Privacy Policy

Who we are

We are Alan Gandy and Elle Draper – owners of the website Spain Buddy.

You can find out a little more by reading our tongue in cheek article HERE.

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of rules that provide data subjects with more control over their personal data. GDPR defines a data subject as anyone within the borders of the EU at the time of processing their personal data and so it is applicable to any business anywhere in the world that interacts with people within the EU. Even if you are a small company in a non-EU country the rules still apply because EU citizens may visit your website. GDPR includes regulations on how EU data can be exported outside of the EU. It is changing the way organizations approach data privacy and the handling of personal information.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

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. This helps us to help spam detection and is standard practice on most websites.

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. Although we have the Gravatar function available to us on Spain Buddy, we do not use it.

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. This applies to anyone sending us Press Releases, Guest Articles… or is submitting a logo for their business in our Free Business Directory.

Contact Forms

If you fill out a contact form on this website, that submitted information is emailed to us. At no point will we ever sell that information to third parties, and it will only be passed on to a third party with your express consent. For example, if you are filling out a contact form to approach a business who is advertising on our website such as in the Business Directory – we would pass that email on. Likewise, if you have commented on an article, asking someone to get in touch then we would pass that on also.

Newsletter & emails

If you have subscribed to our newsletter or if you are a member of our website (you can log in) or if you have purchased on our website, there is a good chance you will receive emails from us. At this time we only send out one newsletter – a general one which people can sign up for.

We will only send you emails which you have signed up to receive, or which pertain to the services we provided to you. Nobody will receive that who has not specifically requested to do so.

To send you emails, we use the name and email address you provide us. Our site also logs the IP address you used when you signed up for the service to prevent abuse of the system.

We use a double optin method. This means that the email address used will receive an initial contact asking them to confirm their subscription. Nobody is added to the mailing list without having clicked that link. This protects you from having your email address added to our list by someone else.

This website can send our Newsletter emails through theMailchimp sending service. This service allows us to track opens and clicks on our emails. We use this information to improve the content of our newsletters.

No identifiable information is otherwise tracked outside this website except for the email address.

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 (such as some of our Authors or Business Directory Submission Users) 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 as one of our authors, 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 added/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

We use analytics programs on this website. This is done so that we can establish how many people are viewing our website, how they found us, and which country they are in. This information may also include the IP addresses of visitors in order for us to protect the website against hacker attacks. This information is never sold to third parties. Totals may be used in discussion with potential advertisers on this website, but your personal data is NEVER passed on to those.

Who else we may share your data with

For security and tracking we share your data anonymously with the following two providers. This is normal behaviour for websites. Please click to view their privacy policies:

Statcounter (statistics)
Siteground (hosting)

How long we hold your data for

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. If you email us, that email is stored indefinitely

For users that register on our website (for example our Authors), 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.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this website, or have left comments, you can request to receive a 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. For this we need the email address or username you have used on Spain Buddy. We will send an email to the address we have on file to confirm that no third party can access your information. You will need to follow the instructions within that email to proceed. A request to delete your information does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Your data is stored with the European Union, although from time to time we may utilise security software from elsewhere in the world in order to protect the website and its users. We only work with GDPR compliant companies for these purposes.

Contact Information