Privacy notice

Who we are

⁦Salt and Sandy Trading for Handicrafts W.L.L.⁩ (سولت أند ساندي لتجارة المشغولات اليدوية ذ.م.م), a small online shop in Doha, is responsible for your data. E-commerce licence No. ⁦343096⁩, address: ⁦Doha, Qatar⁩.

Questions about your data go to ⁦the owners of Salt & Sandy⁩ at privacy@saltandsandy.qa or on WhatsApp at +974 3336 1212. We reply in English. We translate Arabic messages on our own iPhones (Apple Translate, on-device), so they aren't sent to a translation service.

What we collect and why

1. Your order: your name, Qatar mobile, email and delivery address (we need them to take and deliver it), delivery notes and instructions, the text to print, and what you bought and paid. We use your mobile number to contact you about your order, by a call or WhatsApp, and the courier uses it to deliver. Your address comes in parts: area, street, building or compound, flat or villa, floor and, if you give them, the numbers on your building's blue plate. We also keep the proof of delivery: the courier's booking reference, or who received the parcel from the courier (a role or a first name). If a delivery fails, we note what happened. We may also note what we agree with you by WhatsApp or email, such as an accepted delay. We keep your two checkout ticks (our Terms, and 18 or over), with their date, time and the version of the wording. For a refund by bank transfer: the account name and IBAN you give us. Why: to make, deliver and charge for your order, keep you updated, and handle cancellations, returns and refunds. We keep some of it after delivery or cancellation (How long we keep it, items 2 and 3). That lets us answer a card dispute or a claim about the item within its legal time limit. Legal reason: our contract with you; for the proof of delivery and what we keep afterwards, our legitimate interest.
2. Your delivery location, if you share it at checkout: your phone's location, a pin you place on the map, or a Google Maps link you paste. We ask for it first because many addresses in Qatar are hard to find, and we use it to work out your delivery fee by distance. Only an exact point counts: a Google Maps link that doesn't show one is priced as without a location. It goes to our own server when you set it, before you order, and we keep it only if you place the order. You can choose not to share it and give your full address instead (street and building, or your blue plate numbers); delivery then costs the fee for the longest distance, and checkout shows you what that costs before you choose. Your order keeps the fee and whether it was worked out from a location, never a distance. Legal reason: your consent, which you give by sharing it; for working out the fee, also the steps you ask us to take before our contract. You can ask us to remove it at any time, unless a complaint about the order is open. If you don't ask, it is deleted with your street address (How long we keep it, item 2).
3. Invoices and accounts: your name and payments, and for a Fawran or bank transfer the payer's name and account as our bank statement shows them. If we agree another way to pay with you in writing: what we agreed and each payment made that way. Why: our tax and accounting duties. Legal reason: the law requires it.
4. Messages: your WhatsApp number (or username) and profile name, your Instagram username, or your email address, and what we exchange. Why: to answer you and protect our rights. Legal reason: our contract with you, and our legitimate interest.
5. Site visits: your IP address and browser type, in our providers' security logs, to stop fake orders and abuse. Legal reason: our legitimate interest. We use no analytics or tracking.
6. Your account, if you create one: your sign-in email or phone (or the name, email and picture link Google gives us) and saved addresses. Orders you placed with the same email without an account join it once that email is confirmed. Legal reason: our agreement with you. You can delete the account at any time.
7. Age check, for orders over QAR 1,000: a photo of the front of your Qatar ID (or your passport if you don't have a Qatar ID), uploaded on your order page. You may cover all but your name, photo and date of birth. We note the date, who checked, that you're 18 or over, and your year of birth. Why: to sell only to adults, and to prove the check if the order is disputed. Legal reason: our legitimate interest, not your consent.
8. Order links: if we put an order together with you in a chat, the private link we send you holds the items, with your text. If we email you the link, we keep that email address with it until you order from it or it closes (How long we keep it, item 14). Why: so you can check the order and place it yourself. Legal reason: steps you asked us to take before our contract.
9. Sales made outside our website (you buy from us in person or at a stall, or agree it with us on Instagram or WhatsApp and pay outside the website): your name; your phone (any country) and email, only if you give them; what you bought, the amounts, how and when you paid (with a transfer's bank reference), the delivery dates and our notes on the sale; and your invoice (its number starts with INV-M), with its paper copy if we wrote one first. If you give an email, we email you the invoice and updates about the sale. For a refund by bank transfer: the account name and IBAN you give us. Why: to invoice the sale, take your payments, handle cancellations and refunds, and keep our books. Legal reason: our contract with you; for the invoice and accounts, the law requires it. We keep it as set out in How long we keep it, items 5 and 9 (refund bank details).

If you pay by card, when checkout offers it, your card details go only to our card payment provider; we never see them. We don't ask whose name the text is: please type only the text you want printed. Ordering for someone else? Make sure they're happy for you to give us their contact details.

We never use your data for marketing or to build a profile of you.

Who we share it with, and where

Each gets only what it needs. We never sell your data or share it for marketing.

1. Courier: Snoonu (Qatar) delivers our orders. To deliver, the courier gets the order number, your name, phone, address, delivery notes and instructions (including how to hand it over), the delivery date, the amount to collect if we agreed you pay at the door, and your delivery location (as a Google Maps link) if you shared it. Never your text.
2. Our card payment provider, for card payments on its own page, when checkout offers card payment. From us it gets only the order number, the amount and the link back to your order page. We name it here before we offer card payment.
3. QNB (Qatar), our bank, for Fawran, bank transfers and refunds.
4. Render (Germany) runs our website, with Cloudflare carrying the traffic.
5. Supabase (India) holds our database and files, including accounts and ID photos.
6. Maily, run by Qboxmail (Italy, European Union), holds our email and sends your order emails and invoices.
7. Meta runs WhatsApp and Instagram, outside Qatar. Our chats with you stay in the WhatsApp Business and Instagram apps on the shop's phone, and Meta processes them under its own terms.
8. Maps: when the map shows at checkout (you choose it, or it opens so you can move the point your phone gave), your browser loads it from OpenFreeMap. When we or the courier open your location, Google Maps receives that point. Both may be outside Qatar.
9. Our accountant and auditor in Qatar see our accounts, including invoices with your name. Authorities, such as the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the General Tax Authority or a court, get data when Qatar law requires it.
10. Translation: for a sale made outside our website, the item descriptions we type may be translated into Arabic for the invoice by DeepL (a German company), or by Anthropic as a backup. They get only those descriptions, which we write in product words, without your name, contact details or text.

Only the two owners see ID photos. We share one only if needed in a dispute about that order: with our card payment provider for a card payment, a court or the police.

Render, Supabase, Cloudflare, Meta, Google and Anthropic are US companies. Your data is stored and processed outside Qatar, which Qatar's law allows when it stays protected. Our safeguards: our providers' data-protection terms, encryption, an admin area only the two owners use, and the time limits below.

How long we keep it

1. The email on your order: deleted 30 days after delivery, cancellation or the day we close an order we couldn't deliver. A sign-in email stays with your account (item 11).
2. Your street address (all its parts, blue plate numbers included), delivery location, delivery notes and instructions, and the proof of delivery: deleted 180 days after that same day. We keep them this long to answer a card dispute or a claim that a parcel didn't arrive. Our own notes on a failed delivery, or on another way to pay we agreed with you, go then too. The agreement itself and its payments stay in our accounts (item 5). Only your area stays.
3. Your text: deleted 12 months after that same day, so we can deal with a fault or a claim about the item. The order record then describes the item without your text.
4. While a complaint about the order is open, we keep items 1 to 3 until it is closed. An order that is never paid isn't cancelled by itself: it stays open until you or we cancel it, and the times in items 1 to 3 count from then.
5. Order records (for every order: name, phone, area, items, payments, delivery details and checkout ticks), invoices and our accounts: 10 years after the end of the financial year they belong to, as Qatar's tax rules require. They stay longer while a dispute about them is open. Invoices never show your text. Notes of what we agreed with you by WhatsApp or email stay with the order record too, unless you ask us to delete them. The record of a sale made outside our website and its paper invoice are kept for the same time; the email on it is deleted 30 days after we record the sale as delivered or cancelled, and kept longer while a complaint about the sale is open (as in item 4). A draft of such a sale, saved before we issue its invoice, is deleted 30 days after we last saved it.
6. Emails about an order: 30 days after delivery or cancellation.
7. WhatsApp and Instagram chats: we don't delete them on a timer. They stay in those apps on the shop's phone until you ask us to delete them; we then delete our copy within 30 days. What Meta keeps is set by its own terms.
8. Complaint photos: until the complaint is closed. Sent on WhatsApp or Instagram: as item 7. A short complaint log, without your text, stays with the order record.
9. Refund bank details: deleted with the email they came in, once the refund is made.
10. Privacy requests: our record stays with the order record, or 3 years if there is no order.
11. Your account: until you delete it. Past orders then stay as order records, no longer linked to you.
12. Your age-check ID photo: 12 months after delivery, cancellation, the day we close an order we couldn't deliver, or any refund, whichever is latest. If the order is cancelled before we start making it: the same day. It stays longer only until any complaint, card payment dispute or legal claim about the order is closed. We then keep only a note: the date, who checked, 18 or over, and your year of birth. An ID showing you're under 18 is deleted the same day, and the note keeps no year of birth.
13. Our providers' logs and backups: a short period each provider sets.
14. Order links: deleted 30 days after the link closes (your order is paid or cancelled, or the link is declined or stopped). If you decline it or we stop it, its items and your text are cleared at once. The email address we sent it to is deleted as soon as you order from it, decline it or we stop it.

Cookies

We use only the cookies the site needs. NEXT_LOCALE remembers your language until you close your browser. Cookies starting “sb-” keep you signed in until you sign out or for about 13 months. If you open an order link we sent you, ss_link and ss_link_ui remember that link on your browser for up to 30 days. Any others are for the shop's owners only.

None of them track you or show ads, so there is no cookie banner. We will ask you before adding any other cookie.

How we protect it

The site works only over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), and stored data is encrypted. Only the two owners can open our admin area, with two-step sign-in. ID photos are kept in private storage, with location and device details removed.

If a breach of your data could seriously harm you, we tell you and the National Cyber Security Agency within 72 hours of finding out.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

1. Tell you what data we hold about you, with a free copy.
2. Correct it. To change your text before your payment is received, use “Change order” on your order page.
3. Delete it. We delete everything we don't have to keep. Some things stay even if you ask or object. Order records, invoices and our accounts stay 10 years after the end of the financial year they belong to, for tax. An ID photo stays while it could be evidence in a dispute about that order (How long we keep it, item 12). We tell you when it will be deleted.
4. Stop a use of your data you object to, unless the law requires it.
5. Withdraw any consent you've given.

If we ever sent a courier wrong data about you and corrected it, we tell you.

How to ask: with an account, on your Account page. Otherwise message us on WhatsApp or Instagram from the number or account you ordered or wrote from, or email privacy@saltandsandy.qa, with your order number if you have one. Bought outside our website and gave us no phone or email? Give us your invoice number (INV-M…), the amount, when and how you paid and, for a Fawran or bank transfer, the name it was paid from. We check it's you, then answer within 30 days, free. If we can't do what you ask, we say why.

Adults only

Our site and accounts are for adults: you confirm you're 18 or over when you order, and we ask nothing about children. If someone under 18 ordered without a parent's or guardian's permission, we may cancel the order and refund the account that paid. If a child gave us personal data, tell us and we will delete it.

Complaints about your data

Tell us first, at privacy@saltandsandy.qa or on WhatsApp at +974 3336 1212. We usually reply within 1 working day and aim to resolve it within 5 working days.

You can also complain to the National Cyber Security Agency: ⁦ncsa.gov.qa⁩.