WARNING – This article contains humorous swear words.
With thanks to Writers’ HQ, our supreme writing commanders, glorious leaders and excellent but tiny overlords, who have verily granted us permission to use their splendid and sweary Privacy Policy
Wow, you’re actually going to read this??? Cool.
We’re shamefully nicking this from Writers’ HQ because:
(a) It’s awesome;
(b) We can’t be bothered to even try and replicate it because, well, see (a); and
(c) We want to go to the pub.
If you want to read something proper and legal and – frankly – pretty damn boring, then click here to read our proper legal boring Privacy Policy.
Still here? Good. Then strap yourself in and let’s have some fun.
Oh, and don’t forget to tip your waitress.
We have to have one of these thingies to explain how we comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the DPA (Data Protection Act) and the PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) because God knows there’s not enough actual interesting things in the world to read, so you need to read 1,000 words of legalese nonsense that makes literally not one bit of difference to anyone, ever.
Short words (written by short people – sorry Si)
The best bit about the GDPR is that all this has to be “concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible”. So hold on to your hats, comrades, this is going to be the shortest, clearest and best freakin’ privacy policy you ever did see.
So. Here we go…
tl;dr
We’re a tiny, overstretched business and don’t have the time or energy to do anything nefarious with your data. It’s not that we’re not evil – we’re as corruptible as anyone – we’re just too tired to think up any sort of malevolent plot to steal your identity.
We collect and store the info we need so we can provide you with what you are looking at with your actual eyeballs right now, and when you use those very same eyeballs to read other stuff done by us and our awesome authors. We occasionally stalk you via Facebook adverts. That’s really it.
Cookies
Mmmmmm, cookies….
Seriously who actually cares? Does anyone even know what a cookie is or does?
Well then.
Yes, we do use cookies because that’s kinda how the Internet works. If you don’t want our delicious home-baked chocolate chip scripts, then you need to block cookies on your browser — but don’t come crying to us when nothing works like what it’s supposed to.
And now we’re hungry.
Stalky Visitor Tracking
Look, we’re following you, OK? We use Google Analytics, primarily to stare at the real time stats because they’re cool but also to see what stuff people are looking at so we can publish more of the stuff you like. Although frankly we don’t really tend to do that, mainly because we’re pretty crap at dividing up duties, so we’re each assuming the other one’s doing it.
We also have the Facebook Pixel installed so that we can sell you stuff. Yes, you heard it. We are a business and – shocker – we want you to spend money on all those awesome books our supremely talented authors have gifted to this world. The Facebook Pixel means that we can see how people interact with our site and with Facebook adverts and then we try to flog you relevant stuff. So shoot us. Actually. Errr. Please don’t.
If you’ve not seen the Facebook Ads analytics dashboard… MAN ALIVE it’s stalker central. That shit is a terrifying Black Mirror horror show. If you’re not on Facebook – well-bloody-done… but the pixel is tracking you anyway. Submit!!!
None of these things store any super-personal data about you but probably they nab your IP address, not that we’d know where to look for it or what to do with it. All we see is that a person or many people have interacted with our website and ads in a particular way. You can mess with us by doing something totally unexpected on our website and skewing our stats. Or you could do something way more fun and useful with your time like buying our books. BUY OUR BOOKS! Subtle, n’est pas?
Data Storage
DATA!! It’s all about the data, baby. A literal fuck-tonne of petabytes whirring around the world and… what? What’s it all for? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? What will future historians actually see of us and our slowly collapsing society????
Ahem. So. We store your data in a few different places and use it in a couple of different ways. You ready for this?
Here on this website: If you register with our website or sign up for a newsletter, we will store your name and email address. If you buy stuff direct from us (if we ever get round to doing that sort of thing in a maniacal, we-will-take-on-Amazon-and-win type of crazed drunken trip), we will store your name, email address, postal address, phone number if you give it to us, and your purchase history. Your payment details ARE NOT held on the site. We obviously go to the maximum effort to keep your data secure and we’re the only ones who have access to it. And even then, we will never really look at it because we’ve got better things to do: like finding and publishing awesome books, and writing and reading and eating and acting like glorified slaves to our families. And sometimes, just sometimes, sleeping.
We’ll be honest: we do absolutely nothing surprising or radical with your info. We use your history to target you with ads for stuff you might like. Like if you’ve clicked on an ad for a book you might get served an ad for another book. That’s it.
Does that make us EvilMegaCorp? IDK, it’s fairly standard isn’t it?
Mailerlite: If you’ve signed up for anything or bought anything on our site – newsletter, free stuff, books, anything – your name and email address also wangs its way over to Mailerlite, which is the system we use to manage our newsletters and emails. It is (according to them) GDPR compliant. You can unsubscribe from emails at any time by hitting the unsubscribe button.
Affiliate Links: If you click on a link on our website which takes you to Amazon or another online store, chances are that’s an affiliate link which will steal your soul and trap it forever in an alabaster jar in Jeff Bezos’ downstairs toilet. You have been warned.
Not really. We don’t think, anyway. Affiliate links are another way for us to earn a bit of pocket money, grubby little capitalists that we are. Basically, if you click on that link, Amazon will put some sort of tracking thingy on your computer and, if you then buy anything from them after clicking our link, we get a slice of the action out of Amazon’s end. So, we’d really love it if you could go on a massive shopping binge after clicking on our affiliate links. We’ll send you a postcard from the yacht we’ll buy with all our kick-backs.
You can get round this by not clicking on the link on our website and just searching for the thing you wanted to buy directly on the online store of your choice. That way you’ll avoid the affiliate tracking and we won’t get any kick-backs (sob!).
Email Marketing Thingies and Newsletters
If you sign up to our newsletter, we will send you a newsletter. Obvious, really. We won’t overload you, and will only send you the stuff you signed up to do.
You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button in every email. Your name and email address are stored securely in Mailerlite.
Mailerlite automatically adds tracking things to links.
So if you click on a link: WE KNOW.
If you open an email: WE KNOW.
If you ignore us asking you to buy our books: WE KNOW.
If you say mean things about us in whispering tones to a friend. WE WON’T KNOW, but hey, that’s not very nice…!
The most important thing about this is we have neither the time nor inclination to actually look at or do anything with these stats.
Your Right To Be Deleted
FINE FUCK OFF THEN, WE DON’T CARE! If you want to go offgrid, just chuck us an email at info@burningchairpublishing.com, or click on the unsubscribe link on any of our emails, and we’ll delete all the info we have on you from our systems while having a passive aggressive huff about what we could have possibly done wrong.
This does not include payment providers like PayPal and Stripe – if we ever get round to using them for anything. If you want to delete your PayPal or Stripe accounts you have to do that yourself via PayPal or Stripe. Also, we cannot delete your purchase history because the taxman will be terribly upset.
Social Media and All That Bollocks
We use social media a lot, partly to promote our authors’ books but mostly as a vehicle for our creative swearing, amusing pictures and unformed political opinions. If you talk to us in our Facebook groups or pages and we become familiar with you, we might find you on Twitter and say hello. You can ask us to be less friendly if you wish and we will of course respect your boundaries.
That’s it. And that’s five minutes of your life you’ll never get back. Well done you.
