Privacy policy

This policy explains what happens to information when you use Check My Letter at checkmyletter.co.uk. It is written to be read, not to be survived, so the short version is first.

This site has no accounts, no sign-up, no newsletter, no comments, and no forms. It cannot collect your name, your address, your letter reference or your case details, because there is nowhere on it to type them. It is a set of static pages with no server-side code and no database. The only things that could identify you come from two Google services, and neither of them runs unless you press Accept.

Who is responsible

Check My Letter is run by one individual in the United Kingdom, who is the data controller for the purposes of the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Contact: [email protected].

What happens with no consent at all

If you reject cookies, or ignore the banner entirely, the site works completely and nothing non-essential loads. Two things still happen, because they are unavoidable parts of delivering a web page:

• Your browser requests the pages and files from the host, which necessarily involves your IP address in the same way it does for every website. Cloudflare, Inc. hosts the site on Cloudflare Pages and processes those requests, including for security and abuse prevention.
• Your cookie choice is stored in your browser’s localStorage under the key cml-consent, so you are not asked again on every page. That value never leaves your device and is not readable by this site’s owner or by anyone else.

No analytics cookie, no advertising cookie and no third-party script is loaded in this state. You can confirm that yourself in your browser’s network tab.

What happens if you press Accept

Pressing Accept loads Google services that set cookies and process data about your visit. Those services are named below, along with what they do. Accept and Reject are given the same prominence on the banner, and rejecting costs you nothing.

Google Analytics 4

Provided by Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. It is used to count visits and see which pages people actually reach, so that effort goes into the letters people are searching for. The configuration sets Google’s IP-anonymisation flag, but what Google actually stores is determined by Google rather than by this site, and is described in its own documentation — this page will not claim an outcome it does not control.

GA4 sets cookies in the _ga family to distinguish one browser from another across visits, and processes data including the pages viewed, approximate location derived from IP address, referring source, device type and browser. It does not receive your name or email, because this site never has them.

Analytics runs only after an explicit Accept. If you reject, or ignore the banner, no Google Analytics script is requested and no analytics cookie is set — there is nothing to opt out of afterwards, because nothing started.

Google AdSense

Provided by Google Ireland Limited, with Google LLC as a processor outside the UK. When advertising is enabled, Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads and to measure them. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.

Personalised advertising involves profiling — building a picture of interests from browsing across many sites in order to choose which advert to show. That is the part most people care about, so it is stated directly rather than left implied. You can opt out of personalised advertising by Google at google.com/settings/ads, and out of personalised advertising from participating third-party vendors at optout.aboutads.info. Both work independently of anything you choose here.

Google ads are not showing on the site yet — the publisher account is connected and waiting for Google’s site review. The disclosures above apply in full the moment an advert is served, which is deliberate: you should be able to read what will happen before it happens rather than after.

Non-Google advertising vendors

There are none. No other advertising network, exchange, or measurement vendor is used on this site, so there is no third-party vendor list to publish and no separate opt-out to name. If that ever changes, this section will name the vendor, link its privacy policy and give its opt-out before the vendor is added — not afterwards.

More generally: third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to this website or to other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and to other sites on the internet. You can opt out of personalised advertising through the two links above.

Lawful basis under UK GDPR

• Analytics and advertising cookies: consent (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(a)), obtained through the banner as required by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. Nothing loads before you give it.
• Storing your cookie choice: strictly necessary for a service you have requested, so no consent is required for that single value.
• Serving the pages themselves, including the host’s security logging: legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) in making the site available and keeping it running.
• Replying to an email you send: legitimate interests, or performance of your request. Your message is kept only as long as it is useful for the correspondence and any correction it leads to.

Changing or withdrawing consent

You can change your mind at any time, and it takes one click. Use the Cookie settings link — it is here, and in the footer of every page — to reopen the banner and choose again.

Choosing Reject takes effect immediately, on the page you are already on. It sets Google’s own opt-out flag, which Analytics checks before every measurement, and it deletes the _ga cookies from your browser. You do not have to reload anything and you do not have to clear cookies yourself.

What withdrawal cannot do is reach back into data Google has already received. For that, use the two opt-out links above, which operate at Google’s end rather than at ours. Your browser’s own settings can also block or delete cookies for this site, and doing so will not break anything here.

How long anything is kept

This site itself stores nothing, so it has nothing to retain. Your cookie choice sits in your own browser until you clear it or change it.

Analytics data is held by Google, and how long it keeps event-level data is governed by the retention period set on the Analytics property. Google applies its own limits on top of that. An email you send sits in an ordinary mailbox and is kept only as long as it is useful for replying and for any correction it leads to.

International transfers

Google and Cloudflare both process data outside the UK, including in the United States. Those transfers rely on the safeguards those companies put in place, principally the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. This site has no ability to alter those arrangements; the only real control it offers you is whether Google’s services load at all, which is what the banner is for.

Everyone who processes anything

• Cloudflare, Inc. — hosting the site on Cloudflare Pages, and routing email sent to the contact address through Cloudflare Email Routing.
• Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC — Google Analytics 4 and Google AdSense, only after consent.

That is the complete list. There is no CRM, no email marketing platform, no heatmap tool, no session recorder, no chat widget, no consent management platform and no social media pixel on this site.

Children

This site is written for adults dealing with official correspondence and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to access, rectify or erase personal data, to restrict or object to processing, to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time. Because this site holds nothing that identifies you beyond any email you have chosen to send, most requests are answered quickly by simply confirming that.

For anything Google holds, requests are better directed to Google, which is the party with the data. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

If advertising is switched on, or a measurement ID is added, this page is updated first and the review date at the top is changed. That date is how you can tell whether what you are reading is current.