What Personal Data we Collect
We collect and process personal data in various ways to provide and improve our services. Below is a detailed explanation of what data we collect and why.
Comments
If visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form. We also collect the visitor's IP address and browser user agent string simply to help spam detection. An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it to give yourself an avatar image. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to our website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact Forms
We assume that by contacting us you want us to read your message! We keep your message and contact details so that we can reply to you and deal with whatever is in the message. A form can't be submitted on this site without you agreeing to this. You can have any information we hold about you removed by contacting us.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. For more detailed information about our use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.
Embedded Content
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 (provided by Google LLC) to collect anonymous data about how visitors use our website. This helps us understand which pages are most visited, how visitors find us, and how we can improve the site. The data collected includes: pages viewed, time spent on the site, device and browser type, general geographic region (country/city level), and referral source. We have enabled IP anonymisation so that Google does not store your full IP address. Analytics cookies are only set after you give consent via our cookie banner. You can opt out by rejecting cookies or by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. Google's privacy policy is available at policies.google.com/privacy. For full details of the cookies used, see our Cookie Policy.
Who we Share Your Data With
We do not sell or share your personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes. We do use Google Analytics as a data processor to collect anonymous website usage statistics on our behalf. Google processes this data under strict contractual terms and only for the purposes we specify. Google may transfer this data to servers outside the UK, including to the United States, under appropriate data transfer safeguards. You can learn more about how Google handles data in their privacy policy.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What Rights You Have
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we Send Your Data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Your contact details and messages from forms will be used to reply to you, and so will be added to our email address books.
How we protect your data
Our website is protected by an SSL certificate so that data is transferred securely between you, us and the site. We use IP anonymisation in Google Analytics to prevent full IP addresses from being stored. Analytics data collection is gated behind a cookie consent banner, meaning no analytics cookies are set unless you explicitly accept them. We do not use analytics for advertising or cross-site tracking purposes.
Questions about your privacy?
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or wish to exercise your rights regarding your personal data, please contact us.