I take privacy seriously and this website has been created with your privacy in mind. Here’s how I make use of and protect any personal data I collect or you provide when you visit the site.
Who I am
I’m Mary Whitehouse. My company is Word Service Marketing Communications Ltd, a company registered at Companies House in England, registration number 08881308. My website address is wordservice.co.uk.
I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK, reference ZA567571.
What personal data I collect and why I collect it
Contact forms
When you submit a contact form, I will process the information you submit so that I can reply to your message. Form submissions and replies may be stored in my email archives.
Analytics
I use analytics services to evaluate and improve the performance of my website, to help me understand how visitors use the site and to make sure it is working properly for you and other users.
The site uses a privacy-friendly analytics provider called Plausible, which provides independent, open source analytics, hosted in the EU and using European-owned infrastructure. Plausible lets me understand my site traffic without monitoring my visitors. It doesn’t set cookies or collect personal data, but instead produces aggregated and anonymised information. Analytics information is not used to identify individual visitors or profile individuals, or to track you across other websites.
Cookies
My site won’t store cookies on your device, so I don’t have a separate cookie policy.
Appointment bookings
Mailing lists
I use a third-party appointment booking service, TidyCal, so you can easily book appointments directly in my diary at a mutually convenient time.
To book an appointment, choose a time on the screen that pops up when you click on ‘Book a call’ on my contact page. You will be asked to enter your name and email address, which I will use to confirm the meeting, send you the login details and follow up afterwards.
This data is stored for me on TidyCal’s servers. It will remain with me until you ask me to delete it, revoke your consent for storage, or when the purpose for which the data was stored no longer applies. Mandatory legal provisions, in particular retention periods, remain unaffected. The TidyCal privacy policy is here.
Data transfer to the USA is based on the standard contractual clauses of the European Commission. Details can be found here.
If you subscribe to my mailing list, I will collect your name and contact information so I can occasionally send you emails you will, hopefully, find interesting. I use the email platform Kit to collect and store this data. Read Kit’s GDPR statement.
I do not share subscribers’ details with anyone and you can amend your details or unsubscribe at any time.
Comments
If you leave a comment on this site I collect the data shown in the comment form, along with your IP address and browser user agent string to help detect spam. An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. Please refer to the Gravatar service privacy policy for more information. If I approve your comment, your profile picture may be visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Embedded content from other websites
This site may include embedded content from other websites, such as videos, images, articles, and so on. Content from other websites embedded on my website behaves the same way as if you had visited the other site – so it could collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. I bear no responsibility for the content of third-party sites, or for how they use your data.
Lawful bases for processing your data
This site is fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The lawful basis for processing your information will be one or more of the following:
- Your consent. You are able to remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting me.
- Where I have a contractual obligation
- Where I have a vital interest
- Where I have a legal obligation
- Where I have a legitimate interest
Who I share your data with
I don’t share personal data with third parties unless it is provided for a service mentioned above, such as my mailing list email platform or appointment-booking software. If this is the case, your data may be checked via an automated spam detecting service.
How long I retain your data
If you fill in a contact form, the information you submit is retained only as long as is necessary for the purpose it is gathered (mainly to respond to your enquiry), or one year, whichever is shorter.
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so I can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
If you register on this website, I also store the personal information you provide in your user profile. You will be able to see, edit or delete your personal information at any time – although you cannot change your username. Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have filled in a contact form on this website you can request an exported file of the personal data I hold about you, including any data you have provided. You can also ask me to erase any personal data held about you. This does not include any data I am obliged to keep for administrative, legal or security purposes.
Contact information
You can get in touch if you want to query anything regarding this policy, or how it relates to your data.
Updated August 2026