Privacy & Cookie Policy

PRIVACY POLICY

YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WHEN COMMENTING ON OUR SITE

When you leave a comment on our site, we collect your name, your email address and optionally collect a website address if you have one. Our system also records the date and time of your comment, the IP address being used and the browser user agent string.

We also give you the option to store your name, email address and website address for future use. If you choose to do this we store this information in a cookie (please see our Cookie Policy below).

We use the information we collect in a few different ways:

a. Displaying your comment

We show your name alongside your comment, together with the date and time the comment was made.

b. Spam Prevention

We use a third party called Akismet for spam prevention. When you make a comment on our site your comment and the associated data is sent to Akismet for processing. Their privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.

c. Gravatar Card

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. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

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.

YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WHEN SIGNING UP TO OUR EMAIL DISTRIBUTION LIST

When you sign up to our email distribution list, your email address is collected and passed to a third party called MailChimp who we use to manage our email list and also our email distribution. We don’t store the data ourselves, it is passed to MailChimp and stored by them.

By signing up to our email list you consent to us sending the data to MailChimp and it being host on their servers (which may be outside of the European Union). MailChimp’s privacy policy is available here: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/.

We use the email distribution list solely for sending out our newsletters. We do not pass, rent or sell the data to any third parties for any use at all. We also do not send out information ourselves on behalf of third parties.

SHARING YOUR DATA

We will not share your data with any other 3rd party unless it is required by law, court order or regulatory requirement. In the event of this organisation being taken over by another organisation, your personal details may be transferred to the new owner.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the right to access the information held about you by us and, if necessary, have it amended if it is inaccurate or out of date. We may need to ask for proof of your identity before we can respond to your request. You have the right to request that your personal information is deleted.

If you have a question about your personal information, please contact us using the contact page on our site.

COOKIE POLICY

WHAT ARE COOKIES?

Our site puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer or device to collect information about how you browse the site.

Cookies are used to:

• look at how you use the website so we can improve your user experience

• remember your preferences

• remember you when you comment on pages or posts

You can find out more about how to manage cookies from the Information Commissioner’s site here: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/.

HOW WE USE COOKIES

COMMENTS

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 don’t have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

MEASURING WEBSITE USAGE (GOOGLE ANALYTICS)

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use our site. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information about the pages you visit, how long you spend on each page, how you got to the site and what you click on while you’re visiting the site.

We do not allow Google to share our analytics data other than for technical support purposes or using anonymised data for benchmarking purposes.

MEASURING WEBSITE USAGE (WORDPRESS.COM STATS)

We also use software made by Automattic, the owners of wordpress.com, to collect information about how you use our site. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.

Automattic and wordpress.com stores information about the pages you visit, how long you spend on each page, how you got to the site and what you click on while you’re visiting the site.

We do not have access to the detailed data other than the key statistics showing website usage and visitor numbers. Automattic manages the data and it is retained for 28 days. The data is solely used to power activity tracking and is not shared with anyone else.

Automattic’s Cookie Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/cookies/. Additionally their data privacy policy in relation to WordPress.com stats is available here: https://jetpack.com/support/for-your-privacy-policy/.

ACCEPTANCE OF THE COOKIE POLICY

From time to time when you visit our site and at at least every 180 days we will ask you for your explicit consent to our Cookie Policy. We use a cookie to store this consent.

EMBEDDED CONTENT FROM OTHER WEBSITES

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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

These policies were updated on 9th October 2019