Privacy Policy
Loudoun Proud collects as little about you as we can get away with, and we will always tell you what we hold. This page explains it plainly.
Who we are
Loudoun Proud is a local news publication for the Irvine Valley. For data protection purposes we are the data controller. If you want to know what we hold about you, or want it deleted, email privacy@loudounproud.co.uk and we will respond within one month.
If you subscribe to the newsletter
We store your email address, your name if you give it, the date you signed up, and which part of the site you signed up from. We use this to send you the newsletter and nothing else.
We use double opt-in: nobody is added without clicking a confirmation link first. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes you immediately. Emails are sent through MXRoute, our email provider.
We record whether an edition was opened and which links were clicked. This is measured on our own servers, not through a third-party tracking pixel, and we use it only to judge whether the newsletter is any good. You can ask us to stop recording this for your address.
Lawful basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
If you send us something
Events, notices, reader photographs, lost and found pet listings, business directory entries and family notices all ask for contact details so we can check the submission before it is published.
Your name and contact details are not published unless the form says so explicitly and you have chosen it — for example a phone number on a lost pet listing, which is off by default. Messages sent through a listing are relayed to the person who posted it; we do not give out their address.
Lawful basis: your consent, and our legitimate interest in checking submissions before publishing them.
If you pay us
Payments for family notices and premium directory listings are handled by Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe directly and are never seen by or stored on our servers. We keep a record that a payment was made, the amount, and the reference Stripe gives us, because we have to for our accounts.
Stripe processes your data under its own privacy policy, which you can read at stripe.com/gb/privacy.
Lawful basis: performing the contract you entered into, and our legal obligation to keep financial records.
Cookies
We set a small number of cookies that the site cannot work without. These do not need your permission and cannot be turned off:
- csrftoken — protects forms from being submitted by another site on your behalf.
- sessionid — only set if you log in to the admin area.
Analytics — only if you agree
We use Google Analytics to understand which stories people read and how they found us. It sets cookies and sends data to Google.
It does not run unless you say yes. The first time you visit you will be asked. If you decline, no analytics cookies are set and nothing is sent to Google — the site behaves exactly the same. Your answer is remembered in your browser, and you can change it by clearing your browser storage for this site.
Where analytics is enabled, your IP address is anonymised before Google receives it, and we do not use Google's advertising or personalisation features. Google processes this data under its own terms, which you can read at policies.google.com/privacy.
Lawful basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
We do not use advertising cookies. Sponsors on this site are served from our own database — they cannot see who you are.
What we never do
- We do not sell your information to anyone.
- We do not pass reader details to sponsors or advertisers.
- We do not publish your name against a tip-off without your permission.
- We do not set analytics cookies unless you have agreed to them.
How long we keep things
- Subscribers: until you unsubscribe, then removed.
- Submissions: published items stay as part of the public record; rejected ones are deleted within three months.
- Payment records: six years, as UK tax law requires.
- Server logs: ninety days.
- Analytics data: retained by Google for fourteen months.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to how we are using it. Email privacy@loudounproud.co.uk.
If you are not satisfied with how we handle it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Children
This site is not aimed at children. We do not knowingly collect information about anyone under 13. If a child has sent us something, email us and we will remove it.
Changes
If we change how we handle your information we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes will be mentioned in the newsletter.