How I handle your data

The short version: I use what you send to reply to you and to talk about the work. Nobody else sees it. Ask me to delete it and I will.

Who I am

Joseph Edmonds, trading as LTS Commerce Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, based in Shipley, West Yorkshire. I am the data controller, and I answer these emails myself. You can reach me at [email protected].

What I collect

Only what you type into the form: your name, your email address, your company, and whatever you choose to tell me about your situation. If you fill in the short questionnaire afterwards, the answers to that too.

Separately from that, a count of page views is recorded automatically, with no cookie and nothing stored on your device. See Tracking below for exactly what that is.

Why, and on what basis

To reply to your enquiry, and to talk with you about the work. My lawful basis is your consent, given by ticking the box on the form. You can withdraw it at any time by replying to any email from me, and I will delete your details without undue delay.

Withdrawing consent is not the same as asking me to stop emailing you. You can do either, or both, and neither needs a reason.

Counting page views is a different matter and rests on a different basis: legitimate interests. I have a genuine need to know whether anyone is reading these pages, it cannot be done without counting something, and what is counted is deliberately kept to the least that answers the question. You can object to it, and the Your rights section below tells you how.

Who else sees it

Nobody, other than Google. What you send is stored in a private Google spreadsheet that only I can open, and emailed to me. Google act as my processor: they hold it on my behalf and do nothing else with it. I do not sell it, share it, or use it for anything other than the purposes above.

How long I keep it

Only as long as it can still serve the purpose you gave it for, which means while I am following up your enquiry and while there is still a conversation to have. Once it can no longer serve that purpose, I delete it. If we go on to work together, the details of that relationship are kept for as long as running a business requires, and this notice stops applying to them.

You do not have to wait for any of that. Ask me to delete your details at any point and I will.

Tracking

No cookies, no advertising, and no third-party requests of any kind on any page of this site. Nothing is stored on your device and nothing about your visit is shared with anybody. That is checked automatically before the site is published, so it cannot drift without someone noticing.

I do count page views, on my own server rather than through an analytics company. For each view I record which page, the date and time, the utm_ tags on the link if it had any, and the website you arrived from, if you arrived from one. I record the domain only, never the full address.

To tell one visitor from two I also store a short scrambled code, worked out from your network address and browser and a secret that changes every day. It cannot be turned back into your address, and because the secret changes daily it cannot be used to recognise you tomorrow or to link your visit to anything else. Your network address itself is never written down.

I do this because I need to know whether people are reading these pages, and the honest alternative is a tracking script from a company you would then have to trust as well as me.

Your rights

You can ask me for a copy of what I hold, ask me to correct it, ask me to delete it, or object to my holding it at all. Email [email protected] and I will deal with it. There is no form and no process. It is one person and a spreadsheet.

If you are unhappy with how I have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, and you do not have to raise it with me first.