We at Somphearak ("we", "us") recognize the importance of privacy and confidentiality of personal information.
Somphearak (the "Platform") is a B2B platform which connects and facilitates sales and purchases of products and/or services between suppliers (or "Sellers") and buyers (or "Buyers"). The Platform is for business to business transactions and therefore is only made available for use by businesses and not for individual or personal use.
This Privacy Policy sets out the ways in which Somphearak collect, use and disclose information in connection with its operation of the Platform including personal information about Platform visitors and representatives and employees of Buyers and Sellers ("you"). This Privacy Policy also applies to use of our Platform via a mobile device, either through mobile applications or mobile-optimized websites. For details of the personal information that we collect when you use or interact with other Somphearak services, please refer to the applicable Privacy Policy to those services.
If you have any questions or concerns about the use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided at section I "HOW TO CONTACT US" the bottom of this Privacy Policy. All capitalized terms not defined in this document shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the Terms of Use for the Platform, which can be found here.
A. COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
The personal information that we may collect about you broadly falls into the following categories:
Information you provide to us
If you are a representative or employee of any Buyer or Seller or a sole trader Buyer or Seller:
you will be asked to provide certain contact information that is necessary for the registering for a Platform account on behalf of a Buyer or Seller, including name, address, phone number, email address, job title and department;
you will be asked to provide certain identity information, tax registration and/or related information about your business, such as your company name, business type and industry, corporate registration details and information about your business license;
if you are a Seller we will also ask you to provide details about the goods and products that you intend to sell via the Platform and details about your sales/transactions on Somphearak;
if you are a Buyer we will also ask you to provide details or preferences about the goods and products that you may be interested in buying via the Platform and any details or preferences relevant to your purchases;
if you are successfully certified by Somphearak as a blogger or an influencer, in addition to the information mentioned above, we may also collect your live stream videos, your social media account names and profile photos, and posts or comments made by other users of the Platform;
in connection with the facilitation of transactions, purchases and payments over the Platform, you will be asked to provide certain payment information. This might include bank account numbers, billing and delivery information, credit/debit card numbers, expiration dates and security code and tracking information from cheques or money orders to facilitate the sale and purchase as well as the settlement of purchase price of the products or services transacted on or procured through the Platform;
we will process any information provided to us in connection with disputes or to support complaints in connection with the Platform or goods and/or services purchased via the Platform. Please note, Buyers and/or Sellers may submit complaints regarding the products and services on the Platform and/or disputes between the Buyers and Sellers to the Platform and under such circumstances, we will process data provided to us by Buyers and/or Sellers that is relevant to the disputes or complaints submitted. This may include health data of end-users (which may include minors as applicable) of products purchased on the Platform to the extent relevant to the disputes or complaints that are being reviewed by the Platform and to the extent that the individual(s) has provided their explicit consent to their data being shared with us for the purposes of handling the complaints and/or settling the disputes.
Information you submit to the Platform for publication may be made publicly available on the Platform and therefore accessible by any internet user. You should exercise caution when deciding what information you submit to us for publication.
Information that we collect automatically
If you contact us (such as via our customer services department chat service, telephone or email), we may record a copy of your correspondence and may ask for additional information to verify your identity.
We will collect contact details and other information of users from publicly available sources for the purposes of verifying the users and performing due diligence on the users.
We will collect details of user activities, transactions and interactions on the Platform including information relating to the types and specifications of the products and services purchased, pricing and delivery information, dispute and complaint records, communications between users and any information disclosed in any discussion forum.
From time to time, we may also collect information about the existing and prospective users, during or in connection with trade shows, industry events and/or other functions. Including representative contact names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses.
If you visit our Platform, we will automatically collect certain information from your device. In some countries, including countries in the European Economic Area, this information may be considered as personal information under applicable data protection laws. Specifically this information may include IP addresses, device type, unique device identification numbers, browser type, broad geographic location (e.g. country or city-level location), browsing patterns and details of how you have interacted with our Platform and the goods and services available on it. In addition, we gather statistical information about the Platform and visitors to the Platform including, browser software, operating system, software and hardware attributes, pages viewed, number of sessions and unique visitors. Collecting this information enables us to better understand the visitors who come to our Platform, where they come from, and what content is of interest to them. We use this information for our internal analytics purposes and to improve the quality and relevance of our Platform. Some of this information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technology, as explained further under the section E “COOKIES” below.
Information that we receive from third parties
We may receive personal information about you from social media platforms if you choose to register for a Platform account via a social media account. Exactly what information we receive will depend on your privacy settings with the applicable platform, but it would typically include basic public profile information such as:
Your user name or nickname
Your profile picture
Country
Company name
Contact details
We may receive personal information about you from third parties that are engaged by us to assist with providing verification services, and conducting suitable money laundering and KYC (know-your-customer) checks on users, and to improve our marketing efforts. This may include your name, email address, company details and contact information for company representatives.
If you choose to participate in reviewing or rating products and/or services on Somphearak, we may receive personal information about you from third parties that work with us to conduct reviews into our services and/or rate us.
B. USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We collect and use your personal information for the following purposes:
verifying your identity and conducting security, KYC (know-your-customer) and anti-money laundering diligence and background checks in order to set up user accounts;
verifying your eligibility to register as a Platform user in accordance with our Terms of Use here;
setting up / administering user accounts, including providing log-in IDs and developing a Platform profile;
providing users with customer service support; responding to queries, feedback, and managing claims and/or disputes;
facilitating communication between Buyers and Sellers via the Platform, processing transactions and settlement between Buyers and Sellers made over the Platform, assessing fund withdrawal requests from Sellers;
providing logistics and warehousing services (including, without limitation, customs clearance declarations via the Platform);
facilitating customs clearance declarations / applications via the Platform;
assessing and monitoring account security and transaction risks of users of Somphearak, detecting and preventing fraud, money laundering and other security incidents;
sending and serving tailored marketing and advertising that we believe will be of interest to you based on the ways in which you use the Platform, your browsing records, and order history;
performing research or statistical analysis in order to improve the content and layout of the Platform, and to improve the product offerings and services on Somphearak, including, for example, using anonymized data for machine learning purposes;
identifying, developing and marketing and advertising products and services that we believe you will value, including across browsers and devices, in accordance with applicable laws. Cookies or other similar technologies may be used to provide you with advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests (see section E “COOKIES” below). Where we are required by applicable law, we will seek your consent prior to sending you communications for marketing purposes;
if you are a Buyer, we will share details of the last viewed products on the Platform to enable Sellers, their respective affiliates and/or their third-party services provider to contact you with details of products and/or services that might interest you. You can opt not to share this information with Sellers via the Buyer Privacy Settings here.
We may also use your personal information for other purposes that are not incompatible with the purposes we have disclosed to you (such as archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes, or statistical purposes) if and where this is permitted by applicable data protection laws.
C. DISCLOSURE OR SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We may disclose (or provide access to) personal information to the following categories of recipients:
Other Platform Users where necessary in connection with the facilitation of purchases and communications made between you and the other users.
Third party business partners, service providers and/or affiliates of Somphearak engaged by us or working with us to assist us to provide services to you or who otherwise process personal information for purposes described in this Privacy Policy or notified to you when we collect your personal information. Categories of these partners or service providers include:
Members of Somphearak and their respective affiliates and/or their designated service providers that work with us to provide processing services such as software, tools, systems and messaging services for purposes described in this Privacy Policy;
our business partners (for example, in order for them to provide you with discounts or offers that may interest you);
marketing and advertising platforms, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and providers of analytics services relating to users’ behavior, in order to tailor the content you see when visiting our Platform. These platforms may combine information they collect on our Platform with data on their platforms and data they collect from other websites or through other sources in order to conduct targeted advertising. The processing activities of these third party marketing platforms are governed by their own privacy policies, not this Privacy Policy;
payment service providers who collect and process personal information to assist with settling the payments for transactions or process withdrawal requests for Sellers. The activities of payment service providers may be governed by their own privacy policies, not this Privacy Policy;
credit risk assessment providers to conduct risk assessment on Sellers to determine whether a Seller can be permitted to make a fund withdrawal;
logistics partners for providing delivery services for Buyers, including return and exchange of products, and warehousing services for Sellers;
custom agents for customs clearances purposes;
cloud computing service providers to provide cloud storage services;
customer service providers to provide after-sale services;
risk control service providers to assess the security of users’ accounts and transaction risks; and
third party rating / reviewing service providers to carry out reviews of our services with customers if you choose to participate in reviewing or rating Somphearak products and/or services;
To our professional advisers, law enforcement agencies, insurers, government and regulatory and other organizations where we believe it is necessary to comply with applicable laws or to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights or protect your vital interests or those of any other person, we may also disclose and transfer your personal information or as otherwise required or permitted by applicable laws.
To an actual or potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any actual or proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
To any other person with your consent to the disclosure.
D. RETENTION
We retain your personal information as long as we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so for example to provide services or products to you, or as required or permitted by applicable laws, such as tax and accounting laws.
When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.
E. COOKIES
This section explains how we use cookies and similar technologies (we'll refer to them collectively as "cookies") to recognize you when you visit our Platform. It explains what these technologies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control them.
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser and stored on your computer's or mobile device’s hard drive. If you do not de-activate or erase the cookie, each time you use the same browser or mobile device to access the Platform, our web servers will be notified of your visit to the Platform and in turn we may have knowledge of your visit and the pattern of your usage.
Cookies set by the website or app owner (in this case, Somphearak) are called "first party cookies". Cookies set by parties other than the website owner are called "third party cookies". Third party cookies enable third party features or functionality to be provided on or through the website (e.g. like advertising, interactive content and analytics). The parties that set these third party cookies can recognize your device both when it visits the website in question and also when it visits certain other websites.
Cookies can also be categorized as session cookies (which are erased once you close the browser or shut down the device) and persistent cookies (which remain even after closing the browser or shutting down the device/application and which are activated each time you visit the Platform). The session cookies use encrypted data to authenticate you. The persistent cookies do not store account numbers or passwords. We use both session cookies and persistent cookies.
Why we use cookies?
We use first and third party cookies for several reasons. Some cookies are required for technical and/or security reasons in order for our Platform to operate, and we refer to these as "essential" or "strictly necessary" cookies. First party cookies are mainly served to enable basic functionality on our Platform; including web analytics cookies that help us understand how users use our web pages and how we can improve their use. For example we use essential or strictly necessary cookies to enable us to remember goods added to your Somphearak shopping basket and to recognize you when you sign into your Somphearak account.
In addition we also use social media cookies. You may register for Platform membership and "share" Platform content through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes we embed videos from websites like YouTube. These websites have their own privacy policies which govern their use of information, which you can find on the respective websites.
We also use cookies to enable us to track and target the interests of Platform visitors to enhance the experience on our Platform by researching visiting patterns and conduct interest-based advertising; assisting our partners to track user visits to the Platforms; and to track progress and participation in promotions. We use first and third party cookies for these purposes.
What about other tracking technologies, like web beacons?
Cookies are not the only way to recognise or track visitors to our Platform. We may use other, similar technologies from time to time, like web beacons (sometimes called "tracking pixels" or "clear gifs"). These are tiny graphics files that contain a unique identifier that enable us to recognise when someone has visited our Platform or opened an e-mail that we have sent them. This allows us, for example, to monitor the traffic patterns of users from one page within our Platform to another, to deliver or communicate with cookies, to understand whether you have come to our Platform from an online advertisement displayed on a third-party website, to improve site performance, and to measure the success of e-mail marketing campaigns. In many instances, these technologies are reliant on cookies to function properly, and so declining cookies will impair their functioning.
F. MINORS
The Sites and their contents are not targeted to minors (those under the age of 18) and we do not intend to sell any of our products or services to minors. If a minor has provided us with Personal Data without parental or guardian consent, the parent or guardian should contact dataprotection@somphearak.com to remove the information.
G. SECURITY MEASURES
We employ commercially reasonable security methods to prevent unauthorized access to the Sites, to maintain data accuracy and to ensure the correct use of the information we hold.
For registered users of the Sites, some of your information can be viewed and edited through your account, which is protected by a password. We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. Our personnel will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or in an unsolicited email. If you share a computer with others, you should not choose to save your log-in information (e.g., user ID and password) on that shared computer. Remember to sign out of your account and close your browser window when you have finished your session.
No data transmission over the internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be perfectly secure. As a result, while we try to protect the information we hold for you, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk.
H. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make. We will obtain your consent to any material Privacy Policy changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.
Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be communicated by us posting an amended Privacy Policy on the Platform. Once posted on the Platform, the new Privacy Policy will be effective immediately. You can see when this Privacy Notice was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Notice.
Legal basis for data processing
We process personal information for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, as described above. Our legal basis for processing personal information will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. However, we will normally collect and process personal information about you only where it is:
necessary to comply with legal requirements (for example, to comply with applicable accounting rules and to make mandatory disclosures to law enforcement);
necessary for our legitimate interests and not overridden by your rights; and/or
where it is based on your consent.
If we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), this interest will normally be to operate our Platform and services, manage our relationship with you and communicate with you as necessary to provide our services to you and for our legitimate commercial interest, for instance, when responding to your queries, improving our Platform and our services, undertaking marketing, or for the purposes of ensuring the security of our Platform and services and detecting or preventing illegal activities such as fraud. We may have other legitimate interests and if appropriate we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.
If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to enter into a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time. We will advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information). In some instances, you may be required to provide us with personal information for processing as described above, in order for us to be able to provide you all of our services, and for you to use all the features of our Platform.
If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under section I. "HOW TO CONTACT US" below.
International transfers of personal information
In connection with our provision of the Platform and its connected services, we may transfer your personal information to countries outside of the EEA, including to countries that may not provide the same level of data protection as your home country such as the United States and China. We take appropriate steps to ensure that recipients of your personal information are bound to duties of confidentiality and we implement appropriate measures to ensure your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy, such as standard contractual clauses. A copy of those clauses can be requested from dataprotection@somphearak.com.
Your rights
If you are a resident of the EEA, you also have the following data protection rights, which you can exercise at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under section J. "HOW TO CONTACT US" below:
The right to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information.
The right to object to processing of your personal information when it is based on our legitimate interests, and separately the right to object to direct marketing.
The right to ask us, in some situations, to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information.
The right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you. To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided under section I. "HOW TO CONTACT US" below.
If we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
The right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority.
We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
If you are aware of changes or inaccuracies in your information, you should inform us of such changes so that our records may be updated or corrected.
I. HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have any requests, questions or concerns about our use of your personal information and this Privacy Policy, please contact us at dataprotection@somphearak.com.
J. LANGUAGE
If there is any conflict between the English version and another language version of this Privacy Policy, the English version shall prevail.