PRIVACY POLICY

## Privacy and Data Protection Commitment

At SoftGlow Candle, your digital security and personal privacy are important to us. We understand that your personal data deserves protection and respect. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, process, and safeguard your personal information when you browse our storefront, interact with our retail tools, or purchase our candles and candle holders.

We follow data safety principles and use network encryption and secure gateways to support your shopping experience. By accessing our platform or completing a purchase, you acknowledge and agree to the practices outlined in this policy.

Catalog of Information We Collect

To fulfill your purchase requests and support a smooth technical experience, SoftGlow Candle gathers two categories of information from our visitors. We use these data points to administer your orders, improve site functionality, and block malicious traffic.

1. Order Fulfillment Information

When you complete a transaction or attempt to purchase an item through our storefront, we collect billing and identity identifiers. This data includes:

• Identity Data: Your full legal first name and last name.
• Logistical Data: Your physical shipping address and your transactional billing address.
• Financial Data: Credit card brand details, billing zip codes, and related transaction tokens.
• Contact Data: Your primary email address and a telephone number for carrier delivery updates.

2. Digital Device and Technical Information

When you navigate our website, our infrastructure automatically logs technical metrics transmitted by your web browser. This includes:

• Network Identifiers: Your Internet Protocol (IP) address.
• Software Configurations: Your browser type, software versions, language preferences, and referral source webpages.
• Chronological Data: Your time zone settings and date/time stamps of your visit.
• Interactivity Records: Data about product pages you view, items you place in your shopping cart, and search queries on our site.
• Persistent Identifiers: Cookies, web beacons, and tracking pixels within our platform.

How Your Information is Utilized

SoftGlow Candle follows a principle of data minimization. We process your personal data only when we have a lawful basis to do so. Your data is used for the following tasks:

• Transactional Fulfillments: Processing credit card authorizations, calculating taxes, validating free shipping thresholds, and generating digital purchase invoices.
• Logistical Dispatches: Sharing your delivery address with our carrier networks to route and deliver your candles and candle holders.
• Customer Communication: Sending order confirmation emails, tracking links, and responding to customer support inquiries.
• System Optimization: Analyzing visitor trends to refine product layouts, improve page loading speeds, and adjust our home fragrance collection.
• Risk Assessment & Fraud Prevention: Analyzing IP addresses, billing zip codes, and transaction histories to identify and block fraudulent activity and malicious exploits.

Sharing Personal Information & Our Zero-Sale Policy

We do not sell your personal data. SoftGlow Candle has a Zero-Sale Policy:

Our Core Promise: We do not sell, rent, trade, lease, or commercially exploit your personal data, identity details, email addresses, or financial records to any third-party marketing brokers or advertising networks.

To operate our storefront and deliver goods, we share data only with essential third-party processors who are bound by confidentiality contracts:

• E-Commerce Platforms: We use secure e-commerce architecture to manage inventory and process transactions. Your data passes through their encrypted databases.
• Fulfillment Carriers: To ship your orders, your name, telephone number, and destination address are shared with our domestic shipping carriers, including UPS, FedEx, and USPS.
• Legal and Regulatory Compliance: We may share personal information to comply with applicable laws, respond to a subpoena, search warrant, or court order, or to protect the property and safety of SoftGlow Candle and our customers.

Payment Security Framework & PCI-DSS Compliance

We use security protocols to help protect your financial data:

• SSL Encryption: Sensitive financial data and billing inputs transmitted between your device and our checkout are secured using industry-standard 256-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption (AES-256).
• PCI-DSS Compliance: Our processing channels comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).
• Zero Local Storage: SoftGlow Candle does not store your full credit card digits, validation data, or CVV codes on our local servers. Transaction data is tokenized and handled directly by encrypted third-party payment gateways.

Cookies & Behavioral Advertising Controls

• Functional Cookies: We use cookies to run our storefront, preserve shopping cart items, remember language preferences, and analyze website traffic.
• Behavioral Marketing: We may use tools like Google Ads to serve retargeted advertisements based on your browsing history on our site.
• Consumer Control: You can modify your browser settings to decline cookies or notify you when a cookie is issued. You can also opt out of tailored behavioral advertising via the Google Ad Settings Portal or the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) opt-out platform.

Jurisdictional Privacy Rights & Legal Compliance

Our data management practices are designed to comply with consumer privacy frameworks, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Depending on your location, you may have the following rights:

• Right to Know and Access: Request a summary of the personal information we have collected about you.
• Right to Rectification: Request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete personal details.
• Right to Delete (Right to Erase): Request that we delete your personal identifiers, order history, and contact logs, subject to tax and legal exceptions.
• Exercising Your Rights: To exercise these rights, email us at [email protected]. We will verify your identity and respond within the legally required time frames. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

Data Retention & Minors Protection

• Data Retention: When you complete a transaction, we retain your order history, invoice details, and contact data for accounting, audit, and tax compliance purposes. We keep this data unless you request its deletion.
• Minors: Our website is not intended for individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors. If a parent or guardian discovers that a minor has provided personal information, please contact us at [email protected], and we will delete the data.

Policy Updates & Revisions

SoftGlow Candle may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal requirements, or platform features. When material updates are made, we will revise the effective date. Your continued use of our website after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

Verifiable Contact Information

If you have questions about our privacy practices, cookie settings, data sharing, or wish to delete your personal information, please contact our data compliance team using the details below: