Privacy Policy
In plain English
- I use Google Analytics on this website to monitor what’s popular or identify usability improvements
- There may be some remarketing performed if you’ve visited this website, which you can opt out of by changing your browser settings
- If you purchase a service or digital product of mine, I can delete your information if you wish
- If you have emailed me then let me know and I can remove information held on you
- No financial data is held by me, I use third parties to process payments such as PayPal and Stripe
- Your data is never sold or passed on to third parties, unless you have opted in to do so in order to complete a service for example
Here’s what I know about the average visitor
Google Analytics collects
- Your IP address
- Web browser
- Operating system
- The referrer (how you got my website, which could be Twitter, Google or directly typing in the URL)
- Your country plus town/city
This is not an exhaustive list, for the purpose of this website though I pay attention to what is popular, what appears to be working and where the website traffic is coming from.
More detailed information
Our Privacy & Security Policy outlines the information we collect about you, how we use, disclose and otherwise manage this information and the choices you have to restrict our usage of this information. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “we” and “us” means DG web consultancy and we are what’s known as a Data Controller. You may interact with us in several different ways including via our website, by telephone or our business representatives. You may be a residential customer who visits our online shop or an enterprise customer (business, charity or local authority for example). Or you may be an employee or a prospective member of staff. This document covers the categories of personal information we collect through each of the ways you interact with us and the type of services you take from us. Please see below to learn more about the topic that is of interest to you:
Information collected about our Customers
Why do we collect your personal information?
We collect information to help manage your interactions with us and to provide a quality service:
- To deliver products and services you have ordered from us;
- To manage the services we provide to you;
- To charge you for the products and services you have ordered from us;
- To be able to answer questions you may have now and in the future about the services we have provided to you;
- To fulfil our legal obligations as a business; and
- To help us run and grow our business.
We also collect information, so we can tell you about our products and services. We will not collect any personal information from you we do not need.
Information collected via our website
You can visit our site (www.denegibson.co.uk) without telling us who you are or providing us with any personal information. However, we may collect the I.P. (Internet protocol) addresses of all our website visitors and other related information to be used to improve our website. We use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone.
Cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies to collect information about the pages you access or visit. Cookies are bits of information that are automatically stored on your computer, so we can recognise you when you return. This enables us to understand your use of our website so that we can continue to improve and refine it for a better customer experience. Cookies can be disabled via your browser; however, this may affect the quality of the features on our site. The information collected through cookies may be combined with other identifiable personal information from our records and other sources. We may use this combined information for future marketing initiatives. To find our further information about cookies please visit a third-party information site, such as www.allaboutcookies.org. When you visit our website, you are presented with the option to “opt-in” to accept cookies. Our lawful basis for using cookies is your Consent via opting in.
Making Contact via our website
You may choose to raise a query with us via the contact forms provided on our website. In this case we will collect and store your name, address and telephone number (if these are provided) and your email address, along with any further information you provide specific to your enquiry. As an alternative method of contact you may click on one of the email addresses on our website. In this case the link will open your own email application and you will not need to save your information on our website.
Information collected about our Customers
When you purchase a product or service from us will collect the personal information required to perform the service. This information includes your name, billing and installation addresses, email address, phone number, payment method and other location information required to perform the service. We may also collect personal information of your staff where this is needed to provide the service to them. We will retain this information to assist you while you remain a customer of DG web consultancy. Our lawful basis for collecting this information is that we have a Legitimate Interest to enable us to provide products and services to you.
Who we share your personal Information with
We use a number of service providers to assist us deliver products and services to you and share necessary portions of your personal information with them:
- Our website hosting, Webfaction. Our website is hosted inside of the EU and the organisation complies with the EU’s data privacy regulations;
- For customers who require their service to be delivered we will share your name, address and contact telephone number with our Contractor in order to fulfil the contract.
All of our service providers are required to maintain the confidentiality and security of your personal information and to use it only in compliance with applicable privacy laws. These companies are not authorised to use your information in any manner, other than in helping us to provide you with products and services or as otherwise required by applicable law. We may also disclose specific personal information about you if required by law, governmental request or court order if, based on our good faith belief, it is necessary to conform or comply with such law, request or court order.
Retention of Personal Information
We only keep your personal information for as long as necessary for the purposes we collected it, to support a claim or defence in Court or as otherwise required by law.
Security of your Personal Information
We maintain reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards in an effort to protect against the loss, theft, unauthorised access, use, modification and disclosure of personal information in our custody and control. We only provide access to personal information to employees and authorised service providers who require such information for the purposes described in this Privacy & Security Policy.
Sale of our Business
In the event of a merger or transfer of our business to a new owner we may transfer or share information we have about you to a third-party acquirer.
Policy Changes
We may periodically update this Privacy Policy for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed. Any changes made will be posted here. We will treat your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Policy in place at the time your information was collected. This policy was last updated in June 2020.
How to Contact Us about your personal information
Please do contact us with any questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy. If you wish to access or update the personal information we have about you, or to correct factual errors in our records, please email us below. To protect your privacy, we will take reasonable steps to help verify your identity before granting access or making corrections. Email: dene@denegibson.co.uk, Tel: 01604 808887
Your rights
You can request a copy of the personal information we hold on you at any time. If you believe the information we process on you is incorrect you can request to see this information, and have it corrected or deleted. If we are providing a service to you under contract, then it may not be possible to delete your information. We may also be required to retain some parts of your personal information for legal reasons – such as invoice and payment records. Please make such a request in writing. There will be no charge for reasonable requests for information and we will respond within 30 days. If it will take longer than 30 days to meet your request we will advise you accordingly. Please be aware that if you do request a deletion of information this may limit the service we can provide to you. If you wish to raise a request regarding your personal information or to register a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, please contact us at dene@denegibson.co.uk. If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/
Cookie Policy
What are cookies? Cookies are small files which are stored on your computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to your website visit on our site. Cookies help to improve your visit to our website by helping with the following:
- Remembering settings, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
- Remembering information you’ve given (e.g. your postcode) so you don’t need to keep entering it
- Measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs
Please note that cookies can’t harm your computer and we do not store personally identifiable information in cookies we use on this website. We’re giving you this information as part of our initiative to comply with UK legislation, and to make sure we’re honest and clear about your privacy when using our website. Please be assured that we’re working on a number of other privacy and cookie-related improvements to the website. The cookies we use Measuring website usage – Google Analytics Google Analytics uses cookies to define user sessions, as well as to provide a number of key features in the Google Analytics reports. Google Analytics sets or updates cookies only to collect data required for the reports. Additionally, Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies. This means that all cookies set by Google Analytics for your domain send data only to the servers for your domain. This effectively makes Google Analytics cookies the personal property of this website domain, and the data cannot be altered or retrieved by any service on another domain. The following table lists the type of information that is obtained via Google Analytics cookies and used in Analytics reports.
Functionality | Description of cookie | Cookie used |
---|---|---|
Setting the Scope of Your Site Content | Because any cookie read/write access is restricted by a combination of the cookie name and its domain, default visitor tracking via Google Analytics is confined to the domain of the page on which the tracking code is installed. For the most common scenario where the tracking code is installed on a single domain (and no other sub-domains), the generic setup is correct. In other situations where you wish to track content across domains or sub-domains, or restrict tracking to a smaller section of a single domain, you use additional methods in the ga.js tracking code to define content scope. See Domains & Directories in the Collection API document for details. | All cookies |
Determining Visitor Session | The Google Analytics tracking for ga.js uses two cookies to establish a session. If either of these two cookies are absent, further activity by the user initiates the start of a new session. See the Session article in the Help Center for a detailed definition and a list of scenarios that end a session. You can customize the length of the default session time using the _setSessionCookieTimeout() method.This description is specific to the ga.js tracking code for web pages. If you use Analytics tracking for other environments – such as Flash or mobile – you should check the documentation for those environments to learn how sessions are calculated or established. | __utmb __utmc |
Identifying Unique Visitors | Each unique browser that visits a page on your site is provided with a unique ID via the __utma cookie. In this way, subsequent visits to your website via the same browser are recorded as belonging to the same (unique) visitor. Thus, if a person interacted with your website using both Firefox and Internet Explorer, the Analytics reports would track this activity under two unique visitors. Similarly if the same browser were used by two different visitors, but with a separate computer account for each, the activity would be recorded under two unique visitor IDs. On the other hand, if the browser happens to be used by two different people sharing the same computer account, one unique visitor ID is recorded, even though two unique individuals accessed the site. | __utma |
Tracking Traffic Sources & Navigation | When visitors reach your site via a search engine result, a direct link, or an ad that links to your page, Google Analytics stores the type of referral information in a cookie. The parameters in the cookie value string are parsed and sent in the GIF Request (in the utmcc variable). The expiration date for the cookie is set as 6 months into the future. This cookie gets updated with each subsequent page view to your site; thus it is used to determine visitor navigation within your site. | __utmz |
Custom Variables | You can define your own segments for reporting on your particular data. When you use the _setCustomVar() method in your tracking code to define custom variables, Google Analytics uses this cookie to track and report on that information. In a typical use case, you might use this method to segment your website visitors by a custom demographic that they select on your website (income, age range, product preferences). | ___utmv |
Website Optimiser | You can use Google Analytics with Google Website Optimizer (GWO), which is a tool that helps determine the most effective design for your site. When a website optimizer script executes on your page, a _utmx cookie is written to the browser and its value is sent to Google Analytics. See the Website Optimizer Help Center for more information. | ___utmx |
Once the cookies are set/updated on the web browser, the data they contain that is required for reporting purposes is sent to the Analytics servers in the GIF Request URL via the utmcc parameter. Cookies Set By Google Analytics Google Analytics sets the following cookies as described in the table below. A default configuration and use of Google Analytics sets only the first 4 cookies in the table.
Name | Description | Expiration |
---|---|---|
__utma | This cookie is typically written to the browser upon the first visit to your site from that web browser. If the cookie has been deleted by the browser operator, and the browser subsequently visits your site, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to your site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure. | 2 years from set/update. |
__utmb | This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session with your site. When a user views a page on your site, the Google Analytics code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established. Each time a user visits a different page on your site, this cookie is updated to expire in 30 minutes, thus continuing a single session for as long as user activity continues within 30-minute intervals. This cookie expires when a user pauses on a page on your site for longer than 30 minutes. You can modify the default length of a user session with the _setSessionCookieTimeout() method. | 30 minutes from set/update. |
__utmc | This cookie is no longer used by the ga.js tracking code to determine session status. Historically, this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user. For backwards compatibility purposes with sites still using the urchin.js tracking code, this cookie will continue to be written and will expire when the user exits the browser. However, if you are debugging your site tracking and you use the ga.js tracking code, you should not interpret the existence of this cookie in relation to a new or expired session. | Not set |
__utmz | This cookie stores the type of referral used by the visitor to reach your site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within your own site. The cookie is updated with each page view to your site. | 6 months from set/update |
__utmv | This cookie is not normally present in a default configuration of the tracking code. The __utmv cookie passes the information provided via the _setVar() method, which you use to create a custom user segment. This string is then passed to the Analytics servers in the GIF request URL via the utmcc parameter. This cookie is only written if you have added the _setVar() method for the tracking code on your website page. | 2 years from set/update |
__utmx | This cookie is used by Website Optimizer and only set when the Website Optimizer tracking code is installed and correctly configured for your pages. When the optimizer script executes, this cookie stores the variation this visitor is assigned to for each experiment, so the visitor has a consistent experience on your site. See the Website Optimizer Help Center for more information. | 2 years from set/update |
Other 3rd Party Cookies we may use
When you visit our website, you may notice some cookies that are collecting information for other websites. For example, if you visit a page that has video content, cookies from YouTube may be served. We do not control the setting of these cookies and we recommend you visit the third party websites for more information. Please find a list of some third party cookies you may find present on this website and links to their specific cookie information: Google Adwords
How do I Control or Delete Cookies?
If cookies are not enabled on your computer is could mean that your experience with our website will be impacted. However, if you want to control or delete cookies you can do so. Information on deleting cookies or controlling cookies is available at www.aboutCookies.org. To reiterate though, by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.