Last updated: 16 June 2025
At Housebound Friends, your privacy matters. This policy outlines what personal data we collect, why we collect it, and how we handle it—with transparency and care.
🧾Who we are
Our website address is: https://houseboundfriends.com.
We are an independent website based in the UK, sharing resources, stories, and tools for housebound individuals.
💬Comments
When visitors leave comments, we collect the data shown in the comments form, along with the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help detect spam.
An anonymised string (or “hash”) created from your email may be sent to the Gravatar service to see if you’re using it. Gravatar’s privacy policy explains how your data is handled.
Once your comment is approved, your profile image (if applicable) is publicly visible alongside it.
🖼️Media
If you upload images to the website, please avoid including embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors may be able to download and extract this data from public images on the site.
🍪Cookies
We use cookies to improve your experience. For example:
- If you leave a comment, you can opt in to saving your name, email, and website in cookies. These last for one year.
- Temporary cookies are used to check browser compatibility during login.
- Login cookies last two days (or two weeks if “Remember Me” is selected).
- If you edit/publish content, a cookie with your post ID is saved for one day.
Third-party services such as Google AdSense and Google Analytics may also use cookies to deliver ads and track performance. See below for more details.
🔗Embedded content
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, or articles). Embedded content behaves exactly as if you visited the originating site.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, and monitor your interaction with their content—especially if you’re logged in to those services.
🤝Who we share your data with
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties—except as required by law or as part of third-party service integrations (e.g. email marketing, analytics, or spam detection).
⏳How long we retain your data
- Comments and their metadata are kept indefinitely.
- Registered users (if any) can view, edit, or delete their personal information (except usernames).
- Site administrators can also access and edit user data.
🧾 Your Data Rights
If you have an account or have left comments, you can request a copy of the personal data we hold. You can also request that we erase your data, except information we must retain for legal or security reasons.
To request data access or deletion, contact: Alison@houseboundfriends.com.
🌍 Where Your Data Goes
Visitor comments may be screened by automated spam detection services.
We also use:
- Google Analytics (to understand traffic and improve the site)
- Google AdSense (to display relevant advertisements)
- Email list services (if you subscribe to our newsletter)
These services may process data in countries outside your own. They comply with data protection laws and are reviewed for GDPR/CCPA compliance where applicable.
📬 Where to Send Requests
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you’ve provided. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This doesn’t include data we’re obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
👉 To make a privacy-related request, please use our Contact Page. Your message will be sent securely to our admin inbox.