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Privacy Policy

A static site with no accounts and no advertising partners; Google Analytics counts visits. What a visit touches, and who sees it, is set out below.

In effect since

The short version

  • No accounts and no sign-in. Google Analytics sets cookies to count visits (see Analytics).
  • No advertising partners, and nothing about anyone is sold.
  • Our scripts are Google Analytics and the running-cost calculators; Cloudflare may add its own (see Hosting).
  • Retailer links carry no tracking or referral identifiers.

  1. What this site collects

    This is a static website. There are no accounts and no sign-in. The only cookies are the ones Google Analytics sets to count visits, described under Analytics.

    Only the running-cost calculators run a script of ours: it works their figures out in your browser, and remembers the market you picked in your browser’s own local storage. None of that is sent to us.

    We do not build profiles of visitors, and we sell nothing about anyone.

  2. No advertising partners

    The site carries no advertising, joins no commission programme and has no advertising pixels. No advertising network or data broker receives anything from a visit here. Google Analytics, described below, counts visits for us with its advertising features switched off.

  3. Analytics

    We use Google Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they read. It sets first-party cookies, named _ga and _ga_ followed by an id, that can last up to two years, and Google processes the visit on our behalf: the pages viewed, the device and browser, and an approximate location worked out from your IP address. Google says Google Analytics 4 does not log or store IP addresses.

    Google signals and ad personalisation are switched off, so this data is not used for advertising. You can stop it with your browser’s cookie settings, a content blocker, or Google’s own opt-out browser add-on for Google Analytics.

  4. Hosting

    Cloudflare serves the site. It processes technical data such as IP addresses to deliver pages and to stop abuse.

    Cloudflare may also add small scripts of its own to a page as it delivers it: to count visits with its web analytics, which Cloudflare says sets no cookies, or to hide the email address on a page from harvesting bots. Where visits are counted, we see totals, such as how many times a page was viewed and from which countries, never who you are.

  5. Product photos

    Product photos load directly from the retailers’ own image servers. When a page shows one, your browser asks that server for it, and the request carries what any browser request does, such as your IP address.

  6. The contact form

    The contact form sends your name, email address, topic and message straight to this site’s own inbox; no third-party form or mail service handles them. They are stored in the site’s database, run for us by a hosting provider, where only the editor can read them. We use them only to reply to you, and never add you to a mailing list because you wrote.

    To stop floods of automated messages, the inbox counts how many messages arrive from each network (IP) address over ten minutes. That count is held in memory only: your address is not stored with your message.

  7. Security

    Every page is served over an encrypted connection, and so is the contact form. The site keeps no accounts; the only visitor data it stores is a message sent through the contact form, which only the editor can read, after signing in.

  8. Children

    The site is written for adults choosing things to buy. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.

  9. Your requests and questions

    You can ask what we hold about you, which in practice means a message you sent us, and ask for it to be deleted. Privacy questions go to the contact page.

  10. Changes to this policy

    When this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it, and the new text applies from that day.