Privacy Policy

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

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.

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.

Newsletter Signups

When you sign up for our newsletter, your data is stored within our newsletter client and used solely for the purposes of sending you our weekly digest.

First Party Cookies

First-party cookies are used to enable the website to function the right way. They do not collect any of your personally identifiable data.

If you visit our login page, 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.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Third Party Cookies

The third-party cookies on our websites are used mainly for understanding how the website performs, how you interact with the site, keeping our services secure, providing advertisements that are relevant to you, and generally providing you with an improved user experience.

CookieDescription
Google AdSense
  • Google's use of advertising cookies enables them and their partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to this sites and/or other sites on the Internet.
  • You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Ads Settings. You can also opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising by visiting www.aboutads.info.
  • Alternatively you can revoke non-necessary cookies from this site, which will remove both ads and analytics tracking.
Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics collects anonymized data, including IP addresses and cookies, to allow us to identify trends in behaviour for the purpose of site optimisation. You can opt-out of this by clicking the Privacy button at the bottom right and updating your preferences.
Click here to delete your existing cookies

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


What we do with your data

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 over your data

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.