Privacy is important to me, but this isn’t the kind of organisation that plays hard and fast with people’s personal information and data in the first place. I’m a copywriter, working on websites, brochures, press releases and other marketing. I don’t run a mailing list or newsletter, and don’t hold a huge database of possible ‘leads’.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our treatment of your personal information, please write to me by email to doug@lookherewriting.com.
Who we are
My site is owned by me, Doug Smith, a sole trader operating under the name of Look Here Copywriting. I’m my own data protection officer, policy writer and boss.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
‘Personal data’ is any information about you that enables you to be identified. The term covers obvious information such as your name and contact details, but also less obvious information such as identification numbers, electronic location data and other online identifiers.
There are a few points where such data can be collected:
Comments
Actually, comments are disabled from by blog posts, so you are not able to leave a trail of data there. Much easier to field comments and queries through social media, and saves me hassle here.
But if visitors did leave comments on the site, we would collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
Additionally, an anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) might have been 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 would have been visible to the public in the context of your comment.
So, I’m glad we won’t have this trouble.
Media
I don’t allow anyone to upload images to my website.
But if you did have that capability, you would be best advised to avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to a website where you might have uploaded images can download and extract any location data from them.
Contact forms
I do have a contact form on my website. It asks for your email address so I can reply to you, so therefore consent for me to send you a personal response is assumed.
Your email address will not be added to a mailing list, and I would not send you any generic or bcc’d emails. You’ll only get direct messages from me to reply to a question, to ask you about something, or to inform you of something I think you’ll be interested in.
Your email address is not stored anywhere (I know this after trying to find one I’d lost…), so won’t fall into the wrong hands.
Cookies
As before, you are not able to leave a comment on my site, but if you were then you may have been able to 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.
If anyone but my designer and I logged into this site, I would be extremely concerned. But if, for some reason, you had an account and you logged in to this site, we would 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.
If you logged in, we would also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Very evil. Login cookies would last for two days, and screen options cookies for a year. If you selected “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two whole weeks. If you logged out of your account, the login cookies would be removed. Phew.
Very glad I don’t have to deal with any of that.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.) from other websites. 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Just the way it is. Can’t do anything about those bastards.
Analytics
This website tells me the rough location of people who visit this site, but not your exact IP address, nor your name, street address, phone number, nor profiles on LinkedIn or Tinder.
Which is a pity, because I wouldn’t mind knowing all that. But you can’t have everything.
Who we share your data with
Nobody. I don’t like it if people give away my personal details to someone else without asking, and wouldn’t do the same to any of you visiting this site.
How long we retain your data
If you were able to leave a comment, then the comment and its metadata would be retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
If any users were able, or indeed willing (!), to register on this website, we would also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users would be able see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they couldn’t change their username). Website administrators would also be able see and edit that information. But there isn’t any, so don’t worry.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, I’d be amazed. Truly. But you would also be able to request 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.
Where we send your data
If I allowed any visitor comments, then they may have been checked through an automated spam detection service. But that’s it.
Your contact information
If you’ve given me your information, or it’s in the public domain (on your own website, social media or pub toilet wall), then I assume you’re fine with being contacted. If you don’t want me to contact you any more, then just let me know. I’m cool with that, and don’t want to be a pain in the neck to anyone.
Additional information
How we protect your data
Any information that I have is in a password-protected document on my password-protected computer. My emails go through Office 365, which is encrypted.
What data breach procedures we have in place
In the event of a data breach, I promise to inform all individuals who may be affected. We will also take further precautions here to prevent a further breach – changing passwords and moving the location of data.
I’m aware that a data breach is not necessarily a digital occurrence. Information can be stolen simply by someone walking past a computer screen with documents or contact info left in public view. Or, indeed, printed out on sheets of paper. I take all precautions to prevent information about my clients and their companies being unintentionally revealed to third parties.
What third parties we receive data from
Um, none at all.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
What?
If you’ve read this far down the page…
…then you’re probably going to be interested in my Terms Of Business too. You can take a look at them here.