Privacy by Design; Content You Can Trust

Privacy Policy

Respecting Your Privacy

Your privacy is important to me; I appreciate you trusting that I will respect your privacy. This website has been designed in a way that means access to personal information is only permitted to authorised people. Any attempt to access personal information without my consent would infer a breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 of the United Kingdom.

Summary

This privacy policy, covers your personal information whether collected online or offline, including by telephone or where you email me, and provides details on what activities might happen in relation to your personal information, and explains your rights and how to exercise them.

This privacy policy shall be construed in accordance with the law in England and Wales as applied in Wales. Any changes I make to my privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page.

By using my website you confirm that you accept the terms of this privacy policy and you agree to comply with them.

If you become a client of mine, or I become a client of yours, there may be constraints, restrictions, or reductions thereof, to the protection of personal information that will be outlined in the relevant contracts related to that relationship.

You may contact me in relation to this privacy policy via my contact form. If you do so, you are signalling that you agree to this privacy policy in its current form.

In summary, depending on your relationship with me, I will use your personal information:

As required, to perform any contractual obligations that I may have with you, or
as required, for you to perform any contractual obligations you have with me.
To provide you with downloadable products, such as a free assessment.
To provide you with support should a problem with my website occur.
To manage and improve my website, and
to manage and improve my business services and offerings.
To comply with the law as defined in England and Wales, as applied in Wales.

My Commitment to You

Although I will do my utmost to protect your personal information, I cannot guarantee the security or reliability of third-party software or services. Your use of the internet and transmission of personal information is done so at your own risk. Once I have received your personal information, I will use sensible security procedures to try to prevent unauthorised access.

I will never pass on information about you that you have provided via my website to third-parties other than those involved with actioning your request unless either:

a) you have given consent, or
b) I have to, in order to fulfil a contractual obligation, or
c) I am legally obliged to do so under law in England and Wales as applied in Wales.

I will never use any of your personal information supplied via my website in ways that might have unjustified adverse effects on you. I will never use information provided via my website to make automated decisions that would directly affect you without your consent.

My website may contain web links to third-party websites. If you follow a link to any external website, you accept they will have their own privacy policy and may not be affiliated with me. It is your responsibility to check their policies before you submit any personal information to any website.

Although I do record analytics related to my website, these analytics are held on a private system and the data is anonymised to prevent wider fingerprinting or tracking beyond the scope of the website.

Data Controller and Processor

This privacy policy sets out the basis on which any personal information I collect from you, or you supply, in the course of a browsing session, may be processed.

I will not collect any personally sensitive information related to you unless you have chosen to give it to me. Therefore, my website is structured so you can view it without identifying yourself or revealing any personally sensitive information.

In relation to personal information supplied to me via my website; I will act as both the Data Controller and the Data Processor.

I will handle all of your personal information in accordance with the the various data protection laws as they apply in England and Wales.

Information I May Collect

I may typically collect details provided by you as well as information relating to your visits to my website. I may collect and process the following data about you:

Information you give me. You may give me information about you by visiting my website, completing any form on my website, or by corresponding with me via telephone, e-mail, or otherwise. This information may include, and not be limited to, your name, e-mail address, telephone number, job title and employer, the nature of your enquiry, and your enquiry itself. I may also collect the IP address that you used at the time of your visit to my website, and other identifiers related to your browsing session – to help ensure data security, server integrity, and correct identification.

Information I collect about you. With regards to each of your visits to my website, I may automatically collect technical information, including the IP address used to connect your computer to the internet, and browsing session identifiers such as – browser vendor and version, and language preference, without directly asking you. This is necessary for my website to perform correctly. Likewise, if you call me, I may collect your telephone number in order to respond to your query or keep in touch or block your number if you’re naughty.

I may process this personal information in order to:

Understand how I can help you with your enquiry; or
understand how I may do business with you.
Respond to your enquiry; or
enter a business agreement or contract with you.
Understand what I could do to help improve your experience on my website; or
create anonymised analytics related to usage patterns.
Improve my services and offerings; or
better inform you of my services and offerings.
Detect or prevent fraud, or abuse of my website; or
ensure the continuity of my website without interruption.
Facilitate your choice of personalisation; or
Facilitate your access to my website.
To offer you downloadable products; or
to provide you with downloadable products.
To offer you subscription to a free or paid newsletter or mailing list; or
to provide you with a free or paid newsletter or mailing list.
To improve my marketing and advertising; or
better inform me of your marketing and advertising preferences.
To keep a record of your correspondence; or
to keep a record of clients and potential clients.
To comply with the law in England and Wales, as applied in Wales; or
to protect myself or others, including my clients, from crime.

The personal information defined in this privacy policy may also be used to communicate with you if I have a legal obligation or basis to do so, or you have consented. Your personal information may also be used to ensure that content on my website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device, and/or to notify you about changes to my website, my services, or any agreements I may have entered.

Where you have opted to join a newsletter or mailing list that I may operate as part of or an extension to my website; I will always give you the opportunity to opt out of consent based communications.

Any personal information collected or provided will be treated as confidential and, save as set out in this privacy policy, I will not disclose your personal information to third-parties except with your specific permission, or as defined within this privacy policy under a legal basis or obligation to do so – such as when complying with the law in England and Wales.

Disclosure to Third Parties

I will not share the details of your individual visit with any third party save for the analytics platform of my choice, unless required to do so by law, or as described in this agreement. Any request by a third party for access to your personal information outside of the scope of this privacy policy will be denied unless a legal basis recognised under law in the United Kingdom becomes apparent.

Unless I am not required to do so under a legal obligation recognised in the United Kingdom, I will seek consent from you prior to any such disclosure.

I will only share data related to browsing sessions in order to:

Comply with legal obligations recognised in the United Kingdom, or
enforce or apply my rights, privacy policy or other contractual agreements, or
protect my rights, property, and safety, or those of others, or
obtain professional legal advice, or
create, manage, and process analytics, or
with your consent.

I may from time-to-time release analytics based on usage patterns; this data will be anonymised in such a way as to avoid identifying any individual visitor.

IP Addresses

I need to collect information about your IP address when visiting my website in order to ensure the security of the website. I may analyse anonymised details of visits to my website, including but not limited to, peak time usage patterns, and popularity of content.

IP addresses may not necessarily identify an individual, as they may be shared amongst many people. Nonetheless, my analytics provider anonymises this data when processing so as to not identify the exact IP address.

I use this information in accordance with this privacy policy.

Cookies

Most websites use cookies to make the browsing experience more efficient, and to help you use the website to it’s full potential. Cookies are a small text file that is transferred to your device. You can clear cookies in your browser settings.

When you visit my website, I use only strictly necessary cookies to enable navigation around my website, personalisation choices, and to maintain log-in details for the duration of an authenticated session.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the relevant setting on your web browser; however, if you refuse cookies you may be unable to access certain parts of the website, submitting forms may not be possible, and you may not be able to make personalisation choices.

Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, they will be used automatically by your browser where necessary.

If you want to learn more about cookies or if you want to know how to delete or control the cookies that are stored on your computer, you can visit:

About Cookies

My website uses cookies for three purposes:

To help you personalise your experience on my website.
To assist with authentication and session management; for security.
Personalisation cookies may allow you to decide between different features – such as light and dark mode.

Information in regards to this personalisation is not stored or monitored by me and only takes place within your web browser. I would never use information derived from personalisation cookies to try to identify any individual.

Authentication and session management cookies help to ensure that personal information remains secure. They are only one part of a larger set of security measures that I may utilise. They are necessary, and I need to use these session cookies each time you access my website.

Should you decide to withdraw your consent to cookies being used entirely; different browsers provide different methods to block and delete cookies used by websites. You can change the settings of your browser to block/delete the cookies.

To find out more out more on how to manage and delete cookies, visit:

All About Cookies

Analytics

I use Pirsch for website analytics. Pirsch is a cookie-free web analytics platform that was developed according to the Privacy by Design principle.

Pirsch Analytics uses a hashing algorithm to generate a random 16-digit code as the visitor identifier when the page request is received. The input values are the IP address, the user agent, the date and a salt.

Your IP address is not persisted in whole or in part, and is anonymized completely and non-reversibly by the hash. The inclusion of the date and the use of one salt per website ensures that you cannot be recognised for more than 24 hours and cannot be tracked across multiple websites. A rough localisation (country/city) is performed.

I use analytics to better understand traffic flows to my website, what visitors might be interested in and how to better promote my services via my website. I may also use these analytics to provide anonymised insights and information in articles that I write.

Access to Information

I believe that the following legal reasons permit the use of your personal data:

A. Where it is necessary, to provide you with my website, products, and services, such as:

To manage authenticated sessions and log-in information.
To enable you to access and to view my website.
To provide you with downloadable products.
To respond to your enquiry, or to carry out any contractual or legal agreement.

B. Where it is in my legitimate interests to do so, such as:

To test the performance of, and/or create analytics based upon, my website, services, and internal processes.
To follow guidance and best practices recommended by regulatory bodies in the United Kingdom.
For the management of and audit of my website, hosting server, and network operations.
To keep records of communications between you and me.
In order to perform my duties or comply with any legal obligations.

C. With your consent, such as:

For you to make an enquiry, request help, support, or guidance related to my business, website, services, and/or any contract I may have in place.
To provide you with consent-based newsletters and mailing list content.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 and General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR), you have certain rights in respect of the information that I might hold about you.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has useful information in respect of your rights over your personal information.

https://www.ico.org.uk/

If you wish to exercise your rights, you should contact me via my contact form.

1. Your right to withdraw consent.

If you wish to withdraw consent in regards to your personal information being stored, then you will need to contact me via my contact form.

2. Your right to access the information held about you.

If you wish to obtain copy of information held by me that is related to you, then you should contact me via my contact form.

With some exceptions designed to protect the rights of others – including my own, you have the right to a copy of the personal data that is held about you, as well as information about what I do with it, who I share it with, and how long I will hold it for.

3. Your right to have inaccurate information about you rectified.

You have the right to have information held about you corrected if it is factually inaccurate.

If you wish to rectify information held in relation to you, then you should contact me via my contact form.

4. Your right to object to what I do with your data, and to have restrictions placed upon it.

Where I process your personal data on the basis of my legitimate interests, you have the right to object to that processing and have restrictions placed upon it while I consider your objection.

5. Your right to have your information erased in some circumstances.

You have the right to require me to delete the information that I hold about you if it is no longer necessary for the purpose I collected it for, and there is no other legal basis on which I must, or am allowed to, retain it.

6. Your right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

You have the right to lodge a complaint about my handling of your personal data with the supervisory authority, which in the United Kingdom is the Information Commisioner’s Office. However, before you do so, please contact me via my contact form first to give me a chance to put matters right.

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office on 0303 123 1113.