Who am I?
I’m a very nice person called Lucy Rycroft, and my website address is, unsurprisingly, https://lucyrycroft.com. In a previous life, however, my website was desertmum1.wordpress.com, so this blog is still referred to as Desertmum.
Very simply, I am the data collector for this site, and you can contact me at lucy@lucyrycroft.com.
What do I mean by ‘your data’?
This policy relates to the data I collect about those who read https://lucyrycroft.com AND those with whom I connect through email and social media channels.
By making contact with me through my website, email newsletter or social media channels, you are verifying that you are 13 years or over.
What personal data do I collect, and why?
You’ll be pleased to hear that by “personal data”, I’m talking about any information capable of identifying an individual, NOT anonymised data.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site I 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 anonymized 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. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. This includes your profile picture if you have made it visible to the public in the context of your comment (see ‘Comments’, above).
Contact forms
If you choose to subscribe to my email list, you consent to giving me your full name and email address, in order for me to send you updates by email.
Social media
If you choose to engage with my social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram), I will collect your social media contact details, in order to share blog updates and other news or items of interest with you.
User data
This website collects information about how you use the site, such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on my website, page views and navigation paths, the website you came from, details about the number of times you use my website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access my website. This is to make your visit to my website more tailored – but you can read more about this in my Cookie Policy.
Sensitive Data
I do not collect any sensitive data about you. This means I don’t collect data on your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. I also do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
I will only use your personal data for the purpose it was collected (e.g. to send you emails), or for a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary (e.g. to invite you to ‘like’ my Facebook page if you’ve commented on a post). You can always email me on lucy@lucyrycroft.com for more information, or unsubscribe at any time.
I may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.
How I collect data?
I collect data when you, the user:
- Comment on the site
- Send me an email
- Fill in a form to subscribe to email from Lucy Rycroft
- Enter a competition on the site
- Fill in a reader survey
- Interact with me on social media
- Open, click links in, or otherwise interact with any emails I send you
In addition, data is automatically collected by using cookies and similar technologies. See my Cookie Policy for more details.
How do I use your data, and why?
I process your data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. My lawful ground for processing is my legitimate interests, which in this case are to reply to communications sent to me, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
I also process your data to operate my website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of my website, to maintain website back-ups and/or databases, and to enable publication and administration of my website. My lawful ground for this processing is my legitimate interests which in this case are to enable me to properly administer my website and my business.
Some of your data (that relating to your movement on this site) is collected by the analytics tracking system, which is built into this website. I process this data to analyse your use of my website, to administer and protect my business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of my advertising. My lawful ground for this processing is my legitimate interests which in this case are to enable me to properly administer my website and my business and to grow my business and to decide my marketing strategy.
I may use your data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure the effectiveness of the advertising I serve you. My lawful ground for this processing is legitimate interests which is to grow my business.
MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
My lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or my legitimate interests (namely to grow my blog/business).
Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, I may send you marketing communications if
- you made a purchase or asked for information from me about my goods or services or
- you agreed to receive marketing communications
and in each case you have not opted out of receiving such communications since.
Under these regulations, if you are a limited company, I may send you marketing emails without your consent. However you can still opt out of receiving marketing emails from me at any time, and the ‘Unsubscribe’ button is clear at the bottom of every email I send.
I will never share your personal data with any third party except with your express consent. I am committed to keeping your e-mail address confidential. I do not sell or rent my email list to third parties, and will not disclose your email address to any third parties except as allowed under ‘Disclosures of your Personal Data’ below.
You can ask me or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email sent to you from me, or by emailing me at lucy@lucyrycroft.com at any time.
If you opt out of receiving marketing communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided as a result of other transactions, such as purchases, warranty registrations etc.
EMAIL INFORMATION
If you choose to correspond with me directly through email (lucy@lucyrycroft.com), I may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and my responses. I provide the same protections for these electronic communications that I employ in the maintenance of information received online. This also applies when you register for my website, sign up through any of my forms using your email address or make a purchase on this site.
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
I use Google Analytics to collect anonymised data about who is visiting my site, such as the country they’re in, the time they spend on my site, the articles they click on, the device they use and which site referred them. This data does not include personal details such name, age or address. I hold this data sensitively and do not share with others, except in a broad statistical sense, e.g. the percentage of people reading my blog from the USA, or on a mobile device.
How long I retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so I can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on my website (if any), I also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data I hold about you, including any data you have provided to me. You can also request that I erase any personal data I hold about you. This does not include any data I am obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where I send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
It is very important that the information I hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let me know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing me at lucy@lucyrycroft.com
Disclosures of your personal data
I may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:
- Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
- Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers
- Government bodies that require me to report processing activities including H M Revenue & Customs.
- Third parties to whom I sell, transfer, or merge parts of my business or my assets.
I require all third parties to whom I transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. I only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with my instructions.
International Transfers
Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.
Many of my third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever I transfer your personal data out of the EEA, I do my best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:
- I will only transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or
- Where I use certain service providers, I may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or
- If I use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, I may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place.
If none of the above safeguards is available, I may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.
Data security
I have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. I also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on my instructions and they must keep it confidential.
I have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if I am legally required to.
Data retention
I will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes I collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for I look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.
For tax purposes the law requires me to keep basic information about my customers (including Communications and Customer Data) for six years after they stop being customers.
In some circumstances I may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case I may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
Your legal rights
Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.
You can see more about these rights at:
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email me at lucy@lucyrycroft.com
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive, I may need to charge a reasonable fee – or refuse to comply with your request.
I may need to request specific information from you to help me confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. I may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
I try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take me longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, I will keep you informed.
If you are not happy with any aspect of how I collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). I’d be grateful, though, if you would contact me first so that I can try and resolve the issue for you.
Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. I do not control these third-party websites and am not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave my website, I encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
Anonymous data
From time to time, I may use anonymous data, which does not identify you alone, or when combined with data from other parties. This type of anonymous data may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Examples of this anonymous data may include analytics or information collected from cookies.
Publicly visible information
If you leave a comment on the website, or enter a competition, certain information (usually just your name) may be publicly visible. Your email address will never be available publicly.
Cookies
The Website uses cookies to store record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit, ensure that visitors are not repeatedly sent the same banner ads, customise Website content based on visitors’ browser type or other information that the visitor sends. Cookies may also be used by third-party services, such as Google Analytics or MailChimp (my email service).
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. (Please also note that you will still see ads when you disable cookies, the ads just won’t be as targeted to you).
Please see my cookie policy for more details.