Privacy & Cookies

Important information about your privacy and how I use cookies.

Please note that my Fireworks Forum, which is accessed on a different URL, operates independently from this site (UKFR) as far as privacy and cookie policies go. So this article relates only to this site, UKFR.COM.

My Privacy Policy

I do not:

  • Require any form of registration to access any part of my website; it is all free to access to any user, anonymously.
  • Operate any kind of marketing mailing list or newsletter.
  • Use any third party advertising; all adverts are static banners served from UKFR.
  • Track what adverts are shown to whom, or who clicks on an advert banner.
  • Use any affiliate codes or similar.

You can verify many of the above points by viewing and inspecting the source code for any page here on UKFR.

Since August 2021 I have started to sell a limited number of merchandise items such as pin badges and stickers. These orders are handled either by PayPal, or via an e-commerce shop on UKFR.

For PayPal transactions (typically a “Buy it now” button), the entirety of the transaction is handled by PayPal and I am emailed notification of a sale along with your name, address and email. I only use these details to send your order, I do not otherwise store, collate, use or sell these details to any third party. Please note that I do not see your card details either.

For sales conducted on UKFR (typically via a cart and then a checkout screen here), details you enter into the checkout screen are stored by me and used to send your order out. I do not do anything else with your details hence there is no “opt out” from marketing option; there is no marketing in the first place! You may receive emails from the cart system, typically confirmation of your order and an email to confirm I have posted your item. There are no emails after this unless you have a query with your order. Please note that I do not see your card details, these are processed by WooCommerce/Stripe on my behalf. Also note that I do not allow customer registration, each order is done as a one-off guest checkout, to minimise storage of customer data and to ensure your confidence in my site.

Using my contact form

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, if you use my contact form to get in touch, then what you enter into that will be sent to me by email.

Google analytics

Along with many websites, I use analytics to better understand site visitors, how they came to UKFR (what they searched for) and what my most popular – and unpopular – content is. I use “Google Analytics” for this which will run a javascript file and most likely use a cookie to follow you around UKFR. You should feel free to disable or block either if you wish. The data provided to me by Google does not identify you personally.

Logging of site access by my web host

It is an industry-standard practice for web hosts to log all site accesses and mine is no different. This means keeping logs of what pages are requested and what files are served, and other information such as your IP address. This information may be used:

  • To investigate website problems or error messages, whether hardware or software related.
  • To investigate any malicious use of my site.
  • To provide aggregate statistics, such as number of visitors or bandwidth used. 

I do not actively monitor, download or otherwise process this data, but want to make it clear that our web host stores it and I have the option to do so, in case of the issues mentioned above.

Cookie policy

Given the lack of registration required here, my cookie policy is also understandably short.

In the interests of clarity however:

  • If you see a cookie used by UKFR this is a cookie intended for admin/staff to enable the site to keep them logged in during their visit. It is not relevant to any other visitor, is not used for any other purpose (I don’t even have comments enabled on articles nor allow the public to register here) and can safely be blocked if you’re really paranoid about it.
  • Third party embeds may result in a cookie being used. I have no control over this and such cookies will originate from the third party, not from me. An example would be if you viewed a page with an embedded YouTube video, YouTube may access it’s own cookies on your device to personalise your “experience” (i.e. what adverts it shows you in the video, again, nothing to do with me!). Where available, I enable privacy controls, such as YouTube’s “We won’t collect information on your site visitors unless they play a video” option (gee thanks, YouTube!).
  • I use Google Analytics and this is likely to use a cookie to follow you across the site.
  • If you access my online shop area to browse or buy merchandise, the cart system may place a cookie on your device in order to remember the session and what items you have in your cart. However I do not allow customer registration here in order to minimise data storage and processing; you cannot “log in” and therefore cookie use is strictly limited to allowing a functioning cart.

Have any questions?

I’m sorry this policy is somewhat basic and blunt, but it reflects the lack of any interest on my part in either collecting, processing or selling my visitors’ data. My site really is free to access and there are no catches, and I don’t sell fireworks. However if you have any questions by all means contact me.

Last updated: 31 August 2021 to add information about my new merchandise selling and online shop.