We have to have one of these dealios to explain how we comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the DPA (Data Protection Act) and the PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) because God knows there are not enough actual interesting things in the world to read, you need to read 1,000 words of legalese nonsense that makes literally not one bit of difference to anyone, ever.
The best bit about the GDPR is that all this has to be “concise, transparent, intelligible, and easily accessible” so hold on to your hats, this is going to be the shortest, clearest, and best freakin’ privacy policy you ever did see.
So. Here we go…
TL;DR
We’re a tiny, overstretched business and we don’t have the time or energy to do anything nefarious with your data. It’s not that we’re not evil – we’re as corruptible as anyone – we’re just too tired to think up a malevolent plot to steal your identity.
We collect and store the info we need to provide you with the service you buy from us. We occasionally stalk you via Facebook ads. That’s really it.
COOKIES
Seriously who actually cares? Do you even know what a cookie is or does? Well then. Yes, we use cookies because that’s kinda how the Internet works. If you don’t want our delicious home-baked chocolate chip scripts, then you need to block cookies on your browser but don’t come crying to us when nothing does what it’s supposed to.
STALKY VISITOR TRACKING
Look, we’re following you, ok? We use Google Analytics, primarily to stare at the real-time stats because they’re cool but also to see what stuff people looking at so we can write more of the stuff you like.
We also have the Facebook Pixel installed so that we can sell you stuff. Yes, you heard it. We are a business and – shocker – we want you to spend money with us. The Facebook Pixel means that we can see how people interact with our site and with Facebook adverts and then we try to flog your relevant stuff. If you’ve not seen the Facebook Ads analytics dashboard MAN ALIVE it’s stalker central. That stuff is a terrifying Black Mirror horror show. If you’re not on Facebook – well bloody done but the pixel is tracking you anyway.
Don’t know if there’s a specific Facebook Pixel blocking thing but we accidentally discovered that if you use the Freedom app to block social media while you’re writing it also blocks the FB pixel. Handy hints!
We also use AddThis which shows us what content people are sharing. This is because we like to compete about whose content is doing the best. You can’t block this because it’s not tracking you, it’s tracking our content.
None of these things store any super personal data about you but probably they nab your IP address, not that we’d know where to look for it or what to do with it. All we see is that a person or many people have interacted with the website in a particular way. You can mess with us by doing something totally unexpected on the website and skewing our stats. Or you could do something way more fun and useful with your time LIKE WRITING.
DATA STORAGE
DATA!! It’s all about the data, baby. A literal ton of petabytes whirring around the world and what? What’s it all for? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? What will future historians actually see of us and our slowly collapsing society? So. We store your data in a few different places and use it in a couple of different ways. Are you ready for this?
Here on this website! If you register with the site we will store your name and email address. Your payment details ARE NOT held on the site. We obviously go to the maximum effort to keep this data secure and only one person has access to it.
Active Campaign! If you’ve signed up for anything or bought any services from us, your name and email address also wings its way over to Active Campaign, which is the system we use to manage our newsletters and emails. They are (allegedly) GDPR compliant. You can unsubscribe from emails at any time by hitting the unsubscribe button.
Zapier! This is the go-between between the website and our third party services. Your name, email address, and other information travels through this system on the way to our other systems. Your data is held in the logs.
EMAIL MARKETING THINGIES AND NEWSLETTERS
If you sign up for our newsletter, we will send you a newsletter – generally around two a month, but occasionally more if there is more interesting stuff to tell you. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button in every email. Your name and email address are stored securely in Active Campaign.
Active Campaign automatically adds tracking things to links so if you click on a link WE KNOW. If you open an email WE KNOW. If you ignore us reminding you to tune in to a new blog post or Facebook video WE KNOW.
The most important thing about this is we have neither the time nor inclination to actually look at or do anything with these stats.
YOUR RIGHT TO BE DELETED
If you want to go undercover, just chuck us an email at
[email protected] and we’ll delete all the info we have on you from our systems while having a passive-aggressive huff about what we could have possibly done wrong.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND ALL THAT BOLLOCKS
We use social media a lot, partly to promote our services and our clients but mostly as a vehicle for our creative swearing and political opinions. If you talk to us in our Facebook group and we become familiar with you, we might find you on Twitter and say hello. You can ask us to be less friendly if you wish and we will of course respect your boundaries.
You are not required to follow our social media accounts and we won’t ask our employees to temper themselves in the service of us. If they turn out to be racist, bigoted dipshits then we wanna know so we can tell them to go to hell.
