Who we are

We are Mac Thing, providers of IT consultancy and tuition. Our website address is: https://macthing.co.uk.  For all enquiries relating to Privacy & your personal data you can contact us via the following email address: enquiries@macthing.co.uk.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

We use cookies to collect anonymous data about how visitors use our site and how it performs. We use this to improve our products, services and user experience.

We also use Contact Forms to allow visitors to contact us directly. Any enquiries may include a telephone number, email address, and physical address.  This information is used to communicate with our customers.  The Contact Form may use a third party company, https://postmarkapp.com, which is a means of sending contact form submissions.  Please see the section, “Contact Forms” below for more information.

We also may use cookies for advertising, collecting anonymous information to help us recommend more relevant products and services for you. Please note, opting out means you’ll still see the same amount of ads but they will just be less relevant to you.

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 anonymised 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.

Contact forms

When visitors use the Contact Form, the email address, and other optional information, such as name and telephone number is submitted to us.  Additionally, the enquirer’s IP address and browser user agent string is also collected in order to help spam detection.

We keep contact form submissions for up to three months for customer service purposes. We do not use such information for marketing purposes.

We use the third party service, https://postmarkapp.com to send Contact Form submissions to an @macthing.co.uk email account.  Postmark collects and retains content and metadata for all emails for 45 days to give us the ability to access full message history during that time which is fully within GDPR guidelines. After 45 days, original email content and metadata are removed from the Postmark system permanently. Further details can be found here: https://postmarkapp.com/eu-privacy#summary

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.

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

The services contained in this section enable the Owner to monitor and analyze web traffic and can be used to keep track of User behavior.

Display Advertising extension for Google Analytics (Google Inc.)

Google Analytics on this Application might use Google’s Interest-based advertising, 3rd-party audience data and information from the DoubleClick Cookie to extend analytics with demographics, interests and ads interaction data.

Personal Data collected: Cookies and Usage Data.

Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy – Opt Out. Privacy Shield participant.

 

Google AdWords conversion tracking (Google Inc.)

Google AdWords conversion tracking is an analytics service provided by Google Inc. that connects data from the Google AdWords advertising network with actions performed on this Application.

Personal Data collected: Cookies and Usage Data.

Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy. Privacy Shield participant.

 

Google Analytics with anonymized IP (Google Inc.)

Google Analytics is a web analysis service provided by Google Inc. (“Google”). Google utilizes the Data collected to track and examine the use of this Application, to prepare reports on its activities and share them with other Google services.
Google may use the Data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
This integration of Google Analytics anonymizes your IP address. It works by shortening Users’ IP addresses within member states of the European Union or in other contracting states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases will the complete IP address be sent to a Google server and shortened within the US.

Personal Data collected: Cookies and Usage Data.

Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy – Opt Out. Privacy Shield participant.

 

User ID extension for Google Analytics (Google Inc.)

Google Analytics on this Application makes use of a feature called User ID. This setup allows for a more accurate tracking of Users by associating that User with the same ID over various sessions and devices. It is set up in a way that doesn’t allow Google to personally identify an individual or permanently identify a particular device.

The User ID extension might make it possible to connect Data from Google Analytics with other Data about the User collected by this Application.
The opt-out link below will only opt you out for the device you are on, but not from tracking performed independently by the Owner. Contact the Owner via the email address provided in this privacy policy to object to the aforementioned tracking as well.

Personal Data collected: Cookies.

Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy – Opt Out. Privacy Shield participant.

How long we retain your data

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

We keep contact form entries for six months, and analytics records for one year. For customers who use our services, we normally retain information relating to works carried out indefinitely in order to provide an efficient, consistent service over time.  Our customers have a right to request access to any data we hold on them; and a right to request erasing of any such data.  Please contact enquiries@macthing.co.uk for all related enquiries.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, or if we have provided services to you in the past, 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.

Our contact information

For all privacy related enquiries, please contact us via email: enquiries@macthing.co.uk

How we protect your data

This website uses SSL encryption provided by https://letsencrypt.org.  This means that digital interactions between the visitor and the website are encrypted.

Regarding data relating to customers with whom we have provided our services, any data that we have retained is stored on computers and backup disks that are encrypted and password protected.

We may store customer information on third party cloud services such as Apple iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive.  In all cases, the Cloud Services we maintain are further secured using 2 Step verification.

What data breach procedures we have in place.

In the event that a data breach takes place, we will inform the customers if we have retained any data relating to them.

Source: Akismet

We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).