Privacy Policy

Who we are

We are Hobbyism. Our website address is: https://hobbyism.co.uk.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we 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: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

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.

Sponsored links, affiliate tracking & commissions

Our website may contain adverts, sponsored and affiliate links on some pages. These are typically served through our advertising partners; Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliates, or are self served through our own means. We only use trusted advertising partners who each have high standards of user privacy and security. However we do not control the actual adverts seen / displayed by our advertising partners.

Clickable sponsored or affiliate links may be displayed as a website URL like this; www.hobbyism.co.uk or as a titled text link like this: Hobbyism.

Clicking on any adverts, sponsored or affiliate links may track your actions by using a cookie saved to your device. You can read more about cookies on this website below. Your actions are usually recorded as a referral from our website by this cookie. In most cases we earn a very small commission from the advertiser or advertising partner, at no cost to you, whether you make a purchase on their website or not.

We use advertising partners in these ways to help generate an income from the website, which allows us to continue our work and provide you with the best overall experience and valued information.

If you have any concerns about this we suggest you do not click on any adverts, sponsored or affiliate links found throughout the website.

Contact forms

The data collected through the contact list is your name, email address, anything within the message body and IP address although your name isn’t necessary to submit your message.

The purpose for that data is to be able to respond to queries.

We use the Contact Form 7 plugin to manage contact form submissions. The information is sent as email messages that only a select few are allowed to access. The information is also stored in the database on our hosting server for backup and later reference purposes.  WordPress hosts this website.

Data from the contact form is not shared with third parties.
We only use WordPress plugins and themes that are hosted by WordPress.org. WordPress.org’s guidelines clearly prohibit tracking users without their explicit informed consent. The country in which the data is processed is the UK.

We don’t set a particular time limit on storing information because we need it for future reference. If you want your information to be removed from our database, please contact us. We will remove it anytime there are concerns about your privacy.

Contact Form 7’s T&Cs can be found here.

Cookies

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.

We use a cookie control system which allows you to accept the use of cookies, and control which cookies are saved to your device / computer. Some cookies will be saved for specific time periods, where others may last indefinitely. Your web browser should provide you with the controls to manage and delete cookies from your device, please see your web browser options.

Cookies that we use are;

  • Hobbyism – _cfduid, _ga, _gid
  • Google ads – IDE
  • google syndication

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.

Analytics

We use google analytics.

Google Analytics mainly uses first-party cookies to report on visitor (aka. user) interactions on Google Analytics customers’ websites. Users may disable cookies or delete any individual cookie. Learn more

In addition, Google Analytics supports an optional browser add-on that – once installed and enabled – disables measurement by Google Analytics for any site a user visits. Note that this add-on only disables Google Analytics measurement.

Where a site or app uses Google Analytics for Apps or the Google Analytics for Firebase SDKs, Google Analytics collects an app-instance identifier — a randomly generated number that identifies a unique installation of an App. Whenever a user resets their Advertising Identifier (Advertising ID on Android, and ID for Advertisers on iOS), the app-instance identifier is also reset.

Where sites or apps have implemented Google Analytics with other Google Advertising products, like AdWords, additional advertising identifiers may be collected. Users can opt-out of this feature and manage their settings for this cookie using the Ads SettingsLearn more

Google Analytics also collects Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to provide and protect the security of the service, and to give website owners a sense of which country, state, or city in the world their users come from (also known as “IP geolocation”). Google Analytics provides a method to mask IPs that are collected (detailed below) but note that website owners have access to their users’ IP addresses even if the website owners do not use Google Analytics.  Google’s Privacy policy is here.

Data retention: 26 months

Email marketing messages & subscription

Under the GDPR we use the consent lawful basis for anyone subscribing to our newsletter or marketing mailing list. We only collect certain data about you, including your name and email address. Any email marketing messages we send are done so through an EMS, email marketing service provider. An EMS is a third party service provider of software / applications that allows marketers to send out email marketing campaigns to a list of users.

Email marketing messages that we send may contain tracking beacons / tracked clickable links or similar server technologies in order to track subscriber activity within email marketing messages. Where used, such marketing messages may record a range of data such as; times, dates, I.P addresses, opens, clicks, forwards, geographic and demographic data. Such data, within its limitations will show the activity each subscriber made for that email campaign.

Any email marketing messages we send are in accordance with the GDPR and the PECR. We provide you with an easy method to withdraw your consent (unsubscribe) or manage your preferences / the information we hold about you at any time. See any marketing messages for instructions on how to unsubscribe or manage your preferences, you can also unsubscribe from all MailChimp lists, by following this link, otherwise contact the EMS provider.

Our EMS provider is; Mailchimp. We hold the following information about you within our EMS system;

  • Email address
  • I.P address
  • Subscription time & date
  • Name

Here’s a link to Mailchimp’s Privacy Policy

Guest Posts

By submitting a post for publication on Hobbyism, you are confirming that the rights to any materials used are yours, and that any sources are credited as necessary.

You are also granting Hobbyism all rights to the copy.

We may reproduce your blog, or quotes from your blog, in public relations (PR), electronic media and promotional materials.

We reserve the right not to publish any blog post submitted.

Who we share your data with

Unless otherwise mentioned Hobbyism does not share any data with third parties.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize 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.

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 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.

Where we send your data

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

Your contact information

Email: [email protected]
Address: Hobbyism Unit 16190, PO Box 6945, London, W1A 6US

Additional information

How we protect your data

Any data is password protected and there is two-factor authentication on the email subscription.

What third parties we receive data from

None

Privacy policy V1 May 2018

Updated: 18 July 2023