Privacy Statement and Cookies Policy
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I am committed to protecting your privacy and personal information and will never abuse your trust.   

This Privacy Statement and Cookies Policy explains
  • what information is collected 
  • how information is stored 
  • how information is used
  • what rights you have
  • how to exercise your rights

​It covers cookies, email addresses and the use of statistical software. It also provides links to the Privacy Policies of organisations providing webware used by this website.

Updated: 30 May 2018
Interior of a Tulip 2007 by Katherine Tyrrell
Interior of a Tulip (2007) by Katherine Tyrrell (coloured pencils)

Cookies

This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

Opt Out of Cookies
Cookies are small text files, which contain small amounts of information, that are placed on your device. Your internet browser sends these cookies back to the website every time you visit the site, so the website can recognise your device.

A cookie will not access any information other than the information you provide to us when you visit the website.
There are two main types of cookies:
  • First-party cookies – these are set by the website you are visiting;
  • Third-party cookies – these are set by other sites or applications.
Whether or not you receive a cookie depends on your browser settings.  ​If you are concerned about Cookies you can find out more about cookies and how to manage them on

Privacy Statement
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What is personal data?​

This is the definition provided to me by the Information Commission Office in the UK where I am based.
The GDPR applies to ‘personal data’ meaning any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier.

This definition provides for a wide range of personal identifiers to constitute personal data, including name, identification number, location data or online identifier, reflecting changes in technology and the way organisations collect information about people.

The GDPR applies to both automated personal data and to manual filing systems where personal data are accessible according to specific criteria. This could include chronologically ordered sets of manual records containing personal data.
What information does the GDPR apply to?

What information do I collect?

When you contact me
  • Personal data you provide about yourself (for example, your name and contact details e.g. an email)
  • you provide a name and an email address when making a comment on a blog post or submitting a form. I do not ask for any other details. What you provide is up to you.
  • you may disclose information about your business - however this is not personal information which for the purposes of the GDPR only relates to the personal data of individuals
When a third party contacts me on your behalf
  • Personal data provided by a third party such as your name, contact details and specific circumstances.
When you visit this website, or interact with this site or me via social media
  • Your IP address and browsing preferences and choices;
  • Your name and username and any comments that you make.
If you commission me to do work for you
  • Your name and email address. I will also ask you for your normal mailing address for my invoice. Depending on the assignment you may disclose various other data but this will vary from client to client and will not apply to all. What you disclose is your choice.

How do I collect information?

Your personal information may be collected from a number of sources. These include:
  • When you visit this website, including through the use of cookies. 
  • When you contact or interact with this site by email or when you communicate through social media;
  • From forms you may complete;
  • From public sources of data (e.g. the contacts details you have chosen to make public on your website or social media)
  • From organisations/bodies you are connect to or are affiliated with, when they provide your information to me

Why do I collect it?

Consent
  • In relation to news updates, the information I hold is based on you having given your consent. For example, in relation to news updates, you have provided the email and then verified (consented) that it should be stored and used as a basis for processing the blog feed via Google's Feedburner and sending you an email for the news update.
  • Where you have given consent to the processing of your data you may withdraw it at any time.
Legitimate Interest
  • I have a legitimate interest to enable the publication of the website and to understand how it is used. In relation to Technical and Statistical Data: the data collected includes data about your use of this website, e.g. which pages you visit and how long you visit for; which browsers you use, your IP address. I do not collect data that identifies any individuals. I choose NOT to collect any demographic data via Google Analytics.
  • I also collect information because of a legitimate interest to ensure I have got details correct in relation to any public published information about you. You may contact me to correct any information or ask for it to be withdrawn from view at any time. 
Contractual necessity 
  • Data relating to any business transaction arises out of a contractual necessity e.g. so both you and I are fulfilling the obligations set out in supplier terms and conditions or any contract that may be in place. (Examples of such transactions usually arise because you heard about me via this website and not because of any offer made on this website)

How do I use your information?

I process your data in order to:
  • Record any correspondence or products I receive and respond accordingly;
  • Send out information relating to news updates;
  • Enter into contracts with customers; and/or
  • Maintain relationships with individuals and organisations and send messages from time to time

How is it stored?

Your personal data is stored in a number of ways:
  • In paper files stored securely;
  • In software systems which are managed on my Apple hardware or on webware provided by a third party supplier (e.g. Google; Weebly - see details below)
  • If you register to receive news updates, your information will be held on a secure server and the data will be shared with Google Feedburner only for automated processing of the news feed.

Who do I share your information with?

I may share your data with and/or obtain information from some third parties:
  • my website service (Weebly) in relation to the use of forms and comments on this website and for the management of cookies on this website;
  • statistical services (Google Analytics, Statcounter and Weebly) with respect to understanding the 'macro' level of sources of traffic to the website and the pages of most interest to you. 
  • Social media providers e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – to highlight public news
Other organisations where I am required to do so by law or by a public authority.

I am committed to protecting your privacy.
  • Under no circumstances do I rent, trade or share your e-mail address without your consent.  
  • Very occasionally people ask to be put in contact with another person. Rather than give your email address to them, I inform them that I will forward their request to you (using gmail) ​and leave you to decide how to respond.

How do I protect your data?

I take the security of your data very seriously. Your data cannot be accessed by third parties other than those providing services as identified below.

I engage reputable service providers to process your data on my behalf for the purposes of email correspondence, website and social media provision. They are all under a duty of confidentiality, and are legally obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data in line with the relevant legislation.

How long do I keep your personal data?

Nothing is kept indefinitely. Your personal data is kept under review.
  • Correspondence: I periodically delete contacts and associated emails. 
  • Blog comments and forms: If the blog comment is not published or the form submitted is nonsensical they are deleted.
  • Spam comments are kept for a period of time prior to reports to Google re. the worst offenders.
  • News updates: Emails are stored within my dedicated Google Feedburner account. If the email is not verified for this use within one month of it being received by Feedburner I delete it. You may unsubscribe from this online newsletter at anytime using the link provided in each update. (Please also note I cannot create a subscription for you).
  • Personal data and business correspondence in relation to all business contracts involving payment is retained for a minimum of six years after the end of the tax year in line with the requirements of HMRC.

What rights do you have in relation to your personal information?


​You have certain rights in relation to your personal information. They are:
  1. The right to obtain confirmation that we are processing your personal information (see Subject Access Request process);
  2. The right to access your information (see Subject Access Request process);
  3. The right to have your personal information rectified if it is incomplete or inaccurate;
  4. The right to have your personal information removed or deleted in certain circumstances, for example when you have withdrawn consent to it being processed and I have no other basis for processing it;
  5. The right to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances;
  6. The right to object to certain processing including the right to object where I am processing your information on the basis of my legitimate interest;
  7. Where you have provided your consent to the processing, the right to withdraw consent to the processing of your data (without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal); and
  8. The right to require us not to send you marketing communications.
Please note that the above rights are not absolute, and requests may be refused where exceptions apply.

Subject Access Request

You can ask me to confirm if I am keeping any personal information about you and you can also request to receive a copy of that personal information – this is called a Subject Access Request.

To make a Subject Access Request you will need to
  • provide adequate proof of identity such as a copy of your passport, birth certificate, or driving license before your request can be processed.
  • be as clear as possible about the information you are seeking, as that helps me to respond to your request more efficiently.
​Once I have received your Subject Access Request and proof of identity, you will receive a response within a month.

If you want to submit a Subject Access Requests or exercise any of the other rights referred to above, please email me (see contact page). If you are not happy with how I handle any of your requests, queries, or concerns, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (www.ico.org.uk), which oversees the protection of personal information in the UK.

How I work with third party services 
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Blog comments and Contact Forms

Use of Forms: email addresses can be collected by this website - using Weebly forms (Weebly is based in the USA).
  • They are ONLY used for correspondence relating to the page where you submitted your email address - with a suggestion or query.  
  • The way the Weebly webware works means that your email address is stored on the Weebly servers.   This is the Weebly Privacy Policy. 
  • The emails submitted via forms are forwarded automatically to me at a specific email address. I use gmail for correspondence. Gmail is a Google product and is covered by Google's Privacy Policy. (Also based in the USA with a UK operation)

Email addresses

My Privacy Policy in relation to e-mail addresses is simple. The links below are to the Privacy Policies of the services I use when you supply your email to me.
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My Privacy Policy in relation to e-mail addresses is simple.
  • Your personal information is kept safe and secure.
  • Your email address is only ever used for the purpose you consented to use it for, 
  • Email addresses will never be passed by me to anyone else (BUT see below) or any other organisation.
  • see below for how your personal information is processed via this website
That means your personal information and email address will never be sold, rented, or leased to any other party. Very occasionally people ask to be put in contact with another person and rather than give their email address to you I will either provide their website's contact details or, if they have no website, I will forward your request via form or email (using gmail)  to the third party and leave them to decide how to respond. 

Marketing: I won't contact you for marketing purposes or to promote new additions to the website to you. I use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to do this. You can choose whether or not you use social media.

Gmail Contacts / Apple Contacts

I store email addresses of personal contacts who have written to me
  • on Gmail Contacts - because that is the email service I use.
  • on Apple Contacts - for people I meet outside my home.
If you don't want your email stored (and you just need to say), I will delete the email after sending it to you. That will mean I won't recognise you if you write again direct to my email address and I will have no recall of any previous history or prior correspondence. I routinely delete emails from people I do not know where there is no purpose to the proposed correspondence.​

Google Feedburner

Subscriptions to my news blog: People wishing to subscribe to my news blog via email are asked to subscribe by submitting their email using Google's Feedburner (based in the USA). 

  • Your email is ONLY used if you re-confirm (verify) that you wish to receive news updates from my blog and your email is ONLY used for that one purpose.
  • I remove any emails after a period of one month if the email is not verified for this use within one month of it being received by Feedburner

Technical / Statistical Data

​You are also assured of privacy relating to to data collected for statistical purposes - however I am dependent on the privacy policies of third parties in this respect.

All statistical data collected via this site is initially collected, stored and analysed by third parties. 

​Cookies record information about the location of your IP provider, technical data about your computer and data about which pages you look at on this website and how these were accessed.  They do NOT tell Weebly or the statistical data collectors or me who the person is or anything else about the person viewing the site.   If you have a website or blog yourself then you are probably collecting statistical data relating to traffic flows in a very similar way.  

Cookie data helps me to understand which pages are the most popular and how somebody arrived at the site eg from an art forum or via a search on Google.  It also enables me to know what format most people are using to view pages which helps with design and accessibility issues (for example - accessing the website by mobile devices is becoming a lot more popular which makes me check how a page looks in a mobile view)

All data collected via this site is initially collected, stored and analysed by third parties.  See below for more details about the collection of technical / statistical data

Weebly provides me with basic statistics.  I get more information using two other statistical webware packages - see below
In addition, this is Google's statement about How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps.

Statcounter states in its Privacy Policy
to enable StatCounter.com to track your unique visitors we send a cookie to your visitors' computer. This information is collected solely to improve the service we offer to you and statistical purposes and is not used to identify individuals.
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Google Analytics stores information about:
  • the pages you visit on this website and how long you spend on each page

  • how you got to the site 

  • what you click on while you’re visiting the site
  • the location generating the visit (in broad terms e.g. a city)
Your personal information (eg your name or address) is not stored so this information can’t be used to identify who you are. Google is also not allowed to use or share the analytics data.

I am able to download some data to my own computer.   All data collected is anonymous and is collected solely for statistical purposes, to improve the service offered and is not used in any way to identify individuals.  

Contact information and further advice
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Katherine Tyrrell (that's me - the author if this website) is responsible for ensuring compliance with relevant data protection legislation.

If you have a query or concern please contact me in the first instance.

If you have concerns about the use of your personal data, the Information Commissioners Office is an independent body set up to uphold information rights in the UK. They can be contacted through
  • their website: www.ico.org.uk or
  • their helpline on 0303 123 1113, or
  • in writing to: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF