at [email protected]. Any such request must include “California Privacy Rights Request” in the subject line/first line of the description and include your name, California street address, city, California as the state and ZIP code. Please note that we are only required to respond to one request per customer each year, and only if the customer is a California resident, and we are not required to respond to requests made by means other than through this address.

Information shared for purposes other than direct marketing will not necessarily be included in our response to such request. We reserve the right to request and confirm proof of identity as we determine necessary in our sole discretion. Please note that we cannot delete information in connection with orders of merchandise or gift certificates, and other paid services or goods, for at least seven (7) years as we must retain it for accounting and legal purposes; we reserve the right to retain such personal data for accounting and business purposes.

11. How do we protect & retain personal data?

We are committed to the security of your personal data. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place reasonable physical, technological and organizational procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification, in light of, among other things, the sensitivity of the information and the purposes for which it is to be used.

Except as otherwise permitted or required by applicable law or regulation, we will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

12. Electronic marketing

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of certain personal data for electronic marketing communications in the following ways:

Whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you do not want the information to be used for direct marketing purposes.
If you have previously agreed to us using your personal data for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to or emailing us at [email protected] or by unsubscribing. There is an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of every email we send to our users and customers, including you. Please note that:
Even if you have opted out of receiving marketing communications from us, we may still contact you for transactional purposes, in compliance with applicable laws (e.g., for customer service, legal notices or reminder notices). We may also need to contact you with questions or information regarding your customer service inquiries; and
It may take some time for all of our records to reflect changes in your preferences.

13. Consent & withdrawing consent

When you visit our website or our stores, make a purchase, use our Services or otherwise interact with us, you are providing your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of personal data as set out in this Privacy Policy. In some cases, your consent may be “implied” i.e. your permission is assumed based on your action or inaction at the point of collection, use or sharing of your personal data.

We will generally obtain consent when we want to use personal data for a new purpose or for a purpose other than those stated at the time of collection in this Privacy Policy or in the terms and conditions of a specific product, service, contest, promotion or event you signed up for, participated in or purchased.

You may be entitled under applicable law to withdraw your consent (except in limited circumstances, including legal or regulatory requirements or as a result of your contractual obligations with us). However, this will not affect the legality of any processing carried out prior to such withdrawal. If you choose not to provide us with certain personal data or if you withdraw your consent, where such withdrawal is available, we may not be able to offer you the programs, products, services, contests, promotions, events or information that you requested or that could be offered to you.

14. Your rights

Depending on the jurisdiction in which you are located, you may benefit from different rights over your personal data. In most jurisdictions, these rights generally include the right to access your personal data, to modify your personal data when it is inaccurate, and to withdraw your consent (see section “Consent & withdrawal of consent” above). We will follow specific procedures for each jurisdiction, in accordance with the obligations defined in applicable law. Below, we explain some of these rights and how you can exercise them, depending on applicable law:

Access

You have the right to access your personal data, and obtain information about how we use it and with whom it is shared.

Correction

You may request to correct your personal data that is incomplete, inaccurate or out-of-date.

Anonymization or deletion

You can request: (i) the anonymization of your personal data, so that it can no longer be related to you and, therefore, ceases to be personal data; and (ii) the deletion of your personal data, in which case we must delete it without the possibility of reversal.

Portability

You may request that we provide your personal data in a structured and interoperable format for its transfer to a third party.

Restriction

You can limit the way we use your personal data if you are concerned about the accuracy of the data or how it is being used. If necessary, you can also stop us from deleting your data.

Objection

You have the right to object to processing of your personal data, in certain circumstances.

Automated decision

You may obtain additional information regarding, and request a review of, decisions that are made on solely automated processing carried out by us, where applicable.

Your rights are subject to applicable legal restrictions. We will respond to your requests to exercise your rights within a reasonable timeframe, in compliance with applicable laws. We may take reasonable steps to verify your identity before fulfilling your requests. If we cannot fulfil your request, we will explain why, and try to find a solution with you.

15. Changes to this Privacy Policy

Since we endeavor to continually improve our products and Services, this Privacy Policy may be updated at any time. Therefore, we recommend that you visit this page from time to time to be aware of any changes. If the changes we make are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice when required by applicable laws. By continuing to engage with us after the modified version of the Privacy Policy has been posted or you have been informed of such update, you agree to be bound by all such changes. If you do not agree to the changes in our Privacy Policy, it is your responsibility to stop using our Services or otherwise interacting with us. The “Last Updated” date at the top of the Privacy Policy indicates when it was last updated.

16. Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments, or complaints concerning our privacy practices please contact our Data Protection Officer at

[email protected]

Cookie Policy

A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that is transferred from a website to the hard drive of your computer, allowing the website or service to identify your computer, track your activities, and remember preferences that you may have set during a previous visit.

We install our own cookies and third-party cookies on your browser or device through our website. Some of these cookies are uninstalled automatically at the end of your browsing session. Others are persistent, which means that they remain installed for a longer period of time unless you uninstall them.

We may, either directly or indirectly, track your behavior on our website using cookies and other analytics for purposes of our own customer support, marketing promotions, analytics, research, product development, fraud prevention, risk assessment, regulatory compliance, or investigation, as well as to enable you to use and access our website and our Services.

We also use cookies in order to ensure our website functions as intended, to analyze our performance and to ensure that our websites are secure. Cookies are also useful to identify bugs and errors. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track Signals”.

We collect cookies in each of the following categories:

Strictly Necessary Cookies: These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be disabled in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions constituting a request for services, such as logging into your account, managing your cart or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but if you block these cookies some parts of the site may not work as a result.
Functional cookies: Functional cookies allow the website to remember the choices you make (e.g. text size changes, personalized pages, other preferences).
Analytics and Statistics: These cookies collect information about how you use the website and your user experience, such as page visits and any error messages. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. We use this information to analyze and improve the operation of the site for a better user experience.
Marketing and retargeting cookies: Marketing or targeting cookies are used to improve advertising. Common applications include targeting ads based on information relevant to the user, as well as improving reporting on the performance of advertising campaigns and avoiding showing users ads they have already seen. These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant ads on other sites.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers’ settings will automatically accept cookies, but You can modify Your browser setting to decline cookies, or just third-party cookies, if You prefer. This may prevent You from taking full advantage of the Website or ordering products or services from or through us.

You can manage your cookie preferences through your browser, by uninstalling and blocking certain cookies. Click on your browser below to obtain instructions.

You can install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, which prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity. For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms.

To know more about why you are seeing an ad, how to control and/or opt-out of marketing cookies and tracking technologies for interest-based advertising, please visit the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page or the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada website for more information on the AdChoices Tools. You can also consult Google Ads.

You can find more information about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.com.

Some of the cookies we use are essential or recommended for the use of the Services, and you may not be able to access and use all the Services without these cookies.

List of cookies we collect:

The table below lists the cookies we collect and what information they store. Any error or omission is inadvertent and shall not result in our liability.