From May 25th 2018, EU law requires anyone who holds personal data and information to comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation.

I have read and tried to understand the 12 steps provided by the Information Commissioner’s Office for complying with the GDPR.

In terms of relevance to this website and my email address, and how you, my reader, interacts with both and me, please know the following:

Who should read this? 

Anyone who has shared their email address with me. You might have done this in a multitude of ways including simply emailing me.

Why should you read this?

So that you know that I am not a data farmer who is stealing your data and selling it off to other entities who might use it to send advertising to your unwitting inbox.

What do you need to know? Succinct Version:

I might have your email address in my Gmail contacts list. You need to know that when you email me, Gmail automatically saves your email to my address book.

If you subscribe to my blog (when I set it up), I will have the details you sign up with in a database (which will probably be Mailchimp).

If ever I set up an online shop I might collect your email and postal address to deliver products (most likely books) that you have purchased.

I will not share the information with anyone without your permission.

I will delete your data if you request it. Subscribers to my future blog will be able to unsubscribe themselves without contacting me personally.

I am really good at password-protecting my computer, Google, Mailchimp and other accounts where your data may be stored, with individual passwords that I change regularly. If these entities are ever compromised, I will take their advice on how to protect your data.

I work alone and am therefore Data Protection Officer for this site, as prescribed by the GDPR.

More Details

WordPress:

When you leave a comment or contact me using the form on my website, WordPress stores your gravatar name, IP Address, comment, and email address. Therefore, leaving a comment is considered a clear affirmative, specific, and unambiguous action as defined by the GDPR giving me consent to store this information, and permission to contact you in the future by email (which I will of course only do to respond to a query and with your permission).

Your personal information will not be sold or shared with any third parties under any circumstances. Your information shall be retained until you unsubscribe or ask me to remove your data.

If you do not consent to the above, please don’t leave a comment or use the form.

For further information on how WordPress stores and uses your data, click here.

Children and minors:

If children email me I may reply to them if I don’t realise they are children. If I realise they are children, I will try to respond publicly through my blog, Facebook page or Twitter account.

It is not my intention to collect data from people who are underage. If, unbeknownst to me – because a minor has clicked the link to subscribe or follow me – I have collected the data of a minor, and you, being their parent or guardian, feel concerned, please contact me so that I can delete this data immediately.

Gmail: 

Please note Gmail automatically stores the name & email address of people who follow this site, comment on my blog (which is not set up yet) or contact me via the Contact Form.
I do not and will not share this information with anyone nor store it in any other format. If Gmail notifies me of any data breach in their system, I will comply with the actions required by them to contain it. I will also delete your details from my Gmail account if requested. This site & my Gmail account are password protected.