Last updated – 21/05/2018
At The Blog House LTD we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website visitors; this policy sets out how we’ll treat your personal information.
Our website uses cookies. We’ll ask you to consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy when you first visit our website.
What information do we collect?
According to The GDPR, all personal data we hold must be:
- Processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner
- Collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes
- Adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary
- Accurate and, where necessary, kept up-to-date
- Retained only for as long as necessary
- Processed in an appropriate manner to maintain security.
We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information:
(a) information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website (including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation;
(b) information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our newsletter or blog;
(c) information that you provide to us by submitting any form on our website;
(d) any other necessary information that you choose to send to us with legitimate purpose.
Cookies
A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser, and stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. This enables the web server to identify and track the web browser.
We may use both “session” cookies and “persistent” cookies on the website. Session cookies will be deleted from your computer when you close your browser. Persistent cookies will remain stored on your computer until deleted, or until they reach a specified expiry date.
We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website. Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored on users’ computers. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google will store this information. Google’s privacy policy is available at: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html.
Most browsers allow you to reject all cookies, whilst some browsers allow you to reject just third party cookies. For example, in Internet Explorer you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy”, and selecting “Block all cookies” using the sliding selector. Blocking all cookies will, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites, including this one.
You have the choice to either accept or reject these cookies while on our website via a cookie acceptance banner when you first visit our site. We will only drop one cookie to store this choice, so you don’t have to choose to accept or reject again.
Our CMS and CRM
WordPress is our CMS (Content Management System), which is the platform we host our website on. Any data you submit to us via our website forms will be stored securely in Freshdesk which we use as our CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) who are part of Freshworks and their privacy policy is available at:
https://www.freshworks.com/privacy
Using your personal information
Data submitted to us via this website will be used for the purposes specified in this privacy policy or in relevant parts of the website.
We may use this data to:
(a) administer the website;
(b) improve your browsing experience by personalising the website;
(c) enable your use of the services available on the website;
(d) send you general (non-marketing) commercial communications;
(e) send you email notifications which you have specifically requested;
(f) send to you our newsletter and other marketing communications relating to our business which we think may be of interest to you by post or, where you have specifically consented to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications);
(g) provide third parties with statistical information about our users – but this information will not be used to identify any individual user;
(h) deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to the website;
(i) keep the website secure and prevent fraud;
We will not — without your express consent — provide your personal information to any third parties for the purpose of direct marketing.
Disclosures
We may disclose information about you to any of our employees, officers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes as set out in this privacy policy.
In addition, we may disclose your personal information:
(a) to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
(b) in connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings;
(c) in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
(d) to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and
(e) to any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.
Except as provided in this privacy policy, we will not provide your information to third parties.
Security of your personal information
We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your data.
We will store all the data you provide on our secure password and firewall protected servers.
Of course, data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.
Retention of data
We retain data that you provide to us as long as we consider it necessary for working with you, if you have subscribed to our newsletter or blog, or as needed to comply with any legal obligations, and then we will securely delete your data. We will delete your data at an earlier date if you should choose to unsubscribe.
If it has been 5 years since we last invoiced you for a project, we will securely delete your data from our database.
If we have you in our database but have not sold you a service within 2 years, we will securely delete your data from our database.
Policy amendments
We may update this privacy policy from time-to-time by posting a new version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you’re happy with any changes.
Your rights
You may instruct us to provide you with any data we hold about you. Provision of such information will be subject to the supply of appropriate evidence of your identity (for this purpose, we will usually accept a photocopy of your passport certified by a solicitor or bank plus an original copy of a utility bill showing your current address).
We may withhold such personal information to the extent permitted by law. We may also refuse nuisance requests, where a person requests their data excessively on multiple occasions without legitimate reason.
You have the right to rectification, erasure, restriction and objection. You may instruct us not to process your data by sending an email to us or unsubscribing at any time. In practice, you will usually expressly agree in advance to our use of your data for marketing purposes, and we will provide you with an opportunity to withdraw consent of the use of your data at any time.
Data we will not process or hold
We will not process or hold any special category data, including:
- Race;
- Ethnic origin;
- Political opinions;
- Religion;
- Philosophical beliefs;
- Trade union membership;
- Genetic data, for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person;
- Bio-metric data, for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person;
- Health data;
- Concerning a natural person’s sex life;
- Sexual orientation.
We will also not process or hold any data irrelevant to the purposes of doing business with you.
Third party websites
The website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of third party websites.
Updating information
Please let us know if the data which we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.
Contact
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our treatment of your personal information, please write to us by email to privacy@thebloghouse.com or by post to The Blog House LTD, Sunco House, 5 Carliol Square, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6UF
Data controller
The data controller responsible in respect of the information collected on this website is The Blog House Limited.
Our data protection registration number is A8307756.
Our role as a Data Processor for clients
You are the owner of the data you submit to our services (whether they are hosted on your premises or servers we provide).
When your data is placed on servers we provide, you are the Data Controller and The Blog House LTD, the Data Processor. We do not access the data you store on our services unless explicitly requested by you and any processing (as a Data Processor) is only in terms of the services you have asked The Blog House to provide to you. We do not use your data for any processing of our own.
We do not share or provide access to any of your data with third parties unless you have asked us to do so as part of the service we provide to you as a data processor or required to do so by law. Where law enforcement or other authorised parties request access to our servers, we will follow such requests in line with existing UK law. Furthermore, the third parties are required to demonstrate they have a lawful reason to access the data and under what authority.