Privacy policy

SouthernStates.com Customer Privacy Policy

Last updated October 9, 2026

Southern States Cooperative, Inc (“SSC,” "we", "us" or "our") operates the online store and website located at www.southernstates.com (the “site”), including all related information, content, features, tools, products and services, to provide you, the customer, with a curated shopping experience (collectively, the "Services"). SouthernStates.com, including the online store, is powered by Shopify, which enables us to provide the Services to you. This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, and disclose your personal information when you visit, use, or make a purchase or other transaction using the Services or otherwise communicate with us. If there is a conflict between our Terms of Service [Link] and this Privacy Policy, this Privacy Policy controls with respect to the collection, processing, and disclosure of your personal information.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By using and accessing any of the Services, you acknowledge that you have read this Privacy Policy, understand and agree to the collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Personal Information We Collect or Process

When we use the term "personal information," we are referring to information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is reasonably capable of being associated with, you, whether alone or in combination with other information available to us. Personal information does not include publicly available information from government records or information that is collected anonymously or that has been de-identified, so that it cannot identify or be reasonably linked to you. We may collect or process, and, in the past 12 months we have collected or processed, the following categories of personal information, including inferences drawn from this personal information, depending on how you interact with the Services, where you live, and as permitted or required by applicable law:

Identifiers including your name, address, billing address, shipping address, phone number, email address, account username.
Commercial information including financial account numbers, payment card information, financial account information, transaction details (including the items you view, put in your cart, add to your wishlist, or purchase, return, exchange or cancel and your past transactions), form of payment, payment confirmation and other payment details.
Sensitive information including credit card and debit card numbers, account password, account access security questions, and social security numbers.
Account information including preferences and settings.
Communications with us including the information you include in communications with us, for example, when sending a customer support inquiry or responding to a customer survey.
Device information including information about your device, browser, or network connection, your IP address, and other unique identifiers.
Usage information including information regarding your interaction with the Services, including how and when you interact with or navigate the Services.
Inferences drawn from any of the above to create a profile about you reflecting your preferences.

Personal Information Sources

We may collect personal information from the following sources:

Directly from you including when you create an account online or in-store, visit or use the Services, complete applications or other forms, such as change of address forms and financial statements, communicate with us (including by telephone or in person with our representatives), or otherwise provide us with your personal information.

· Automatically through the Services including from your device when you use our products or services or visit our websites, and through the use of cookies and similar technologies including cookies, pixels, and tags provided by analytics and advertising platforms such as Google, Meta, and LinkedIn. Cookies can be either session cookies or persistent cookies. A session cookie expires when you close your browser and is used to make it easier for you to navigate our Services. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. Our Services use certain cookies that are fundamentally necessary for the Services to function and allow you to use the features of our Services (e.g., loading pages, maintaining session continuity, and submitting forms). We also use cookies that support analytics, performance measurement, and advertising. You can control or disable cookies at the browser level by adjusting your browser settings to refuse all or some cookies, to delete cookies that have already been set, or to alert you when cookies are being placed. Most browsers also offer a private or incognito browsing mode that limits cookie storage. Please note that if you disable or refuse cookies, some parts or features of our Services may not function as intended. If you disable your Cookies setting on your Web browser, the functionality of our Services, site and applications may be limited.

From our service providers including when we engage them to enable certain technology and when they collect or process your personal information on our behalf.
From consumer reporting agencies including when we obtain information related to your credit worthiness and credit history
From our partners or other third parties including from verification of information you provide on applications and other forms, which we obtain from third parties, such as your financial institutions, lenders, creditors and other sources (including, as applicable, with your consent).

How We Use Your Personal Information

Depending on how you interact with us or which of the Services you use, we may use personal information for the following business purposes:

Provide, Tailor, and Improve the Services. We use your personal information to provide you with the Services, including to perform our contract with you, to process your payments, to fulfill your orders (including shipping and delivery logistics), to remember your preferences and items you are interested in, to send notifications to you related to your account, to process purchases, returns, exchanges or other transactions, to create, maintain and otherwise manage your account, to arrange for shipping, to facilitate any returns and exchanges, to enable you to post reviews (to the extent such feature is available), and to create a customized shopping experience for you, such as recommending products related to your purchases. This may include using your personal information to better tailor and improve the site and the Services.
Marketing and Advertising. We use your personal information for marketing and promotional purposes, such as to send marketing, advertising and promotional communications by email, text message or postal mail, and to show you online advertisements for products or services on the Services or other websites, including based on items you previously have purchased or added to your cart and other activity on the Services.
Security and Fraud Prevention. We use your personal information to authenticate your account, to provide a secure payment and shopping experience, detect, investigate or take action regarding possible fraudulent, illegal, unsafe, or malicious activity, protect public safety, and to secure our Services. If you choose to use the Services and register an account, you are responsible for keeping your password and other account credentials safe. You are not permitted to share your username, password or other access details with anyone else.
Communicating with You. We use your personal information to contact you regarding your orders, to provide you with customer support, to be responsive to you, and to provide effective services to you and to maintain our business relationship with you.
Legal Reasons. We use your personal information to comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including requests from law enforcement or government agencies, to investigate or participate in civil discovery, potential or actual litigation, or other adversarial legal proceedings, and to enforce or investigate potential violations of our terms or policies.

Categories of Information Sold or Shared with Third Parties

We do not sell or share Personal information, and in the preceding 12 months we have not sold or shared any Personal Information. Except as expressly set forth in this Privacy Policy, we do not disclose Personal Information to third parties.

Categories of Information Disclosed for a Business Purpose.

In the preceding 12 months, we have disclosed the following categories of personal information for a business purpose with the following categories of third parties:

Categories of Third Parties and Business Purpose for Disclosure

Categories of Personal Information

• Our affiliates within our corporate group;
• Service providers we use to help deliver our products and/or services to you, such as website and ecommerce operations, order fulfillment, payment service providers, warehouses, and delivery companies;
• Business and marketing partners we use to help us run our business, such as marketing agencies or website hosts;
• Third parties approved by you, including shipping or delivery services, social media sites you choose to link your account to or third-party payment providers;
• Credit reporting agencies;
• Our insurers and brokers;
• Our bank[s];

• Identifiers.
• Commercial information
• Device information
• Usage information

How We Disclose Personal Information

As discussed above and more specifically, we may disclose your personal information to third parties for legitimate business purposes subject to this Privacy Policy, including:

With Shopify, vendors and other third parties who perform services on our behalf so that we can provide the Services to you (e.g. IT management, website management, payment processing, data analytics, customer support, cloud storage, fulfillment and shipping).
With business and marketing partners to provide marketing services and advertise to you. For example, we use Shopify to support personalized advertising with third-party services based on your online activity with different merchants and websites. Our business and marketing partners will use your information in accordance with their own privacy notices. Depending on where you reside, you may have a right to direct us not to share information about you to show you targeted advertisements and marketing based on your online activity with different merchants and websites. You can exercise your rights to opt-out of those uses here .
When you direct, request us or otherwise consent to our disclosure of certain information to third parties, such as to ship you products or through your use of social media widgets or login integrations.
With our affiliates or otherwise within our corporate group.
In connection with a business transaction such as a merger or bankruptcy, to comply with any applicable legal obligations (including to respond to subpoenas, search warrants and similar requests), to enforce any applicable terms of service or policies, and to protect or defend the Services, our rights, and the rights of our users or others.

Relationship with Shopify

The Services are hosted by Shopify, which collects and processes personal information about your access to and use of the Services in order to provide and improve the Services for you. Information you submit to the Services will be transmitted to and shared with Shopify as well as third parties that may be located in countries other than where you reside, in order to provide and improve the Services for you. In addition, to help protect, grow, and improve our business, we use certain Shopify enhanced features that incorporate data and information obtained from your interactions with our Store, along with other merchants and with Shopify. To provide these enhanced features, Shopify may make use of personal information collected about your interactions with our store, along with other merchants, and with Shopify. In these circumstances, Shopify is responsible for the processing of your personal information, including for responding to your requests to exercise your rights over use of your personal information for these purposes. To learn more about how Shopify uses your personal information and any rights you may have, you can visit the Shopify Consumer Privacy Policy . Depending on where you live, you may exercise certain rights with respect to your personal information here Shopify Privacy Portal Link.

Relationship with Pandectes

On our store, we use the consent management tool Pandectes GDPR Compliance from Pandectes. This tool enables you to manage consent for data processing via the store, particularly for the setting of cookies, and to exercise your right to revoke consents that have already been given.

The purpose of this data processing is to obtain and document the necessary consents for data processing and to comply with legal obligations. For this purpose, cookies may be used, and the following information may be collected and transmitted to Pandectes: anonymized IP address, date and time of consent, URL from which the consent was given, anonymous, random, encrypted key, and consent status. This consent record itself is not shared with other third parties. Depending on the choices you make in the cookie banner, other information collected through the Services may still be shared with other providers as described in the 'How We Disclose Personal Information' section above.

You can find more information about the terms of use and data protection at Pandectes at: Terms of service and Privacy Policy.

Third Party Websites and Links

The Services may provide links to websites or other online platforms operated by third parties. If you follow links to sites not affiliated or controlled by us, you should review their privacy and security policies and other terms and conditions. We do not guarantee and are not responsible for the privacy or security of such sites, including the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of information found on these sites. Information you provide on public or semi-public venues, including information you share on third-party social networking platforms may also be viewable by other users of the Services and/or users of those third-party platforms without limitation as to its use by us or by a third party. Our inclusion of such links does not, by itself, imply any endorsement of the content on such platforms or of their owners or operators, except as disclosed on the Services.

Children's Data

The Services are not intended to be used by children, and we do not knowingly collect any personal information about children under the age of 18 years of age. If you are the parent or guardian of a child who has provided us with their personal information, you may contact us using the contact details set out below to request that it be deleted. As of the Effective Date of this Privacy Policy, we do not have actual knowledge that we "share" or "sell" (as those terms are defined in applicable law) personal information of individuals under 18 years of age.

Security and Retention of Your Information

Please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and we cannot guarantee "perfect security." In addition, any information you send to us may not be secure while in transit. We recommend that you do not use unsecure channels to communicate sensitive or confidential information to us.

How long we retain your personal information depends on different factors, such as whether we need the information to maintain your account, to provide you with Services, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes or enforce other applicable contracts and policies. We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this privacy policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us keeping your personal information longer than the period of time in which users have an account with us.

Use or Disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information

We do not use or disclose your sensitive personal information for purposes other than those listed below:

• The use that is necessary to perform the services or provide the goods reasonably expected by an average consumer who requests those goods or services

• To prevent, detect, and investigate security incidents that compromise the availability, authenticity, integrity, or confidentiality of stored or transmitted personal information

• To resist malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal actions directed at the business and to prosecute those responsible for those actions

• To ensure the physical safety of natural persons

• For short-term, transient use, including, but not limited to, non-personalized advertising shown as part of a your current interaction with us, provided that the personal information is not disclosed to another third party and is not used to build a profile about you or otherwise alter your experience outside the current interaction with us

• To perform services on behalf of SSC

• To verify or maintain the quality or safety of a product, service, or device that is owned, manufactured, manufactured for, or controlled by SSC, and to improve, upgrade, or enhance the service or device that is owned, manufactured by, manufactured for, or controlled by SSC

• To collect or process sensitive personal information where the collection or processing is not for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you

You have the right to limit the use and disclosure of your sensitive personal information. If you exercise your right to limit the use of your sensitive personal information, we will limit our use and disclosure of your sensitive personal information for the purposes listed above.

Your Rights and Choices

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the rights listed below in relation to your personal information. However, these rights are not absolute, may apply only in certain states under certain circumstances and, in certain cases, we may decline your request as permitted by law.

Right to Access / Know. You may have a right to confirm whether we are processing your personal information and/or request access to personal information that we hold about you. For California residents, this includes the right to know the categories of personal information we collected about you in the preceding 12 months, the categories of sources for such personal information we collected about you, our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information, and the categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
Right to Delete. You may have a right to request that we delete personal information we maintain about you, subject to certain exceptions, such as complying with legal obligations, assessing security incidents, completing transactions, among others.
Right to Correct. You may have a right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information we maintain about you.
Right of Portability. You may have a right to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to request that we transfer it to a third party, in certain circumstances, such as to the extent technically feasible and in a commonly used, machine readable format, and with certain exceptions.
Right to Categories of Third Party Recipients. You may have the right to obtain a list of the categories of third parties to which we have disclosed your personal data or, if not available, a list of the categories of third parties to which we have disclosed personal information in general.
Right to Opt out of Sale or Sharing for Targeted Advertising. Depending on where you reside, you may have a right to opt out of the "sale" or "share" of your personal information or to opt out of the processing of your personal information for purposes considered to be "targeted advertising", as defined in applicable privacy laws. You can exercise your rights to opt-out of those uses here. Please note that if you visit our website with the Global Privacy Control opt-out preference signal enabled, depending on where you are, we will automatically treat this as a request to opt-out for the device and browser that you use to visit the website. If we are able to associate the device sending the signal to a Shopify account, we will apply the opt out request to the account as well. To learn more about Global Privacy Control, you can visit https://globalprivacycontrol.org/. Other than the Global Privacy Control, we do not recognize other "Do Not Track" signals that may be sent from your web browser or device.
Right to Limit the Use or Disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information. You may have the right to limit the use or disclosure of your sensitive personal information other than those set forth in the section above titled “Use or Disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information.”
Managing Communication Preferences. We may send you promotional emails, and you may opt out of receiving these at any time by using the unsubscribe option displayed in our emails to you. If you opt out, we may still send you non-promotional emails, such as those about your account or orders that you have made.

You may exercise any of these rights where indicated on the Services or by contacting us using the contact details provided below. SSC will respond within the time period and in the manner as required by applicable law, generally within 45 days.

To learn more about how Shopify uses your personal information and any rights you may have, including rights related to data processed by Shopify, you can visit https://privacy.shopify.com/en.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights, including denying you or providing a different level of quality of goods or services, or charging different prices or rates for goods or services, or imposing penalties.

We will need to verify your identity before we can process your requests, as permitted or required under applicable law, and may ask you for additional personal information for the purposes of such verification (which may include requesting from you a signed declaration under penalty of perjury), although we will attempt to avoid collecting additional personal information from you. If we collect additional personal information for purposes of verification, we shall use such information only for such verification and for security or fraud-prevention purposes. In accordance with applicable laws, you may designate an authorized agent to make requests on your behalf to exercise your rights. Before accepting such a request from an agent, we will require that the agent provide proof you have authorized them to act on your behalf, and we may need you to verify your identity directly with us. We will respond to your request in a timely manner as required under applicable law. However, we cannot respond to you request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you. Making a verifiable request does not require you to create an account with us.

State Specific Privacy Rights

Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, or other states with applicable consumer privacy laws may exercise available rights by contacting SSC through the contact information provided below. Rights may vary by state and may be subject to exemptions and limitations under applicable law.

California “Shine the Light” Law

California Civil Code Section 1798.83, also known as the “Shine the Light” law, permits our users who are California residents to request and obtain from us, once a year and free of charge, information about categories of personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes and the names and addresses of all third parties with which we shared personal information in the immediately preceding calendar year. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please submit your request in writing to us by using the contact details provided below.

Complaints

If you have complaints about how we process your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided below. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to appeal our decision by contacting us using the contact details set out below, or lodge your complaint with your local data protection authority.

International Transfers

Please note that we may transfer, store and process your personal information outside the country you live in.

If we transfer your personal information out of the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we will rely on recognized transfer mechanisms like the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, or any equivalent contracts issued by the relevant competent authority of the UK, as relevant, unless the data transfer is to a country that has been determined to provide an adequate level of protection.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, including to reflect changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. We will post the revised Privacy Policy on this website, update the "Last updated" date and provide notice as required by applicable law. In all cases, your continued use of our Services or our other products and services constitutes consideration and your binding acceptance to any such changes. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy regularly to ensure that you are familiar with our current practices.

Contact

Should you have any questions about our privacy practices or this Privacy Policy, or if you would like to exercise any of the rights available to you, please call +1 804-281-1000 or email us at action@sscoop.com or contact us at Southern States Cooperative, Inc., 6606 West Broad Street, Southern States, Richmond VA 23230, United States.