Privacy policy | The Hobby Library

Who is responsible

The Hobby Library is responsible for the personal information used by this website. The current owner and contact details are published with this policy when the site is made available to the public.

Information we may use

We may receive information you choose to send through a contact form or email, basic server security logs, and consent choices stored on your device. Optional analytics or marketing technology will run only according to the choice made in Cookie settings.

Why we use it

To respond to messages
To operate, secure and diagnose the website
To understand website use when optional analytics consent has been given
To remember cookie choices
To meet legal obligations

We keep information only as long as it is needed for the relevant purpose. Service providers may process limited information on our behalf under appropriate agreements.

Your rights

Depending on the circumstances, UK data protection law may give you rights to access, correct, erase or restrict use of personal information, object to certain processing, and withdraw consent. You can also raise a concern with the Information Commissioner's Office.

Updates

This policy will be reviewed when the website's forms, analytics, advertising, hosting or service providers change.

First-party analytics

If you consent to Analytics, this website creates random visitor, visit and page-view identifiers in browser storage. The identifiers are transformed before they are stored in our own database. We record the page path and title, referring website domain, visit times and engaged time while a page is visible. We do not store your IP address, precise location, full browser fingerprint or an advertising profile in the analytics tables.

This information helps us understand which guides are used, how readers move between pages and where content may need improving. Analytics records are normally retained for 180 days. You can stop future analytics and remove the identifiers from your browser by changing Cookie settings.

Shopping country and product links

On guide pages we estimate your country from your network address so the product button can use a supported local Amazon site. Your browser also checks with Country.is to correct the country when the server lookup is wrong or unavailable. The server lookup uses Country.is unless our hosting provider supplies a country code. Country.is receives the network address for this lookup; according to its published policy it does not log requests. We cache only a keyed hash of the address and the country code in private server storage, normally for up to seven days. The lookup does not identify your exact location. If it is unavailable, the UK link is shown and you can choose a supported country on the page.

With Analytics consent, a click on a product link records the guide, product, selected country, whether it opened a product or search page, and the time. These click rows contain no network address or visitor identifier and are normally removed after 180 days. Without Analytics consent, clicking still opens the retailer but no click row is recorded. Your manual shopping-country choice is remembered across pages only if you allow Preferences storage.