Privacy and Cookie Policies

Who we are

At Outwoodz (https://outwoodz.co.uk/), we aim to be as honourable to our users as we can be, and therefore take the data you share with us very seriously. The last thing we want you to be concerned about is the security of your personal data. We have outlined below, all of the data we do and might collect from you, how we use it, our security measures and some helpful links. If you would like to know any other specific information about our data policies, please contact us and ask.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be 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 is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

We ask that you do not add any personal information to any comments that you submit. This will be visible publicly and we cannot control who views this information. You are responsible for any comments you submit and we have the rights to remove and not display any comments submitted to outwoodz.co.uk which we do not believe to be appropriate.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Any identifiable information (forename and surname), email addresses or any other contact or personal information which may be collected via our contact forms does not get shared with any third-party or is used beyond the use of responding to any inquiry submitted directly to us.

All responses get held within Google Forms. Google do not claim ownership of any content, data or information used by their services. This is discussed directly in Google’s privacy policies: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may 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.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded 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 tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

We have Google Analytics user tracking software installed onto this site. We use this to improve our site performance only, and to provide the very best content and service we can. None of the data we collect from our tracking efforts is identifiable information, and has not been opted to be shared directly with Google.

This data collection is controlled via a third-party cookie which is embedded as part of our site loading, and will not be triggered or start collecting any of the described user data unless specifically ‘Accepted’/opted into by yourself. This can also be amended by yourself from anywhere within the sites cookie settings. This can be found within the ‘gear’ options in the bottom left of the screen.

Advertising

We may use display advertising on outwoodz.co.uk as a means of earning money. This is part of a partnership through Google Adsense of which they use our site as a platform for their advertising display network. We have a number of Google installed cookies on our site, which allow Google to tailor their advertising displayed to users on our site based on data and preferences they have collected on them from other sites and sources.

These cookies purely relate to Google’s adverting platform and we do not record or use them for any data collection ourselves. https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en-US#types-of-cookies

Who we share you data with

We try to share as little as your data as possible with any 3rd-party organisations to keep your data as secure as possible. Any personal identifiable data (names and email addresses) we do store is stored using Google services but not shared with them.

Any non-identifiable user data collected  with Google Analytics (behaviour, generic location and generic device data), is kept within Google Analytics or exported to be used with other softwares but is not shared with other organisations. Some user behaviour and preferences may be shared with Google directly.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

Any personal identifiable data and contact information (names and email addresses) submitted to us through our forms we do not keep beyond 6 months beyond the most recent direct contact response.

All non-identifiable user data (behaviour, generic location and generic device data) is kept long-term, as is consistently useful within our business needs and operation. 

What rights you have over your data

If you have have left comments on our site, you can request that we erase any personal data we hold about you.

Although we automatically delete any contact information after 6-months time of use, you can request for us to delete any personal and contact data we have stored on you. You can contact us if you would like to know what data we do have stored on you already, and how much longer we intend to store that information for.

This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Additional information

How we protect your data

We take care to protect any data that we do collect, and in particular any personal information. For this reason, personal data is not kept longer than is possibly needed to. We make sure that this data exists securely and is not shared with other services/organisations as to not to increase the risks of security. You can read about Google Security Compliance here: https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance/

We are also very dedicated to keeping our site as up to date for security and as risk free as possible from breaches and vulnerabilities.

What data breach procedures we have in place

If we do become aware of a data breach which has potentially put your data at risk, it is our duty to contact you directly and let you know what data taken may have been breached and the measures we are taking in that event.

Our efforts to collect only essential information from you, and to not store that data any longer than we deem necessary we hope minimises the security risk of data we collect. As we do not collect much beyond a name and email address, we do not expect that any data breaches would cause any serious security outcomes; nevertheless, we still attempt to be as vigilant as we can be. 

What third parties we receive data from

As part of Google Analytics, Google may share generic and non-identifiable information that you have shared with them separately, as a method of presenting basic user statistics and basic demographic information concerning the users of our site.

Industry regulatory disclosure

If you require any information on the data protection legislations we aim to adhere to, you can read more from this Guide to the General Protections Regulation (GDPR) which we are obliged to follow.