Privacy policy

In this policy we explain what personal data we process when you visit www.antmastershop.com, make a purchase, create an account, join the loyalty programme or contact us. We also explain what we use it for, who we share it with, how long we keep it and how you can exercise your rights. We apply Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), the Ley Orgánica 3/2018 de Protección de Datos Personales y garantía de los derechos digitales (LOPDGDD, the Spanish Data Protection and Digital Rights Act) and the Ley 34/2002 de servicios de la sociedad de la información (LSSI, the Spanish Information Society Services and E-commerce Act).

1. Data controller

  • Controller: Mario Cascado Nieto, sole trader, trading as AntMaster.
  • Tax ID (NIF): 77498083C
  • Address: Plaza Bari 14, 30319 Cartagena (Murcia), Spain.
  • Email: info@antmastershop.com
  • Phone: +34 634 716 082

We do not have a data protection officer, because the law does not require us to appoint one. If you have any questions about your data, write to us at the email address above.

2. What data we process

We only process the data we need for each purpose. Depending on how you use the shop, it may include:

  • Identification and contact details: first name and surname, email address, phone number, and shipping and billing addresses.
  • Order data:
    • products and amounts;
    • whether you choose shipping or collection from the workshop;
    • delivery instructions and whether you have ticked the “Hold my shipment” option;
    • shipping status and tracking;
    • returns, withdrawals and claims.
  • Payment data: payment method, amount and confirmation. We never see or store your full card number, because it is handled directly by the payment providers. We only see limited data, such as the card type and its last digits.
  • Customer account (optional): email address, name, saved addresses and order history. To sign in, we send you a one-time code by email; we do not use passwords.
  • Loyalty programme: your points and redemptions, your referrals to friends and the actions that earn you points, such as following our Telegram channel.
  • Communications: what you send us through the contact form (name, email, phone number and comment), the shop chat, email or phone. The chat may first reply to you with an automated Shopify artificial intelligence assistant, which tells you so on screen. You can ask to speak to a person at any time.
  • Live arrival guarantee: the photos or videos of the parcel and its contents that you send us when making a claim.
  • Ant exchanges: if you offer us native queens or colonies on the Free Ants page, we process your name, email, country, region or province, the species, the quantities, when you could send them and your comments.
  • Reviews: your name, rating, text and the photos or videos you choose to publish.
  • Gift cards: if you give one as a gift, the recipient’s name and email, and your message. We use this data only to send them the card.
  • Affiliates and partners: if you work with us, your contact details, your social media profiles, the sales attributed to you and the data needed to pay you your commissions.
  • Browsing data: IP address, device, browser, language, pages visited and products you view or add to your cart. If you accept them, also the data collected by analytics and marketing cookies and pixels (see section 9).

We do not ask you for specially protected data, such as health data. Please do not include it in your messages.

Where we get the data from

You give us almost all of it. Some of it comes from other sources:

  • PayPal or Klarna pass us your name, email and address if you pay with them, for example with the PayPal express checkout button.
  • Shopify passes us your name and email if you sign in with Shop, for example in the chat.
  • Carriers tell us how the delivery is going.
  • Payment providers tell us whether a payment has been completed or whether it carries a risk of fraud.
  • If someone gives you a gift card, that person gives us your name and email.
  • If you reach the shop through a link from a friend, an affiliate or a partner, we know who referred you.
  • If you post a review of AntMaster on Google, we show it on our website with your Google name and your rating.

3. What we use your data for and on what legal basis

To perform the contract with you

  • Processing your orders, payments and shipments, and collection from our workshop in Cartagena.
  • Organising the shipment of live animals: departure day, holding the shipment if it is too cold or too hot at the destination, and notifications.
  • Handling returns and withdrawals, the legal guarantee and the live arrival guarantee.
  • If you sign up, managing your customer account and the loyalty programme. Also gift cards.
  • Answering your questions about products and orders, and reviewing the ant exchange proposals you send us.
  • Managing our relationship with affiliates and partners.

Legal basis: the performance of the contract or, before entering into it, the steps you ask us to take. Without this data we cannot process your order or your request. Mandatory fields are marked.

To comply with legal obligations

  • Issuing invoices and meeting our accounting and tax obligations.
  • Respecting the rights that consumer law gives you.
  • Responding to requests from authorities and courts.
  • Handling your data protection requests.

Legal basis: compliance with legal obligations.

With your consent

  • Sending you news and offers by email or SMS. We only do this if you ask us to: by ticking the box at checkout or when signing in to your account, or by leaving your email in the subscription form. You can unsubscribe whenever you want using the link included in every email or by following the instructions in the SMS.
  • If you agreed to receive marketing communications and you start a checkout without completing it, sending you a reminder.
  • Using analytics, personalisation and marketing cookies and pixels. With them we measure visits and campaigns, and show you personalised ads on Google, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok and Pinterest.
  • Publishing your review with your name and the photos or videos you upload.

Legal basis: your consent. You can withdraw it at any time, as easily as you gave it. Withdrawing it does not affect what we did before.

Based on legitimate interest

  • Preventing payment fraud and protecting the shop and customer accounts.
  • If you have bought from us, asking for your opinion on the order after you receive it, with an email inviting you to leave a review. That email may offer you a discount if you upload a photo, so it is also a marketing communication: we only send it to customers, about what they bought, and you can opt out at any time.
  • Showing on the website the public reviews that customers leave us on Google.
  • Answering general questions that are not related to an order.
  • Defending ourselves against possible claims.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest. These are reasonable uses that a customer can expect and that do not override your rights. For review requests, the LSSI also allows us to write to customers about products similar to those they bought, as long as they do not object. You can object whenever you want: write to us at info@antmastershop.com or, in the case of review requests, use the link included in that same email.

Automated decisions

We do not make decisions that significantly affect you without a person being involved. Payment providers automatically analyse the fraud risk of each payment and may decline some payments; this is necessary in order to complete the purchase. If this happens to you, write to us: a person will review your case, you will be able to give us your point of view and we will help you complete the order. Klarna decides on its own whether to grant you instalment payments, according to its own policy. If you accept marketing cookies, advertising platforms may infer your interests in order to show you ads.

4. How long we keep your data

  • Orders and invoices: 6 years from the end of the financial year, as required by commercial and tax law. This includes returns, withdrawals, guarantees and claims. If a claim is ongoing, we keep them until it is resolved and the time limits for legal action have expired.
  • Customer account: for as long as you keep it open. If you ask us to close it, we delete it. We only keep the order data described in the previous point.
  • Loyalty programme: for as long as you are a member.
  • Marketing communications: until you unsubscribe. After that, we keep your email or phone number on a suppression list, only so that we do not contact you again, and the proof of your consent for 3 years.
  • Questions not related to an order (form, chat or email) and ant exchange proposals that do not lead to an agreement: 1 year from the last message. If the exchange leads to an agreement, we keep it as an order.
  • Reviews: for as long as they are published. You can ask us to remove yours. Google reviews are shown for as long as they remain published on Google.
  • Affiliates and partners: for as long as the partnership lasts. After that, we keep payment data for 6 years.
  • Cookies: the period stated in the Cookie Policy.

If we no longer use certain data but the law requires us to keep it, we block it. It can then only be accessed at the request of a judge or a public authority, or to defend ourselves against a claim. When that period ends, we delete it.

5. Who we share your data with

We do not sell your data. We only share it with the companies listed here. Those that process it on our behalf have a contract that requires them to protect it and to use it only to provide their service to us. Others, such as payment providers or advertising platforms, also process it for their own purposes, as independent controllers and in accordance with their own policies.

  • Shopify (Shopify International Limited, Ireland, and companies in its group). It is our platform and handles:
    • hosting the shop and customer accounts;
    • payments with Shopify Payments;
    • the chat (Shopify Inbox) and its automated assistant;
    • the shop’s emails and SMS messages;
    • in-person sales (Shopify POS);
    • partner management (Shopify Collabs).
  • Payment methods: Shopify Payments and its payment institutions (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, BLIK and MobilePay), as well as PayPal. PayPal, Klarna, Apple and Google also process your data as independent controllers. They do so, for example, to verify your identity or, in Klarna’s case, to assess instalment payments.
  • Carriers: the companies that deliver your order, such as SEUR in mainland Spain, Correos in the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, and the relevant international carrier in the rest of the European Union. They receive your name, address, phone number and email in order to deliver the order and keep you informed.
  • ParcelPanel: manages the order tracking page and shipping notifications. If you accept analytics cookies, it also receives data about your browsing in the shop for its statistics.
  • Loox: sends review requests and publishes reviews.
  • Reputon: shows our shop’s Google reviews on the website.
  • Smile.io: manages the loyalty programme and referrals. If you accept analytics cookies, it also receives data about your browsing in the shop for its statistics.
  • hCaptcha (Intuition Machines): protects our forms against spam and checks that you are not a robot when you submit one.
  • GoAffPro: manages the affiliate programme. It records which affiliate referred you to the shop in order to calculate their commission.
  • Google (Google Ireland Limited), Meta (Meta Platforms Ireland Limited), TikTok (TikTok Technology Limited) and Pinterest (Pinterest Europe Limited): analytics and advertising, only if you accept those cookies. With your consent, we send them data about your visit and your purchases, such as the products you view or buy, and, to measure ads more accurately, your encrypted email or phone number. This data may be sent from your browser or directly from Shopify. When their pixels collect and send this data for advertising, we are joint controllers with each platform; from that point on, each platform is responsible for how it uses the data. You can exercise your rights with us or with the platform. Their policies: Google, Meta, TikTok and Pinterest.
  • Google (Google Workspace): hosts our email.
  • Our professional advisers, for example our accounting firm. They are bound by confidentiality.
  • Public authorities, courts and law enforcement, when the law requires us to.

If you use Shopify’s Shop app, sign in with Shop or use its accelerated checkout options, Shopify also processes your data as an independent controller. The same applies to chat messages, which Shopify may use to provide and improve that service. All of this is in accordance with its privacy policy.

6. International transfers

Some providers have their headquarters or servers outside the European Economic Area, for example in Canada or the United States. We only accept this if one of these GDPR safeguards is in place:

  • An adequacy decision of the European Commission, which recognises that the country protects data to an equivalent standard. This is the case for Canada, where Shopify Inc. has its headquarters. It is also the case for US companies that have joined the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
  • Standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, with additional measures where needed. We use them in all other cases.

TikTok states that companies in its group located in other countries, including China, may access the data collected by its pixel.

If you would like to know which countries your data goes to with each provider, or to receive a copy of these safeguards, write to us at info@antmastershop.com.

7. Your rights

  • Access: to know whether we process your data and to receive a copy.
  • Rectification: to correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • Erasure: to ask us to delete your data, for example when it is no longer necessary.
  • Objection: to object to uses based on legitimate interest. You can always object to marketing communications and advertising.
  • Restriction: to ask us to keep your data without using it, for example while we check whether it is accurate or decide on your objection, or when you need it for a claim.
  • Portability: to receive the data you gave us in electronic format, or to ask us to send it to another company.
  • Withdraw your consent at any time.
  • Not to be subject to automated decisions that produce legal effects concerning you or significantly affect you, and to ask for a person to review the decision.

How to exercise them

Write to us at info@antmastershop.com with the subject “Data protection”, or by post to Plaza Bari 14, 30319 Cartagena (Murcia), Spain. Tell us which right you want to exercise. If we have reasonable doubts about your identity, we will ask for the minimum needed to confirm it, for example that you write to us from the email address of your account or order.

It is free of charge. We reply within one month at most. If the case is complex, this period may be extended by two further months, and we will let you know beforehand.

To stop receiving marketing emails, use the link included in every email. To change your cookie choices, use the “Cookie preferences” link in the website footer.

Complaints to the supervisory authority

If you believe we have not handled your data properly, you can lodge a complaint with the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (www.aepd.es, C/ Jorge Juan 6, 28001 Madrid), or with the data protection authority of your EU country. We would appreciate it if you wrote to us first so that we can try to resolve the matter together, but this is not mandatory.

8. Minors

If you are under 14, do not give us any personal data, do not create an account and do not subscribe: your mother, father or legal guardian must do it. If we discover that we hold data of a child under 14 without that consent, we delete it. For purchases, follow the Terms of Service: if you are a minor, the purchase must be made or authorised by your mother, father or guardian.

9. Cookies and similar technologies

On the website we use cookies and similar technologies, such as pixels or the browser’s local storage. Necessary cookies are always set, because the shop does not work without them. Personalisation, analytics and marketing cookies are only activated if you accept them in the cookie banner, where you can accept them all, reject them all or choose by category.

First-party cookies are managed by our shop, which runs on Shopify. If you accept the relevant categories, Google, Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, GoAffPro, Shopify Collabs, Smile.io and ParcelPanel also set cookies or receive data about your browsing. The payment buttons (PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay and Klarna) and hCaptcha, which protects the forms against spam, only use what they need in order to work.

The full list, showing who sets each cookie, what it is for and how long it lasts, is in the Cookie Policy. You can change your choice whenever you want using “Cookie preferences” in the website footer, or delete cookies in your browser.

10. Social media and links to other websites

We have profiles on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and a Telegram channel. We also have business accounts on Facebook and Pinterest, which we use for ads and our catalogue. If you interact with us there, each social network processes your data according to its own policy. We only see your public profile data and the messages you send us, and we use them to reply to you.

Social networks give us aggregated statistics about our pages. For our Facebook and Instagram pages, we are joint controllers with Meta for those statistics.

Our website may link to other websites. We are not responsible for how they process your data.

11. Security

We apply technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk:

  • the website uses an encrypted connection (HTTPS);
  • payments are processed on platforms certified under the PCI DSS standard;
  • only the people who need it have access to customer data;
  • we require equivalent measures from our providers.

No system is infallible. If a security breach posed a high risk to you, we would notify you without delay.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy if our services, our providers or the law change. We will publish each new version on this page with its date. If the change is significant, we will also notify you by email or with a clearly visible notice on the website.