Who we are

Our website address is: https://www.beginnersguidetowriting.com

At Beginners guide to writing (“We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy (together with our terms of website use and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.  Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

For the purpose of the General Data Regulation (GDPR) effective from May 25th 2018, the Data Officer is Christine Lightfoot at Beginners guide to writing of 2 Magnolia Court, 34 Ashley Road, New Milton BH25 6FG.

Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process the following data about you:

  • Information that you provide by filling in forms on our site www.beginnersguidetowriting,com (our site). This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our site, subscribing to our service and forums, posting material or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our site.
  • If you contact us using out Contact form, we may keep a record of that correspondence but we do not use that information for marketing purposes. 
  • When you leave comments on the site we collect data shown in the comments form and also your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
  • 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.
  • We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
  • Details of transactions you carry out through our site and of the fulfilment of your orders.
  • Details of your visits to our site [including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise] and the resources that you access.

IP addresses and cookies

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies are small text files placed on your computer when you visit some websites. They are used to store information about you such as your name, the contents of your shopping cart, what you are looking at online etc.. Cookies help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us:

  • To estimate our audience size and usage pattern.
  • To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to your individual interests.
  • To speed up your searches.
  • To recognise you when you return to our site.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

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.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

  • To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
  • To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes.
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so.
  • To notify you about changes to our service.

We may also use your data, or permit selected third parties to use your data, to provide you with information about goods and services which may be of interest to you and we or they may contact you about these.

If you are an existing customer, we will only contact you by electronic means (e-mail or SMS) with information about goods and services similar to those which were the subject of a previous sale to you.

If you are a new customer, and where we permit selected third parties to use your data, we (or they) will contact you by electronic means only if you have consented to this.

If you do not want us to use your data in this way, or to pass your details on to third parties for marketing purposes, please tick the relevant box situated on the form on which we collect your data.

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.

For users that register on our website (if any), we 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.

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
  • If Beginners guide to writing or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of website use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Beginners guide to writing, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Your rights

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data.  You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at 2 Magnolia Court, 34 Ashley Road, New Milton BH25 6FG or chris.lightfoot@gmx.co.uk

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates.  If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.  Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to 2 Magnolia Court, 34 Ashley Road, New Milton BH25 6FG or email chris.lightfoot@gmx.co.uk.