A Bit About Britain’s Privacy Policy
Introduction
Certain information is collected and stored whenever you visit and/or interact with any website, including A Bit About Britain (https://bitaboutbritain.com). A Bit About Britain is a personal website project that seeks to inspire, inform and entertain, as described in its About Page. It has no interest in holding unnecessary information and has a zero tolerance toward the abuse of personal information and the invasion of personal privacy. A Bit About Britain will never sell anyone’s personal data to a third party. This policy describes what data is collected when you visit A Bit About Britain’s website, why it is collected, how it is used and your right to have it deleted.
Personal data
If you visit and/or interact with any website, some data is collected and stored which is personal data that can identify you. When you leave a comment on A Bit About Britain, or use the contact form to get in touch, the data provided in the forms is collected (eg name, email address and URL – if available) as well as your internet protocol (IP) address and submission date/time.
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, if you have one, is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
If you leave a comment while logged into and using another website or social media account (eg Facebook, Twitter) your user ID on that account as well the website url (if available) may also be collected.
When you sign up to follow A Bit About Britain’s blog your email address is collected and stored. If you follow from a WordPress account, your website URL will be stored. Once you have signed up, third party software operated by Automattic will send you an email whenever a new post is published. Atomattic’s privacy policy is here: https://automattic.com/privacy/ You can stop following A Bit About Britain’s blog at any time to cancel these emails – though we’d rather you didn’t, of course.
Visitor comments and contacts may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Technical data
Technical data is also collected when you visit a website. A Bit About Britain cannot identify you from technical data, which may include your internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access the website. Anonymous information is also collected on which pages/posts you visit (see ‘cookies’).
Cookies
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Cookies help identify and track visitors, quantify usage, access preferences, analyse web traffic and speed up the visit. A Bit About Britain uses third-party cookies (cookies that are set by an organisation other than the owner of the website) and has no direct control of them; cookies do not provide A Bit About Britain with access to your computer or any personal information about you. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you should be able to adjust your browser settings to decline or limit cookies – though this may restrict your ability to fully use or enjoy certain websites.
Links to other websites
A Bit About Britain contains links to other websites that are owned and operated by third parties. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies – and so on – and A Bit About Britain has no control over this or responsibility for those websites. You should check the privacy policies of all websites before providing any personal data to them.
Affiliates
A Bit About Britain may participate in affiliate programmes, whereby if you click on a link to a product or service from A Bit About Britain’s website and buy something quickly enough from the provider of the product or service, they might pay A Bit About Britain a small commission. You pay no more as a result. Affiliate programmes track visitors from a publisher source site, such as A Bit About Britain, to the advertiser’s site, such as Amazon. A Bit About Britain has participated in programmes operated by Amazon, Awin, the National Trust and English Heritage – none of them work, to be honest.
Analytics
A Bit About Britain uses tools from organisations, including Google and Microsoft, to help analyse what’s happening on the website, such as how many visitors it has, where they are from and so forth.
Embedded content
A Bit About Britain may contain embedded content (eg videos, images, articles, etc.) from other websites. Embedded content behaves in exactly the 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.
How and why data is used
Some personal data has to be provided if you want to interact with a website in any way. Both personal and technical data helps to see how a website is performing so that content can be tailored and improvements made to the website.
A Bit About Britain may use personal data (eg name and email ) provided by you voluntarily – ie when leaving a comment, following A Bit About Britain’s blog or contacting A Bit About Britain – to occasionally keep you informed about significant events.
Sharing your data
A Bit About Britain will never disclose your personal data or sell it to anyone. However, exceptionally, we may need to provide your personal data if we are required to do so by the police, or any other regulatory or government authority, investigating suspected illegal activities.
Your rights
You can request:
- Confirmation of what personal data we hold about you;
- To be removed from any mailing/contact list;
- That any personal data is erased from A Bit About Britain’s files, unless it has to be kept for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Updates to this policy
A Bit About Britain’s privacy policy was last reviewed on 7 May 2024 and will be reviewed again when necessary. Please check this page regularly to ensure you are familiar with any changes.
How to contact A Bit About Britain
You can contact A Bit About Britain via email using the contact form.
You may also be interested in a few legal bits and bobs….