Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Beth Bakes Cakes is a sole trader run by Beth Wardley, trading from Unit 17 Rose Centre, Rose Avenue, Nether Poppleton, York, YO26 6RX. We are the data controller for personal information collected through this website. If you have any questions about this policy or your data, contact us at beth@bethbakescakes.co.uk.

2. What we collect

• Orders and enquiries — your name, email address, phone number if you give one, billing address, and the details of your order, including any messages, images or design references you upload for a custom cake.
• Your account — your name, email address, order history, marketing preference and password. Passwords are stored in encrypted (hashed) form; we never see or store the actual password.
• Payments — all card payments are handled by Stripe. Your card details go directly to Stripe and never touch our systems; we only receive confirmation of payment and basic details such as the last four digits of the card.
• Technical data — standard server logs (such as IP address and browser type) used to keep the site secure and working. We do not run analytics or advertising trackers on this site.

3. How we use it, and our legal grounds

• To take, make and hand over your order, take payment, and email you about it — necessary to perform our contract with you.
• To run your account and let you view your order history — necessary to perform our contract with you.
• To reply when you contact us or make an enquiry — our legitimate interest in responding to you.
• To send you marketing emails — only with your consent, given at checkout or in your account settings. You can withdraw it at any time via the unsubscribe link or your account.
• To prevent fraud and keep the site secure — our legitimate interest in protecting the business and our customers.
• To keep order and payment records — our legal obligations, for example for tax and accounting.

4. Who we share it with

We never sell your personal information. We share it only with the services that run this shop for us: Stripe (payment processing), Resend (sending order and account emails), and Vercel and DigitalOcean (hosting the website and its data). Some of these providers are based in the United States; where data leaves the UK it is protected by UK-approved safeguards such as the UK extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses. We may also share information where the law requires it.

5. How long we keep it

Order and payment records are kept for six years to meet tax and accounting rules. Your account, including any uploaded design images, is kept until you delete it or ask us to. Enquiries and messages are kept for as long as we need them to help you. When we no longer need information, we delete it.

6. Cookies

This site currently sets only cookies and similar browser storage that are strictly necessary for it to work — keeping you signed in and remembering your basket through checkout. We do not load any analytics, advertising or third-party tracking cookies. The cookie banner records your preference for the future: if you choose "essential only", nothing beyond the necessary storage will ever be set, and any optional cookies we introduce later (for example, to see which pages are popular) will only run with your consent.

7. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to access a copy of your personal information, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, take it with you in a portable format, and withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis we rely on. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at beth@bethbakescakes.co.uk and we will respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

8. Changes to this policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the updated policy on this page with a revised "last updated" date.