Privacy Policy

1. The short version

We keep the details you type when you register, the letters and enquiries you send us and a small technical record of how the site is used. We do not sell your data, we run no advertising trackers, and we do not keep more than the service needs.

2. What we collect

• Account data — name, email address, a password held only as a one-way hash, and the role your account carries.
• Profile data you choose to add — website, link page, avatar, description, slogan and telephone numbers.
• Letters and enquiries you send — the text you write to the desk, the address you send it from, and the answers we send back.
• Newsletter subscriptions — the address you gave, when you asked for the morning edition, and whether we delivered it.
• Technical data — IP address, browser type and pages requested, used for security, abuse prevention and aggregate statistics.
• Preferences on your device — colour template, light or dark mode, chosen language and cookie consent, held in your browser's own storage.
• Reading data — if you subscribe, we record what you subscribed to and whether we delivered it. We do not sell reading habits, and we do not build advertising profiles from the articles you open.

3. Why we process it, and the lawful basis

• To provide the service you signed up for — performance of a contract.
• To moderate the material members send us, prevent fraud and answer support requests — legitimate interests in a safe and trustworthy publication.
• To keep records that tax and consumer law require — legal obligation.
• To store or read anything non-essential in your browser, and to send marketing — your consent, which you may withdraw at any time.

4. One account across the network

The sites of the All Farmers, One Platform network share a member directory so that one address opens all of them. When you register or sign in, your email address is looked up in that shared directory and, if you already exist, the minimal profile fields are copied to the site you are opening. This is a performance-of-contract step: it exists so that you do not have to register twice.

5. Search and infrastructure

The text of reports and articles submitted for search is copied into a search index so that the archive can be found by keyword. That index sits on our own infrastructure and is reachable only with this site's own credentials. Database and search traffic is encrypted in transit, access is logged, and credentials are stored outside the directory the server publishes.

6. Email

We send transactional email — sign-up confirmation, password resets, enquiry notifications and account notices — from our own mail server. Service messages cannot be switched off while an account is open. Any optional newsletter is double opt-in and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.

7. Who else sees your data

Readers see what you choose to publish on your profile: the name or nickname you display, the description you write and the links you add. Our hosting provider, our mail provider and our backup storage process data on our instructions under written terms. We do not sell or rent personal data, and we disclose it to law enforcement only where the law requires it.

8. How long we keep it

• Account and profile data — while the account stays open.
• Published profiles and letters — until you withdraw them or we remove them.
• Letters and enquiries you send us — twelve months, then deleted.
• Technical and security logs — ninety days.
• Invoices and tax records — six years, as the law requires.

9. Your rights

You may ask to access, correct, delete or port the personal data we hold about you, to restrict or object to processing, and to withdraw a consent you gave. Most of this you can do yourself on your account page, including closing the account. For anything else write to [email protected] and we answer within one month.

10. Children

The site is a publication for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly hold data about anyone under sixteen, and if we find such an account we close it.

11. Security

Passwords are never stored in readable form. Access to production data needs a named account and is logged. Where a breach is likely to affect you, we notify you and the supervisory authority within seventy-two hours of becoming aware of it.

12. Complaints

Raise a concern with us first at [email protected]. If you remain unhappy you may complain to your data protection authority — in the United Kingdom the Information Commissioner's Office, in the European Union the supervisory authority of your member state.