Privacy & Cookies Policy

The short version

Thanks for visiting, and for taking the time to read this. Here’s the gist: this site uses a few automatic tools — cookies to count visitors, and security filters to keep hackers and spam out. Your information isn’t sold, and it isn’t shared with anyone beyond the handful of service providers who handle it automatically as part of running the website for me (listed further down). If you email me, I use your message only to reply to you. You can ask what I hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, and complain to the regulator if you’re ever unhappy. That’s the whole of it. The longer version, with the detail the law expects, follows.

Who I am, and who’s responsible

This website, tonywalsh.me, is run by me, Tony Walsh. For data-protection purposes I’m the “data controller” — the person responsible for how any personal information on this site is handled. The site is run from the UK and follows UK data-protection law: the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018, and the cookie rules known as PECR.

If you want to reach me about anything in this policy, you can get in touch through my contact page.

Cookies and similar bits of code

Like almost every website, this one uses cookies — small pieces of code stored by your browser. Some are strictly necessary to make the site work and to keep it secure, and those don’t need your permission. Others — the ones that count visitors or come from embedded content — are not essential, and under the UK rules I shouldn’t set those until you’ve had the chance to agree or decline.

So when you first arrive you’ll see a short notice that lets you accept or reject the non-essential cookies, and you can change your mind later through the “Consent Preferences” link. If you reject them the site still works perfectly well; I simply won’t get the visitor numbers 🙁 I can’t police your own browser settings for you, but I can make sure nothing non-essential is dropped on your device until you’ve said yes.

Counting visitors, and other tracking

Here I have to be straight with you, because a scan of the site turned up more than I’d realised was running. As well as a simple count of visitors, the site currently loads cookies from one or more outside analytics services — these can include Google Analytics, and measurement tools such as Hotjar and Chartbeat, which track how visitors move around a site. Some of these arrive through plugins or embedded content rather than anything I deliberately set up, and I’m reviewing whether I want them there at all.

Whatever I decide, none of them are essential — so they all sit behind the consent banner, and nothing in this group loads until you’ve accepted. There’s no advertising on this site, I’ve no interest in building a profile of you, and I don’t sell anyone’s data. If you’d rather not be counted or measured, just decline the non-essential cookies and that’s the end of it.

The full, up-to-date list of every cookie — what each one is, who sets it, and how long it lasts — lives on my separate Cookie Policy page, which updates itself as things change.

Keeping the site secure, and spam

There are automatic tools running quietly in the background to protect the site from hackers and from spam. This is normal and necessary: a great deal of online mischief is automated, and it’s far better to block trouble at the door than to repair the damage afterwards. These include things like Google reCAPTCHA on the contact form, which checks you’re a real person rather than a spam-bot, and Cloudflare’s bot protection. To do their job, these tools may briefly handle something like your IP address — enough to tell a real reader from a malicious bot — and nothing more.

Comments

I’ve switched comments off, so for now there’s no comment facility on the site and no comment data being collected at all. If that ever changes, I’ll update this page first.

The contact form, and emailing me

If you use the contact form or email me directly, I collect what you send — usually your name, your email address and your message — and I use it only to reply and to deal with whatever you’ve got in touch about. The email itself travels through an ordinary external email provider (a Gmail or Yahoo-type system), exactly as any normal email would. I don’t pass your details to anyone else, and once our exchange is finished I don’t use them for anything further. What your own email provider does with your information is between you and it.

If I ever run a newsletter, you’d have to sign up for it deliberately, and you’d be able to unsubscribe whenever you liked.

Content pulled in from other websites

Some pages here include things drawn in from elsewhere — a YouTube video, an image, a book link, a social-media post and so on. When a page shows this kind of embedded content, that other website (YouTube, for instance) can behave as if you’d visited it directly, including setting its own cookies. I don’t control what those companies do — their privacy policies apply, not mine — so where this content is the sort that tracks you, it only loads once you’ve accepted cookies.

Links to other sites, including to my books

This site links out to other websites — for background and source material, and to places where my books are sold, such as online bookshops and Amazon. Those sites have their own privacy policies and terms, which are nothing to do with me, so if you follow a link you’re making your own decision to visit them.

Some of those links may, now or in future, be “affiliate” links. That means that if you buy something after clicking, I may earn income, at no extra cost to you, which helps cover the cost of running the site. I’ll always keep this straight with you: a link is a link whether or not it earns anything, and I only point you towards things I’d have mentioned anyway.

Where your information goes

To run an ordinary website I rely on a few outside service providers — broadly: my web host, the WordPress platform and its tools, the analytics and security services described above, and the email service I use to receive contact emails and reply to you. Some of these companies are based outside the UK, including in the United States; where that’s the case, they’re expected to protect your information to standards recognised under UK data-protection law. I don’t sell your data, and I don’t share it for anyone else’s marketing.

How long I keep things

Emails and contact-form messages are active while we’re in touch, and then sink into the morass of other emails — I don’t resuscitate them. The visitor statistics are aggregated counts rather than anything personal to you. If I’m holding something of yours and you’d like it gone, just ask — see below.

Your rights

UK data-protection law gives you clear rights over your own information. In plain terms, you can:

• ask me what personal information, if any, I hold about you — though unless you’ve contacted me, it’s nothing;
• ask me to correct anything that’s wrong;
• ask me to delete any emails — I’m extremely happy to clear out my inbox;
• ask me to stop using it, or object to how it’s used;
• withdraw your consent to cookies, or to a newsletter, at any time — without that affecting anything done beforehand.

Just get in touch and I’ll sort it out. There’s no charge for asking, and I’ll respond as quickly as I reasonably can.

If something’s gone wrong

If you’re ever unhappy with how your information has been handled, please tell me first — I’d much rather hear about it and put it right. If you’re still not satisfied, you have the right to complain to the UK’s data-protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

I’ll update this page if the way the site works changes, or if the rules do. The date below tells you when it was last revised.

A couple of other things (not about your data)

Some of the places and activities written about on this site — desert travel, and certain countries — can carry real risks for an inexperienced traveller. Unlike a lot of YouTubers and bloggers, I travel independently, in countries on ‘watch-lists’, without ‘minders’ in the background; what’s here is simply what I’ve done, and part of my story on my own website — not a suggestion that you should do the same. If you do, that’s your own decision and at your own risk. And because things change in foreign countries just as they do at home, always check the most current information before relying on anything written here.