The policy: This privacy policy notice is served by Ruth Cheesley under the website; www.ruthcheesley.co.uk. The purpose of this policy is to explain to you how we control, process, handle and protect your personal information through the business and while you browse or use this website. If you do not agree to the following policy you may wish to cease viewing / using this website, and or refrain from submitting your personal data to us.

Policy key definitions:

• "I", "our", "us", or "we" refer to the business, [Business name & other trading names].
• "you", "the user" refer to the person(s) using this website.
• GDPR means General Data Protection Act.
• PECR means Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulation.
• ICO means Information Commissioner's Office.
• Cookies mean small files stored on a users computer or device.

Key principles of GDPR:

Our privacy policy embodies the following key principles; (a) Lawfulness, fairness and transparency, (b) Purpose limitation, (c) Data minimisation, (d) Accuracy, (e) Storage limitation, (f) Integrity and confidence, (g) Accountability.

Processing of your personal data

Under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) we control and / or process any personal information about you electronically using the following lawful bases.

• We are exempt from registration in the ICO Data Protection Register because we are only processing information for our own internal marketing purposes and do not provide any services or products for sale.

• Lawful basis: Consent
  Where our purpose for processing is: tracking activity across the website to better understand interests and engagement.
  Which is necessary because: It helps to better understand interest in the website and tailor communications appropriately.
  We process your information in the following ways: Tracking with Google Analytics and self-hosted Mautic.
  Data retention period: We will continue to process your information under this basis until you withdraw consent or it is determined your consent no longer exists.
  Sharing your information:  We do share your personal information with Google via Google Analytic
  

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• Lawful basis: Legitimate interests
  Where our purpose for processing is: to allow you to register an account and manage that account on the website for the purpose of making comments.
  Which is necessary because: it allows you to engage with articles and leave comments.
  We process your information in the following ways: capturing your username, email address and IP address when registering and commenting on an article.
  Data retention period: We will continue to process your information under this basis until you withdraw consent or it is determined your consent no longer exists.
  Sharing your information: We do not share your information with third parties. 
  

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If, as determined by us, the lawful basis upon which we process your personal information changes, we will notify you about the change and any new lawful basis to be used if required. We shall stop processing your personal information if the lawful basis used is no longer relevant.

Your individual rights

Under the GDPR your rights are as follows. You can read more about your rights in details here;

• the right to be informed;
• the right of access;
• the right to rectification;
• the right to erasure;
• the right to restrict processing;
• the right to data portability;
• the right to object; and
• the right not to be subject to automated decision-making including profiling.

You also have the right to complain to the ICO [www.ico.org.uk] if you feel there is a problem with the way we are handling your data.

We handle subject access requests in accordance with the GDPR. If you wish to have your data removed or to export your data, please use the request form.

Internet cookies

We use cookies on this website to provide you with a better user experience. We do this by placing a small text file on your device / computer hard drive to track how you use the website, to record or log whether you have seen particular messages that we display, to keep you logged into the website where applicable, to display relevant adverts or content, referred you to a third party website.

Some cookies are required to enjoy and use the full functionality of this website.

We use a cookie control system which allows you to accept the use of cookies, and control which cookies are saved to your device / computer. Some cookies will be saved for specific time periods, where others may last indefinitely. Your web browser should provide you with the controls to manage and delete cookies from your device, please see your web browser options.

Cookies that we use are:

Session cookie:

All requests to a Joomla website start a session which stores the IP address in the session data and creates a session cookie in the user's browser. The IP address is used as a security measure to help protect against potential session hijacking attacks and this information is deleted once the session has expired and its data purged. The session cookie's name is based on a randomly generated hash and therefore does not have a constant identifier. The session cookie is destroyed once the session has expired or the user has exited their browser.

Mautic also starts a session which stored the IP address in the session data and creates a session cookie in the user's browser.  The IP address is used to track activity across the website and connect this with activity in other channels, such as email.

Remember me cookie:

Joomla websites create a cookie in the user's browser if a "Remember Me" checkbox is selected when logging into the website. This cookie can be identified with the prefix `joomla_remember_me` and is used to automatically log users into the website when they visit and are not already logged in.

Captcha protection:

The Invisible reCAPTCHA plugin integrates with Google's reCAPTCHA system as a spam protection service. As part of this service, the IP address of the user answering the captcha challenge is transmitted to Google.

Web fonts:

A font used on our website are from fontlibrary.org which places a cookie when used.

Mautic tracking:

Mautic sets various cookies in the browser if cookies are accepted, which you can read about here.

Data security and protection

We ensure the security of any personal information we hold by using secure data storage technologies and precise procedures in how we store, access and manage that information. Our methods meet the GDPR compliance requirement.

Fair & Transparent Privacy Explained

We have provided some further explanations about user privacy and the way we use this website to help promote a transparent and honest user privacy methodology.

Sponsored links, affiliate tracking & commissions

Our website may contain affiliate links on some pages. These are self served through our own means, usually by adding an affiliate link and clearly marking it as such. We only use trusted advertising partners who each have high standards of user privacy and security. 

Clicking on affiliate links may track your actions by using a cookie saved to your device. You can read more about cookies on this website above. Your actions are usually recorded as a referral from our website by this cookie. In most cases we earn a very small commission from the advertiser or advertising partner, at no cost to you, whether you make a purchase on their website or not.

If you have any concerns about this we suggest you do not click on any affiliate links found throughout the website.

Email marketing messages & subscription

Under the GDPR we use the consent lawful basis for anyone subscribing to our newsletter, comments or marketing mailing list. We only collect certain data about you, as detailed in the "Processing of your personal data" above. Any email marketing messages we send are done so through an EMS, email marketing service provider. An EMS is a third party service provider of software / applications that allows marketers to send out email marketing campaigns to a list of users.

Email marketing messages that we send may contain tracking beacons / tracked clickable links or similar server technologies in order to track subscriber activity within email marketing messages. Where used, such marketing messages may record a range of data such as; times, dates, I.P addresses, opens, clicks, forwards, geographic and demographic data. Such data, within its limitations will show the activity each subscriber made for that email campaign.

Any email marketing messages we send are in accordance with the GDPR and the PECR. We provide you with an easy method to withdraw your consent (unsubscribe) or manage your preferences / the information we hold about you at any time. See any marketing messages for instructions on how to unsubscribe or manage your preferences.

Our EMS provider is a self-hosted Mautic instance. We hold the following information about you within our EMS system;

• Name (where known)
• Email address
• I.P address
• Subscription time & date
• Pages accessed
• Resources downloaded
• Form submissions
• Activities including emails opened, links clicked, etc.

Data requests

You can complete this form for any requests relating to data protection if you have created an account on this website.