Privacy Policy
Last updated: 13 September 2026
Who we are
This website is The Info Trove, at https://theinfotrove.com. We publish plain-English explainers on money, technology, health, work and everyday rights. For anything in this policy, write to privacy@theinfotrove.com.
What this policy covers
This policy explains what information we collect when you visit theinfotrove.com, why we collect it, who else can see it, and what you can ask us to do about it.
It covers this website only. It does not cover other websites we link to, including advertisers’ sites and any site you reach by clicking a link in one of our posts.
Comments
When you leave a comment, we collect the information you type into the comment form — your name, your email address, your website if you enter one, and the comment itself. We also automatically record your IP address and your browser user agent string, which helps us detect spam.
All comments are held for approval before they appear. We read every one.
An anonymised string created from your email address (called a hash) may be sent to the Gravatar service to check whether you have a profile picture with them. The Gravatar privacy policy is at https://automattic.com/privacy/. Once your comment is approved, your profile picture is visible to the public alongside your comment.
Media
If you upload an image to this website, avoid uploading images that contain embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors can download images from the site and extract any location data stored inside them.
Contact form
Our contact page uses a form to send us a message. When you use it, we receive whatever you type — typically your name, your email address and your message. Submissions are sent to us by email and are not stored on this website.
We use what you send only to reply to you. We do not add you to a mailing list, and we do not sell or share it.
Cookies
Cookies are small files a website stores in your browser. This site sets the following:
If you leave a comment, you may tick a box to save your name, email address and website in cookies. This is a convenience so you do not have to type them again next time. These cookies last one year.
If you visit our login page, we set a temporary cookie to check whether your browser accepts cookies. It contains no personal data and is deleted when you close your browser.
If you log in (site administrators only), we set cookies to save your login and your screen display choices. Login cookies last two days, screen option cookies last one year. If you tick “Remember Me”, your login lasts two weeks. Logging out removes the login cookies.
If you edit or publish an article (administrators only), an extra cookie records the post ID of the article you just edited. It holds no personal data and expires after one day.
Advertising cookies are set by Google, not by us. See the Advertising section below.
You can delete or block cookies in your browser settings at any time. Blocking them may stop parts of the site working normally.
Embedded content from other websites
Posts on this site may include embedded content — videos, images, social media posts and similar. Embedded content from another website behaves exactly as if you had visited that other website directly.
Those websites may collect data about you, set their own cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor how you interact with that embedded content — including linking it to your account if you are logged in to that website.
Advertising
This site may show advertising served by Google AdSense.
- Google and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to serve ads on this site.
- Google’s use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and other sites on the internet.
- We do not receive your name, email address or any other identifying information from Google. We see only aggregate reporting — how many times ads were shown and what they earned.
You can turn off personalised advertising in Google’s own settings at https://myadcenter.google.com. Turning it off does not remove ads; it makes them less relevant to you.
More detail on how Google handles data on sites that use its services is at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
To opt out of personalised advertising from many companies at once, see https://optout.aboutads.info (US) or https://www.youronlinechoices.eu (EU/UK).
Search
We use Google Search Console to see which search queries bring people to the site and which pages appear in Google results. Search Console reports on Google’s own search data. It does not place cookies on this website or track you while you browse here.
Server logs
Our web host records standard server logs for every visit, including your IP address, the page requested, the date and time, and your browser user agent. These logs are used for security and to diagnose faults, and are kept by our host under their own retention policy.
Who we share your data with
We do not sell your data and we do not share it for anyone else’s marketing.
Data reaches these third parties as a normal part of running the site:
- Our web host, which stores the website and its database and records server logs.
- Google, for the advertising described above.
- Gravatar (Automattic), if you comment — only the anonymised hash of your email.
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
We may also disclose information where we are legally required to do so.
How long we retain your data
- Comments and their metadata: kept indefinitely, so that follow-up comments from the same person can be recognised and approved automatically instead of being held in a queue.
- Contact form messages: delivered to our email account and kept there only while we still need them for correspondence.
- Registered user accounts: for anyone who registers on this site, we store the personal information in their user profile. All users can see, edit or delete their own information at any time, except their username. Administrators can also see and edit it.
- Comments identified as spam, and the IP addresses recorded with them: deleted after 30 days.
- Server logs: kept for as long as our host retains them.
Where your data is sent
Our web host, Google and the other services named above may store and process data on servers outside your own country, including in the United States.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can ask us to send you an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including anything you gave us. You can also ask us to erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not cover data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal or security reasons.
Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to correct inaccurate data, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to complain to your national data protection authority.
To exercise any of these, email privacy@theinfotrove.com. We will respond within 30 days.
Children’s privacy
This site is intended for a general, adult audience. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email privacy@theinfotrove.com and we will delete it.
Security
We use HTTPS across the whole site, so traffic between your browser and our server is encrypted. No website can promise perfect security, but we take reasonable steps to protect the information we hold.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date at the top. Significant changes will be noted on the page itself.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about the data we hold on you:
Or use our contact form at https://theinfotrove.com/contact/