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Site policy

Privacy Notice

Last updated:

Amanda Durkan operates Amanda Durkan Writes and is the data controller for the personal information described in this notice. This means she decides why and how that information is processed.

This notice explains how information is collected and used when you visit Amanda Durkan Writes, become a member, subscribe to emails, leave a comment, complete a poll, submit the contact form, make a payment or otherwise interact with the site.

Contacting me about privacy

To ask a privacy question or exercise a data-protection right, use the contact form and select Privacy or personal-data request.

Please do not submit unnecessary sensitive information through the form.

Information collected

The information collected depends on how you use the site.

It can include:

  • your email address;
  • your name, if you choose to provide it;
  • your member profile and membership status;
  • your newsletter subscriptions and preferences;
  • email delivery, open and link-click information;
  • comments you post and related moderation information;
  • messages submitted through the contact form;
  • poll or survey responses;
  • a Tally Respondent ID used to prevent duplicate poll submissions;
  • payment, subscription, and transaction information;
  • basic technical and security information, including IP address, browser details, device information, and server logs;
  • information about pages and posts viewed through Ghost’s native analytics;
  • information you provide when making a privacy, accessibility, payment, or support request.

Stripe processes payment-card details. Amanda Durkan Writes does not receive your complete card number.

How information is collected

Information is collected when you:

  • subscribe to one or more newsletters;
  • create or use a member account;
  • sign in through Ghost Portal;
  • become a paid member;
  • make a one-off tip;
  • leave a comment;
  • complete a poll or survey;
  • submit the contact form;
  • manage your subscription or email preferences;
  • browse the site.

Ghost, the hosting infrastructure and services needed to secure and operate the site collects some technical information automatically.

How information is used

Information is used to:

  • create and administer member accounts;
  • authenticate members securely;
  • provide access to public, member-only, and paid content;
  • send newsletters and service messages;
  • record and apply email preferences;
  • measure newsletter delivery, opens, and link clicks;
  • process recurring subscriptions and one-off tips;
  • manage subscription status;
  • display and moderate comments;
  • prevent duplicate poll responses;
  • receive and respond to contact messages;
  • provide technical support;
  • detect fraud, spam, automated traffic, and other misuse;
  • protect the security and reliability of the site;
  • understand readership and content performance;
  • meet legal, tax, accounting, and consumer-protection obligations;
  • establish, exercise or defend legal rights.

Personal information is not sold to advertisers or data brokers.

The legal basis depends on the activity.

Consent is used for optional newsletter emails and any non-essential technologies that legally require permission.

You can withdraw newsletter consent at any time by:

  • using the unsubscribe link in an email;
  • changing your newsletter preferences in your member account;
  • submitting a request through the contact form.

Withdrawing newsletter consent does not automatically delete your member account or cancel a paid subscription.

Contract

Information is processed where necessary to:

  • create and manage a membership;
  • provide paid content;
  • administer a recurring subscription;
  • process a one-off tip;
  • deliver another service you requested;
  • take the steps requested before entering into an agreement.

Legitimate interests

Limited information is processed where necessary to:

  • operate and improve the publication;
  • secure the site;
  • prevent abuse and duplicate submissions;
  • understand aggregate readership;
  • respond to correspondence;
  • moderate comments;
  • maintain appropriate records.

These interests are balanced against readers’ rights and reasonable expectations.

Some records are processed or retained to meet tax, accounting, payment, consumer-protection or other legal requirements.

Membership and sign-in

Ghost provides membership and passwordless authentication.

When you request to sign in, Ghost sends a secure link or code to your email address. When signed in, Ghost uses authentication cookies to recognise your session and provide account features, restricted content and comments.

Your member record can include:

  • email address;
  • name;
  • subscription status;
  • newsletter preferences;
  • labels or notes used to administer the membership;
  • payment and subscription status;
  • account creation and activity information.

Newsletters and email measurement

Mailgun delivers newsletters, sign-in messages and other transactional emails for Amanda Durkan Writes.

Newsletter open tracking and link-click tracking are enabled. This means the publication can record whether an email appears to have been opened and whether a link in it was followed.

You can unsubscribe from optional emails at any time. Essential account, authentication, payment, or service messages can still be sent where needed to provide a service you requested.

Website analytics

Ghost’s native analytics are enabled.

Ghost’s native website analytics are first-party and do not use analytics cookies. They record information used to understand visits, traffic sources and content performance. When a member is signed in, Ghost can associate member and membership information with site activity.

No advertising trackers, Meta Pixel, Google Analytics or other third-party marketing analytics are currently installed.

Comments

Comments are available to signed-in members. A paid subscription is not required to comment.

When you comment, Ghost processes:

  • your member identity;
  • the comment text;
  • the post or discussion concerned;
  • timestamps and moderation information;
  • reactions or replies connected to the discussion.

Comments are publicly visible. Do not include private or sensitive information that you do not want others to see.

Comments can be hidden or removed, and member access can be restricted where necessary to enforce the Terms of Use or protect the site and its readers.

Polls and surveys

Polls and surveys are provided through Tally.

They do not ask for names or email addresses unless this is made clear in the particular form.

Tally automatically assigns a Respondent ID. The ID is persistent across forms in the same Tally workspace and is used here to prevent the same respondent from submitting a poll more than once.

The Respondent ID is not used by Amanda Durkan Writes to identify respondents by name.

Tally polls are currently opened through external links rather than embedded in this site.

Contact form

The contact form is processed through Formspark at submit-form.com.

Formspark retains submissions in its dashboard and forwards them to Amanda Durkan Writes by email.

Contact-form information is used to:

  • read and respond to your message;
  • manage follow-up correspondence;
  • handle membership, payment, privacy, or accessibility requests;
  • address complaints, corrections, or technical problems;
  • maintain appropriate records where necessary.

Contact submissions and related correspondence are retained while relevant to the enquiry, the publication, an ongoing professional relationship or the protection of legal rights. They are deleted when no longer needed, unless retention is required for legal, accounting, safeguarding, dispute-resolution or security purposes.

Payments, subscriptions, and tips

Stripe processes recurring paid subscriptions and one-off tips.

Stripe can process:

  • name and contact information;
  • billing information;
  • payment-card information;
  • subscription and transaction details;
  • fraud-prevention and security information;
  • IP address, browser, and device information.

Amanda Durkan Writes receives transaction and subscription information needed to administer access but does not receive your complete card details.

A one-off tip supports Amanda Durkan Writes but does not create a paid membership or unlock paid content. Access to paid content requires an active paid subscription to an eligible membership tier.

External content and links

Pages and posts can include links to, or content supplied by, third-party services such as:

  • video or audio platforms;
  • polls and surveys;
  • maps;
  • social-media services;
  • payment services;
  • image providers.

Where a service is linked rather than embedded, it is not loaded through this site until you follow the link.

Embedded content can connect to its provider when a page loads or when you interact with it. The provider can then receive technical information and use cookies or similar technologies under its own privacy terms.

Service providers

The following providers are used to operate the site:

  • PikaPods hosts the Ghost installation, database and uploaded files.
  • Ghost provides publishing, memberships, comments, newsletters, Portal and native analytics.
  • Mailgun delivers newsletters, sign-in emails and other transactional messages.
  • Stripe processes recurring paid subscriptions and voluntary one-off tips.
  • Formspark, through submit-form.com, processes and delivers contact-form submissions.
  • Tally processes poll and survey responses.
  • Unsplash provides licensed images selected for use on the site.

These providers process information to supply their services and operate under their own privacy terms. Some use subprocessors.

International processing

Some service providers or their subprocessors operate in more than one country.

Where personal information is transferred internationally, the provider or Amanda Durkan Writes relies on an applicable legal transfer mechanism, such as:

  • an adequacy decision;
  • standard contractual clauses;
  • another safeguard recognised by applicable data-protection law.

Retention

Information is kept only for as long as it remains needed for the purpose for which it was collected.

In particular:

  • member records are kept while an account remains active and for a reasonable period afterward;
  • newsletter preferences and suppression information are retained where needed to honour unsubscribe requests;
  • comments are retained while the relevant discussion remains published, unless removed sooner;
  • contact correspondence is retained while relevant and deleted when no longer needed;
  • poll responses are retained while they remain useful for the purpose of the poll;
  • payment and accounting records are retained for legally required periods;
  • security and server logs are kept for limited operational and security purposes;
  • records relating to privacy requests are retained as necessary to show how the request was handled.

Data-protection principles require personal information not to be kept in identifiable form longer than necessary.

Security

Reasonable technical and organisational measures are used to protect personal information, including:

  • encrypted HTTPS connections;
  • secure authentication cookies;
  • access controls;
  • reputable hosting and payment providers;
  • backups;
  • software updates;
  • fraud and bot-detection systems.

No online service can guarantee absolute security.

Your rights

Depending on the law that applies to you, you can have rights to:

  • access personal information held about you;
  • correct inaccurate or incomplete information;
  • request deletion;
  • restrict processing;
  • object to particular processing;
  • withdraw consent;
  • receive certain information in a portable format;
  • complain to an appropriate data-protection authority.

To exercise a right, use the contact form and select Privacy or personal-data request.

You can be asked to verify your identity. For a Ghost member, this will normally involve contacting the site using the address associated with the account or authenticating through the member account.

A request can involve information held in:

  • Ghost;
  • comments;
  • Mailgun;
  • Stripe;
  • Formspark;
  • correspondence;
  • Tally, where a response can reasonably be connected to the requester.

A limited record of the request and how it was handled can be retained for accountability and legal purposes.

Children

The site is not directed specifically at children.

A child who is not legally able to consent to the relevant processing should use membership, email, commenting, poll and payment features only with appropriate involvement from a parent or guardian.

Changes to this notice

This notice can be updated when the site, services or legal requirements change.

The “last updated” date shown on the page identifies its latest revision. Material changes may also be explained on the site or by email where appropriate.