Privacy notice

Who is responsible

The controller for the Friends’ area and the photographs on this website is Tony McDonnell. Contact: tony@unispacekent.co.uk, telephone 07933 543338.

A registered postal address has not been added here yet. It will be published once Tony confirms the address he wants used for privacy requests. Please do not treat this page as giving a postal address or a company number.

The site is built and looked after for Tony by PeakSwift Studio. Hosting is provided by Vercel. PeakSwift may access the hosting account when Tony asks for maintenance. They are not the controller.

What is collected

• Friend accounts, only when Tony creates a login or invites someone: a username, display name, an email address if one is given, and a password stored only as a PBKDF2 hash (never in readable form). Temporary passwords from Tony must be changed at first sign-in. Invitation, reset and unsubscribe links are stored only as hashes.
• Posts and comments you write, with the time and your display name.
• Photographs you upload, plus a caption, category, the time, and whether Tony has approved them. Files are checked as JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC, resized, converted to WebP, and EXIF data including GPS is removed before anyone else can see them. There is a 12 MB limit.
• Notifications inside the Friends’ area, and your choices about email.
• Email log, if a mail service is configured: the address, the type of message, and whether sending succeeded. If it is not configured, no email is sent and the site says so.
• A public like on the information page is a single count for the whole site, not an account. One like is remembered in a cookie on that browser.
• Sign-in attempts are rate-limited using the visitor’s IP address in short-lived server memory. That address is not saved in the Friends’ database.

There is no public registration and no advertising profile. The public pages do not ask you to create an account.

Why

Account details are needed so each Friend signs in as themselves, so posts show the right name, and so Tony can disable an account or reset a forgotten password. Photographs are stored so Friends can share them in the Friends’ private gallery, after Tony has approved them. Email is optional and is only for the notices you leave switched on.

The legal bases Tony is relying on are his legitimate interests in running a private Friends’ area for the meadow, and, for optional email, your choices (which you can withdraw). This wording should be checked with Tony if he wants formal legal advice.

Who can see it

• Other signed-in Friends can see posts, comments, and photographs Tony has approved. They can see their own photographs while those are still waiting for review. They cannot see someone else’s unpublished photographs.
• Photographs, including Tony’s, are shown only to signed-in Friends. A Friend’s photograph is visible to other Friends only after Tony has approved it. The welcome page shows one of Tony’s photographs.
• Tony can manage accounts, moderate posts and comments, and approve or reject photographs. His private area is a separate password. A Friend cannot open it, and Tony’s password does not open the Friends’ area.
• Photographs and the community database are kept in private storage, not in a public folder. Unpublished images are not cached for the public.
• Proposal documents that Tony uploads are kept in private storage. Signed-in Friends can read the versions he publishes; drafts and his working notes are visible only to him.

Email

You can choose announcements, important notices, replies to your posts, and a weekly round-up. The choices are saved immediately. Every email that is actually sent includes an unsubscribe link which works without signing in and turns all of those emails off. You can turn them back on individually after you sign in.

Until RESEND_API_KEY and EMAIL_FROM are set on the host, the site does not send email and does not pretend that it has.

How long it is kept

• Account details are kept while the account is active.
• If you delete your account, your display name becomes “Former member”, your email and password are removed, and your photographs and notifications are deleted. Posts and comments remain so the conversation still makes sense, without your name.
• Tony can disable an account, which signs that Friend out.
• Invitation links expire after 14 days. Password reset links expire after two hours. Unsubscribe links are single-use.
• Sessions last 14 days. The cookies hm_friend and hm_session are essential, HTTP-only, and limited to this site.

Your choices

You can see and correct what you have posted by signing in. Ask Tony if your email address or display name needs changing. You can delete your account from the Friends’ area, or ask Tony by email. You can unsubscribe from email without signing in. You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you are unhappy with how your information is handled: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.