Privacy notice

Data collected on this site

Non-GamStop Watch is a static information site. It does not require you to register, does not offer accounts, does not process payments and does not host a comments facility. The categories of personal data the site collects are therefore narrow. When you request a page from our server, our hosting provider records the request in a standard access log, which contains your IP address, the time of the request, the page requested, the response status returned by the server, the browser user-agent string sent by your device, and the referring URL if your browser has sent one. That log is used to operate the site, to identify and defend against abusive requests such as scraping and brute-force scanning, and to keep the site available to ordinary readers.

If you write to the editor at [email protected], our mailbox will hold your email address, the content of your message and any material you have chosen to attach. That correspondence is processed on the lawful basis of legitimate interest, being the interest of both correspondent and editor in a written record of factual queries, corrections and complaints. We do not use the content of your correspondence for any purpose beyond replying to it and, where the correspondence identifies an error, publishing the correction on the page in question.

Cookies and analytics

The site sets a small number of strictly-necessary cookies that are required for the pages to render correctly, for accessibility settings such as the preferred colour scheme to be remembered across pages, and for the safety banner to record whether you have already seen it during the current session. Strictly-necessary cookies do not require your consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, and no consent banner is displayed for them on that basis. We do not set advertising cookies, tracking cookies or third-party analytics cookies from providers who share data with commercial partners.

We use privacy-preserving analytics to understand which pages are most read and which are not, and the analytics used does not set cookies that identify individual visitors, does not persist identifiers across visits, and does not build behavioural profiles. Where we display external resources, we do not embed third-party widgets that would set cookies from those platforms. Outgoing links to external sites, such as gamblingcommission.gov.uk, gamstop.co.uk, gamcare.org.uk, begambleaware.org and gov.uk, are marked in the HTML to prevent referrer leakage where practical, and each opens in a new tab so that navigation to a public authority does not affect your reading position on this site.

How long we retain data

Server access logs are retained by our hosting provider for a rolling ninety days for the operational purposes described in the first section, after which the logs are aggregated into non-identifying summaries and the raw records are deleted. Email correspondence with the editor is retained for as long as the correspondence remains relevant to a query, a correction or a complaint, and for a further period sufficient to demonstrate that the site has responded to the query in question. In practice that period runs to twenty-four months from the last message in the exchange, after which the correspondence is deleted unless a specific reason for continued retention has been recorded on the file.

Where a correction has been published on a page in response to correspondence, the dated correction note itself is retained on the page indefinitely as part of the site's editorial record. The version history of substantive articles is retained on our internal editorial system for a period of six years, in line with the general limitation period for civil claims in England and Wales, and is available on written request to the editor. We do not sell, share or transfer personal data to third parties for marketing or profiling purposes at any point.

Your rights under UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018

Under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 you have a set of rights over the personal data we hold about you. Those rights include the right to be informed, which this notice discharges. They include the right of access, being your right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you. They include the right to rectification, being your right to have inaccurate data corrected. They include the right to erasure in the circumstances the legislation prescribes, the right to restrict processing, the right to data portability where the processing rests on your consent, the right to object to processing based on legitimate interest, and rights relating to automated decision-making, which do not apply here because the site does not undertake automated decision-making.

Requests under any of those rights should be sent to the editor at the address given below. We will respond within the statutory period of one calendar month from receipt, or within a longer period where the request is complex and where we have notified you of the extension in accordance with the legislation. We will not charge a fee for a request that is proportionate to the legislation's expectations, and we will not require you to justify the request beyond identifying yourself sufficiently for us to be sure the request has come from the person whose data it concerns.

How to reach us and the ICO

The data controller for the personal data described in this notice is the editor of Non-GamStop Watch, contactable at [email protected]. Please use that address for any subject-access request, rectification request, or other request relating to your rights under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Please also use it for corrections to any article on the site, whether or not the correction concerns personal data, and for factual queries relating to any material published under this domain.

If you are dissatisfied with our response to a request under the data-protection legislation, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, which is the United Kingdom's independent supervisory authority for data protection matters. The ICO can be contacted through its website at ico.org.uk, by telephone on its published helpline, or by post at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply to the processing described in this notice. Contact the editor, [email protected].