Privacy

What the newsletter is

Postcards from Seabrook is a monthly email about the Penrose Investigations books and the town they are set in. Signing up also opens the office, the readers’ area of this site. You join the list only when you press the button in the confirmation email, so nobody else can sign you up.

What is collected

• Your first name and email address.
• That you agreed to receive the newsletter, and when.
• The page you signed up on, the site that sent you here if one did, and any campaign tag on the link you followed.
• The times you sign in, with the country and the kind of browser.
• Which pages of the office you open, and what you download there, with the country and the kind of browser.
• When a sign-in link or a reminder was sent to you, when you sign out, and any change of your email address.
• On Alice’s page: the name you comment under and the comment itself, any heart you leave, and whether you want an email when Alice replies.
• A poll vote, kept as a code made from your account, or from your internet address if you are not signed in. The code cannot be turned back into either.
• How many times each of Alice’s pieces is read each day. It is a bare count, made without a cookie, and says nothing about who read it.
• Clicks on the bookshop buttons, with the country, the kind of browser and nothing that identifies you.
• Your name, email address and message, if you write to the office.
• A code made from your internet address, kept for an hour when you send a form, so that nobody can flood the forms. The address itself is not stored.

Nothing is sold here, so no payment details are taken. There is no password, so none is stored.

Who handles it

Penrose Investigations decides what is collected and is responsible for it. Four companies handle it for us, each for one purpose:

• Kit keeps the newsletter list and sends the monthly postcard.
• Resend delivers the emails this site sends itself, such as your sign-in link.
• Cloudflare hosts the site and its records, checks that forms are filled in by a person (the check is called Turnstile), and counts visits without cookies.
• BookFunnel delivers the ebook when you ask for it.

A fifth, Pushover, sends the office a short alert when a reader joins, a letter arrives or a comment is waiting. The alert carries no name, no address and nothing that anybody wrote.

Some of them keep data outside the United Kingdom, under the safeguards the law requires. Your details are not sold or passed to anyone else.

Cookies

There are two, and neither is set until you sign in. One keeps you signed in and lasts a year from your last visit. The other is a harmless marker that says a sign-in exists, and nothing about whose. There are no tracking cookies and no advertising.

No cookie records how you found the site. If a link or another site brought you here, that is held in your own browser for the length of your visit, and is sent only with the sign-up form if you fill it in.

How to unsubscribe

Every postcard has an unsubscribe link at the foot. One click and they stop.

How to delete everything

Open the Account page in the office and delete your account. That removes your name and address, your sign-in and page records, your hearts and your comment settings from this site, signs you out everywhere, and unsubscribes you from the newsletter list. If the list cannot be reached at that moment, the request is kept and tried again each day until it is done. A comment that has been published stays, signed only “A reader”, until you ask for it to be removed. A poll vote stays in the count, as a code that no longer leads to anybody. If you cannot sign in, write to the address below.

How long things are kept

Your details and records are kept until you delete your account. A sign-up you never confirm gets one reminder and nothing after it, and is removed sixty days after it was made. Counts of bookshop clicks and of reads identify nobody and are kept.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you may ask to see what is held about you, have it corrected, restricted or deleted, object to its use, or ask for a copy to take elsewhere. The newsletter is sent because you consented, and you may withdraw consent at any time. The other records are kept to run the office safely, which the law calls a legitimate interest. If an answer does not satisfy you, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

How to get in touch

Write to post@penroseinvestigations.uk. A request about your details is answered within one month.