Privacy Policy

COSCO Privacy Policy

Effective 16th December 2024

At COSCO, we prioritize your privacy while enriching lives through technology. This policy explains the personal information we collect, how we use it, how we share it, and your options to control it.

Scope

This policy applies to COSCO stores, events, and digital platforms (websites and apps) owned or operation by COSCO and any of our subsidiaries, unless that property or subsidiary has its own privacy policy (which would instead apply).

Personal Information Options

We provide the following options to our customers:

  • Access: We’ll give you a report on the personal information that COSCO has about you. Just submit an access request to get started.
  • Deletion: You can ask us to delete certain personal information we have about you by submitting a deletion request. Exceptions apply.
  • Advertising Opt-Outs: We’ve provided the opportunity to make an opt-out choice for targeted advertising and “Do not sell my personal information”.

Information We Collect

We gather information in three ways:

  1. Directly from you – This could be as part of your interactions with COSCO personnel, such as at our retail stores or during in-home visits, or when you provide information though our website and mobile app. The personal information we collect directly from you may include things such as:

· Name

· Postal address

· Email address

· Phone number

· Payment card number and other payment information

· Your COSCO member ID

· Survey responses

· Chat submissions

· Reviews and other content you post on our website, mobile app, in publicly accessible blogs and other forums (be aware that anyone who accesses these posts may view, collect, and use the information you provide)

· Health information (for example, if you purchase a hearing aid)

· Location information (such as when you ask us to tell you about nearby stores)

· Demographic and lifestyle information (for example, if you sign up for a registry or birthday list)

· National Identity Card Number (for example, if you return a product or apply for credit)

  

2. Observing behaviour – either in the “real world” or through our website and mobile app

Store cameras & sensors Our stores may use cameras and sensors for asset protection and other operational purposes, such as measuring traffic patterns and protecting and improving our business.

Information collected automatically Our website and mobile app are not designed to respond to “do not track” requests from browsers. We may collect information about your digital interactions with us including, for example:

· Type of device and/or browser you’re using

· IP address

· Browsing behavior while visiting our website and mobile app

· The URLs of the websites visited before visiting our site (these are called “referring URLs”)

· IMEI/UDID (a numeric identifier for your mobile device)

· MAC address (another kind of numeric identifier for your mobile device)

· IDFA (Apple’s ID for advertising, a randomly generated number)

· AAID (Google Android’s unique ID for advertising)

· Location information

Most current operating systems on mobile devices require that a user give permission for a specific app to collect specific location information—don’t give our app permission if you don’t want that information collected. Mobile devices also often provide users with the ability to adjust settings related to sharing specific location information. Note that adjusting these settings does not completely eliminate the ability of others to develop location information about your device (such as non-specific location information derived from IP addresses).

Collection by others    COSCO and our partners use cookies, pixels, tags, or similar technologies on our website and mobile app. We may permit third-party service providers to collect and process some information from our website and mobile app through these or other automated means. We may share personal information with those providers and may have similar arrangements with interest-based advertisers. See above regarding “Advertising Opt-Outs” to learn more on how you can limit this collection and sharing and below for more on interest-based advertising.

Our website and mobile app link to other companies’ websites, many of which have their own privacy policies. Be sure to review the privacy policy on the website you are visiting to understand their privacy practices—our policy will not apply to others’ digital properties.

3. Other sources

We may receive information about you from other sources, independent of you. For example, we may receive information about you as a gift recipient or as the person designated by another customer to pick up a purchased item at our store. We may receive information relating to you from our financial-services partners, data brokers or other third parties.

Use

We will use information about you to meet your expectations, give you a great experience with COSCO, and improve our business to better serve you and others in the future. Some examples of this may include:

    • Identifying you or a device on our website or mobile app to personalize or customize experiences
    • Fulfilling orders and requests for products, services, or information
    • Processing refunds, returns, and exchanges
    • Tracking and confirming orders
    • Delivering and installing products
    • Managing and providing benefits of our COSCO Memberships programs
    • Conducting research and analytics
    • Engaging in internal uses with the purpose of enhancing existing or creating new products, services, digital properties, and technologies
    • Undertaking activities to verify or maintain the quality or safety of a service or device that is owned, manufactured, manufactured for, or controlled by us, and to improve, upgrade, or enhance a service or device that is owned, manufactured, manufactured for, or controlled by us

We will also use information related to you in efforts to protect you, our customers, COSCO, and other stakeholders. Examples may include detecting and responding to security incidents, protecting against and responding to malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, and prosecuting those responsible for that activity. We also may use such information to comply with and enforce applicable legal requirements, relevant industry standards and our policies.

We may use location information collected by website or mobile app to, for example, help you locate the closest COSCO store, use special mobile features within some of our stores, or provide you with helpful messaging in our mobile app. We also may use this information to provide you with personalized content, information, or notices.

Finally, we will seek to tell you about technology and other products and services that we think you will find useful through marketing, advertising, and other communications. That means we will use information about you to predict what you may find useful (or just fun and interesting). We may use those predictions to choose marketing messages to send you on our website or mobile app and monitor the response to that message.

Sharing

We may combine or share information among current or future COSCO companies, including affiliates and subsidiaries. We may share your information with third parties to perform services on our behalf such as:

  • Fulfilling orders and delivering packages
  • Scheduling and performing product installations
  • Providing customer care and technical support, including servicing products
  • Maintaining our COSCO Memberships programs
  • Sending marketing communications and providing advertising services
  • Measurement and reporting of advertising frequency, attribution, and performance
  • Personalizing customer experience on our digital properties
  • Fulfilling subscription services
  • Conducting research and analysis
  • Processing credit card payments
  • Detecting fraud and other illegal activity

We also may share personal information in connection with co-branded product or service offerings (including sharing personal information with business partners to validate offers). Additionally, we may share personal information in connection with financial products or services related to our business, such as private-label credit cards

Sometimes we may be required to share personal information for legal reasons, for example, if we are required to do so by a regulation, court order, subpoena or other legal process. We may also share information when we believe it is necessary to comply with the law or to respond to a government request, or when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect COSCO, our customers, or others.

We may share personal information in the event of a corporate sale, merger, acquisition, joint venture, reorganization, divestiture, dissolution, liquidation, or similar event.

More on interest-based advertising & related information sharing

You can opt out of interest-based advertising from third-party providers

As a general rule, when we share personal information the contract between us and the receiving party places specific limits on how they use the information in support of COSCO. However, this general rule does not apply to some information sharing for advertising purposes. For example, we may share browsing history from our website or our prediction of your preferences/interests and personal information (like a device identifier or IP address, for example) with third parties to support providing you or a device relevant ads. Some recipients may combine this information with assumptions based on other information they have collected in order to tailor ads to you or the identified device.

As another example, we may share consumer purchase history with social-media companies so that, if you have an account with that company’s website or mobile app, they can improve the performance of our advertising on their website or mobile app and we can better assess how those advertisements performed. Some of these companies will combine this information with other personal information for their own purposes, independent of COSCO, but are obligated by law to follow their own privacy policy.

See above regarding “Advertising Opt-Outs” to learn more about asking us to limit this type of sharing for advertising purposes.

Social media features

Our website and mobile app may include ways to interact and share using social media, through features such as a “thumbs up” button, “share this” button, or interactive mini-programs that run on our website (“widgets”). These features may collect information such as your IP address or the page you are visiting on our website and may set cookies to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features can be hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the social media company providing the feature.

How we protect information about you

We use a variety of cybersecurity measures designed, under a risk-based approach, to ensure the confidentiality of information about you from bad actors. However, as set forth in the applicable terms of use for each digital property, we cannot and do not guarantee the security of information we collect.

You also can do your part to help protect the information you provide to us. Create a strong password. Use that password only on our website or mobile app and not on other sites or for other accounts. And do not share your password with anyone—especially anyone claiming to work with us. We would never contact you and ask for your password—ever.

Protecting children’s privacy

We do not knowingly solicit or collect personal information from children under the age of 18 without parental consent. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 18 without parental consent, we will promptly delete that information. Our digital properties are not intended for minors under age 18 and we also ask third parties who share personal information with us, including data brokers, not to include any information concerning children or minors under the age of 18 if possible. If you believe we are processing information about a child or minor without parental consent, please contact us as specified in the “How to contact us” section below.

Please note that in some cases we may not be able to remove content posted on our website and mobile app, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why. Additionally, even if we are able to anonymize or make content or information no longer visible on our digital properties at your request, this cannot ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or information from the internet.

Privacy Policy updates

We may need to update our Privacy Policy as we and our customers grow and evolve. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email (sent to the email address specified in your account) or by means of posting a notice on this website prior to the change becoming effective, as well as inform you of any choices you may have with respect to these changes.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or practices, please contact us.

Phone              : 071 2 888 887

Email               : support@mycosco.lk

You also may contact us at the above to stop receiving direct mail from us. If you wish to make an Access, Deletion, or Advertising Opt-Out request as discussed at the start of this policy, you or your authorized representative must follow the methods provided at the specific linked pages. The methods we’ve established are either technically necessary or designed to ensure, under a risk-based approach, the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of personal information to a degree that emailing or writing us with such a request cannot provide.