This Privacy and Cookie Policy is for this Website – https://luscinia-ecology.co.uk – and served by Luscinia Ecology Ltd of 117a Holly Hill Road, Kingswood, South Gloucestershire, BS15 4DL. It governs the privacy of all users who choose to use it. It explains how we comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the DPA (Data Protection Act) [pre-GDPR enforcement] and the PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations).

This policy will explain areas of this Website that may affect your privacy and personal details, how we process, collect, manage and store those details and how your rights under the GDPR, DPA and PECR are adhered to. Additionally, it will explain the use of cookies or software, advertising or commercial sponsorship from third parties and the download of any documents, files or software made available to you (if any) on this Website. Further explanations may be provided for specific pages or features of this Website in order to help you understand how we, this Website and its third parties (if any) interact with you and your computer / device in order to serve it to you.

The DPA & GDPR May 2018

We and this Website comply to the DPA (Data Protection Act 1998) and the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). We will update this policy accordingly after the completion of the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Use of Cookies

Like the majority of Websites, we use cookies to improve your experience while visiting. As required by legislation, where applicable this Website uses a cookie control system, allowing you to give your explicit permission or to deny the use of/saving of cookies on your computer or device.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers which asks permission to be placed on your computer or mobile device. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular Website. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use them to provide anonymised data for Google Analytics. Data is kept for 14 months only. Google Analytics enables us to calculate the aggregate number of people using the Website any trends, and which parts of the Website are most popular. This process does not identifying individual visitors.

The Google Analytics cookies are: _utma, _utmb, _utmc, and _utmz. We use first-party cookies to identify which pages on our Website are being used. We use Google Analytics cookies to help us analyse data about traffic on our Website and improve our Website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form (a numeric string) and no personal details are captured. You can overview Google’s privacy policy here.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better Website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie does not allow us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies. However, you may prefer to disable cookies on this Website and on others. The most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser. Consult the Help section of your browser or take a look at the About Cookies Website which offers guidance for all browsers.

How can I prevent cookies being stored? You are advised that if you wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this Website on to your computer’s hard drive, then you should take the necessary steps within your web browser’s security settings to block all cookies from this Website and its external serving vendors.

Website Visitor Tracking

This Website uses tracking software provided by Google Analytics to monitor our visitors to better understand how you use it. The software will save a cookie to your computer’s hard drive in order to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the Website, but will not store, save or collect personal information. This Website uses only the default settings provided in the standard installation of Google Analytics. This allows details of the page you visited, including its URL and title, and information about the browser you used, such as its name, viewport size, screen resolution and the language in which it operates. Details of your location are included – this is determined by the IP address you’re visiting from, but at no point is your actual IP address made available as that is personally identifiable information that violates Google Analytics’ privacy terms. More information about Google Analytics’ privacy policy and how they safeguard your data is available on their Website.

Embedded Content from Other Websites

Content on this Website 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 originating Website. These Websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that Website.

Downloads and Media Files

Any downloadable documents, files or media made available on this Website are provided to you at your own risk. While all precautions have been undertaken to ensure that only genuine downloads are available, you are advised to verify their authenticity using third party anti-virus software or similar applications. We accept no responsibility for third party downloads and downloads provided by external third party Websites and advise you to verify their authenticity using third party anti-virus software or similar applications.

Contact and Communication with us

If you contact us through our Website you do so at your own discretion. Any personal details we request are provided at your own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time it is no longer required or has no use.

Where we have clearly stated and made you aware of the fact, and where you have given your express permission, we may use your details to send you products/services information through a mailing list system. This is done in accordance with the regulations named in ‘The policy’ at the start of this page.

Contact Forms

This Website uses a contact form provided by WordPress. Please note that in order to protect your data, this Website has chosen that no messages received via the form will remain on its server. All messages are therefore directly forwarded to the Website owners by email, and no personal information that you provide in the contact form remains on the Website.

External Website Links and Third Parties

Although we only look to include quality, safe and relevant external links, you are advised to adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this Website.

Shortened URLs

URL shortening is a technique used on the web to shorten URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) to something substantially shorter. This technique is especially used in social media and looks similar to this (example: http://bit.ly/2qChaHs). You should take caution before clicking on shortened URL links and verify their authenticity before proceeding.

Social Media Policy and Usage

We cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked Website, despite our best efforts. You should therefore note that you click on external links at your own risk. We cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

We adopt a Social Media Policy to ensure our business and our staff conduct themselves accordingly online. While we may have official profiles on social media platforms, you are advised to verify the authenticity of such profiles before engaging with or sharing information with such profiles. We will never ask for user passwords or personal details on social media platforms. You are advised to conduct yourself appropriately when engaging with us on social media.

There may be instances where our Website features social sharing buttons, which help share web content directly from web pages to the respective social media platforms. You use social sharing buttons at your own discretion and accept that doing so may publish content to your social media profile feed or page. You can find further information about some social media privacy and usage policies in the resources section below.

Your Rights Over Your Data

If you have an account or have left comments on this Website, you can request to receive an export file of the personal data the Website holds about you, including any data you have provided to them. You can also request that the Website owners delete any personal data they hold about you. This does not include any data that the Website is obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Resources and Further Information

• Overview of the GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation
• Data Protection Act 1998
• Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003
• The Guide to the PECR 2003
• Google Privacy Policy
• Linkedin Privacy Policy

Please contact us if you have any queries and comments, or if you want to make a request regarding any of your data subject rights

Changes to our Privacy and Cookie Policy

We may modify our Privacy and Cookies Policy from time to time at our discretion; if so, we will post a revised version of this Privacy and Cookies Policy on this page. Modifications will be effective as soon as they are posted on this Website.