The short version
- There are no reader accounts. You cannot register, and we do not want you to. There is no newsletter, no mailing list and nothing to pay for.
- We never sell, rent or trade personal data.
- There is no advertising on this site.
- Our own site sets a cookie only if you do something — vote in a poll, or send us something through the form.
- If you use the submission form, we keep what you wrote and your contact details so we can read and answer it. They are never published.
- Photographs sent to the gallery are published only after an editor approves them. Your email address is never published.
- Google Analytics runs on every public page and sets its own cookies as soon as you arrive. We do not currently ask you first. Section 2(b) explains exactly what that means and how to stop it.
- The web server keeps short-lived access logs that include your IP address.
1. Who is responsible for your information
herbsandspices.food is run by Callum Haywood, an individual in the United Kingdom, who is the “controller” of the personal data described here for the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
For anything in this notice — including a request to see, correct or delete your data — write to [email protected]. A postal address is available on request. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer; we are not required to.
This notice covers herbsandspices.food only. It does not cover other sites we link to, which have their own policies.
2. What we collect, and why
(a) Web server logs
Like every web server, ours records each request. A log line contains your IP address, the date and time, the page or file requested (including any search terms, because a search on this site puts your words in the URL), the response code, the amount of data sent, the page you came from, and your browser's user-agent string.
We use these logs only to run and protect the site: diagnosing errors, investigating abuse, and identifying traffic that is attacking or overloading the server. We do not use them to build a picture of you, and we do not try to identify you from them. Requests for images and stylesheets are not logged at all.
(b) Google Analytics
Every public page on this site loads Google Analytics 4 (property G-J1G54P7H9J), supplied by Google Ireland Limited. It tells us how many people visit, which pages they read, roughly where in the world they are, and what kind of device and browser they use. We look at it to decide what to write next.
Be clear about how this works: the Google Analytics cookies are set the moment you open a page here. We do not currently show a consent banner, so you are not asked beforehand. If you would rather not be measured, see “How to stop it” below — and please do, if you would prefer: nothing on this site depends on analytics working.
Google Analytics collects the pages you view and their URLs (so a search you run here reaches Google as part of the page address), the site or search engine that sent you, your approximate location, your device, screen size, browser and operating system, and how long you stay. Google Analytics 4 uses your IP address to estimate that approximate location and then discards it — it does not store your IP address or make it available to us. We see aggregate reports, never a named individual.
We do not use Google Signals, Google Ads linking, remarketing, audience export or any advertising feature of Google Analytics, so your visit here is not used to target advertising.
How to stop it. Any of these works:
- block cookies for this site in your browser settings, or use private browsing;
- install Google's official browser opt-out add-on, which stops Google Analytics on every site;
- use a browser or extension that blocks
googletagmanager.com— most tracker blockers and several mainstream browsers do this by default; - tell us to stop processing your data by objecting under section 11.
Google's own explanation of how it handles this data is at policies.google.com/privacy and business.safety.google/privacy.
(c) Poll votes
If you vote in one of the site's polls, we need to know that this browser has already voted, so it is not asked twice. We do it without identifying you:
- your browser is given a random token — not derived from anything about you — which is
stored in the
sp_votercookie; - what we store in the database is a salted SHA-256 hash of that token, never the token itself, alongside which option you chose and when;
- no IP address, and nothing that identifies you, is stored with a vote.
It stops casual double-voting. It is not, and does not pretend to be, ballot-grade. If you clear your cookies you can vote again, and we accept that.
(d) Editors signing in
The editors' area is private. When an editor signs in we store their username, display name, a hashed password and the time of their last sign-in, and we set a session cookie. This applies to the handful of people who edit the site, not to readers.
(e) Email you send us
If you write to us — a correction, a question, a takedown request, a photograph — we receive your email address, your name if you give it, and whatever you put in the message. We keep that correspondence so we can deal with it, act on it, and show why a page says what it says. If you send us a photograph for publication, the terms in section 11 of the terms of use apply, and we will credit you as you ask — or not at all, if you prefer.
(f) What you send through the submission form
The form at Send us something asks for your name, your email address, a contact number if you choose to give one, and whatever you want to tell us. All of it is stored in the site's database so the editors can read it, reply to it and act on it. Nothing is uploaded through that form — it takes text only.
Your name, email address and phone number are never published. If something you send becomes a page, the material is used, not your contact details; where a credit is appropriate we will agree it with you first. The contact number is optional and we will only use it if replying by email has not worked.
A cookie is set when you submit, purely to space repeated submissions out. It holds the time you last sent something and nothing else.
(g) Photographs you send to the gallery
The gallery takes a photograph, a category, a description and your email address. You also have to confirm the photograph is yours to send, and that we may publish it here.
Nothing you send appears until an editor has approved it. Until then the file is held outside the part of the server that publishes images, and it cannot be fetched by anyone but us. If it is approved, the photograph and your description are published; your email address is not, and neither is your name unless you put it in the description yourself.
We use the email address only to ask you about that photograph, or to tell you if we have taken it down. Ask us at any time and we will remove a photograph you sent, along with its file. A cookie is set when you submit, purely to space repeated uploads out.
A photograph carries more than its picture: phones commonly record the place it was taken and the device that took it inside the file. When you upload one we resize it and write out a new file containing the image and nothing else, so that data is discarded rather than published. The original, with whatever it contained, is not kept.
(h) What we do not collect
Apart from what you choose to type into the submission form, we do not ask for, and have no use for, your date of birth, your address, your payment details or any special category data (health, beliefs, ethnicity, sexuality, politics, trade union membership, biometrics). There is no reader registration, no newsletter, no social media tracking pixel, no session recording and no heatmap tool and no advertising on this site.
3. Cookies
A cookie is a small file a site asks your browser to keep. These are all of them:
| Cookie | Set by | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|
sp_voter |
herbsandspices.food | A random token so a browser that has voted in a poll is not asked again. Not readable by scripts (HttpOnly), and sent only over HTTPS. | 1 year |
sp_sub |
herbsandspices.food | The time you last used the submission form, so the same browser cannot fire it repeatedly. Set only if you submit something. | 1 day |
sp_gallery |
herbsandspices.food | The time you last sent a photograph, so the same browser cannot upload repeatedly. Set only if you submit one. | 1 day |
session |
herbsandspices.food | Keeps an editor signed in to the private admin area. Signed, HttpOnly, and never set for readers. | When the browser closes |
_ga |
Google Analytics | Distinguishes one visitor from another. | 2 years |
_ga_J1G54P7H9J |
Google Analytics | Keeps the state of the visit for this particular property. | 2 years |
The four herbsandspices.food cookies are strictly necessary for the function you asked for, and none is set unless you vote, send us something or sign in. The Google Analytics cookies are not necessary, and section 2(b) explains how to refuse them. Blocking every cookie on this site costs you nothing but the ability to vote in a poll.
4. Who your browser contacts when you load a page
Loading a page here makes your browser fetch a few files from other people's servers. Those servers necessarily see your IP address, your user-agent string and the page you were on, in the same way any web request does:
- cdn.jsdelivr.net — the Bootstrap stylesheet and script that lay the site out;
- fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com — the two typefaces the site is set in, supplied by Google;
- www.googletagmanager.com — Google Analytics, as described above.
We have no control over what those providers do with the request, and each is governed by its own privacy policy. Everything else — the pages, the images, the icons and the site's own stylesheet — is served from our own server.
5. Our legal bases for using your information
| What | Legal basis | The interest, where relevant |
|---|---|---|
| Server logs | Legitimate interests | Keeping the site running, secure and free of abuse |
| Google Analytics | Legitimate interests | Understanding which pages are read, so we write more of what is useful. You have an absolute right to object — see section 11 — and the practical ways to refuse are in section 2(b). |
| Poll voting | Legitimate interests | Running a fair poll. The data is pseudonymous by design. |
| Editor accounts | Contract and legitimate interests | Letting authorised people edit, and keeping a record of who changed what |
| Email correspondence | Legitimate interests | Replying to you and acting on what you tell us |
| Submissions through the form | Legitimate interests | Reading, replying to and acting on what you chose to send us. You gave it to us deliberately; ask and we will delete it. |
| Photographs you send for publication, including through the gallery | Consent | You give it with the tick box on the form. You can withdraw it at any time and we will take the photograph down and delete the file. |
| Responding to a legal obligation | Legal obligation | Where a law or a court requires it of us |
6. Who we share your information with
We do not sell, rent or trade personal data, to anyone, ever. It is shared only with:
- Google — analytics data, as described in section 2(b), and the request your browser makes for the fonts;
- our hosting and network providers, who necessarily process traffic in order to deliver the site to you;
- our email provider, if you write to us;
- law enforcement, regulators or a court, where we are legally required to disclose something, or where disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or someone's safety.
7. Transfers outside the UK
Google is a global company and analytics data may be processed in the United States and elsewhere. Where personal data is transferred outside the United Kingdom, Google relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension, and on Standard Contractual Clauses together with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, which are the safeguards recognised by UK law. You can ask us for details of the safeguards that apply.
Everything else — the site, its database, its images and its logs — is held on servers in the United Kingdom.
8. How long we keep things
| What | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Web server access logs | No more than 14 days, then deleted automatically |
| Google Analytics event data | Held by Google under its own retention setting for this property. Aggregate reports — visits per page, per month — remain available to us. |
| Poll votes (hashed token and choice) | Until the poll is deleted or reset |
| Editor accounts | While the account is in use, plus a short period afterwards |
| Article revision history | Indefinitely — it is the site's public record of what changed and who changed it |
| Email correspondence | Up to 2 years, or longer where it records permission to publish a photograph or supports something we have published |
| Form submissions | Up to 2 years after we have dealt with them, or longer where one became a page and the submission is the record of where it came from |
| Gallery photographs | Approved ones, for as long as they are published. Rejected ones are deleted when an editor clears them out. Ask us and yours goes immediately. |
9. Security
The site is served over HTTPS only. Editor passwords are stored as salted hashes and never in readable form. The session cookie is signed, marked HttpOnly and restricted to HTTPS, and the editors' area is closed to everyone who is not signed in. Uploads are restricted by type and size.
No site can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach occurs that is likely to result in a risk to people's rights and freedoms, we will report it to the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and tell those affected where the law requires it.
10. Children
This site is a general-interest reference guide. It is not aimed at children, we do not knowingly collect personal data from children, and there is nothing here for a child to sign up to. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, tell us and we will delete it.
11. Your rights
Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:
- be told how your data is used — this notice;
- ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
- have it corrected if it is wrong;
- have it erased, where we have no overriding reason to keep it;
- restrict how we use it while a question about it is resolved;
- object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests — including analytics;
- portability — receive data you gave us in a machine-readable form;
- withdraw consent at any time, where we relied on it.
Exercise any of them by emailing [email protected]. It is free, and we will reply within one month. We may ask you for enough information to be sure who you are before we act on a request.
One honest limitation: for most visitors we simply hold no data that can be connected to you. Server logs are short-lived and hold only an IP address; poll votes are hashed and cannot be traced back to a person; analytics reaches us only in aggregate. If you ask us for a copy of your data and all we can find is an IP address you can prove was yours, we will say so rather than invent a file.
12. If you want to complain
Please tell us first — [email protected] — and we will try to put it right. You also have the right to complain directly to the UK's data protection regulator, whatever we say:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Telephone 0303 123 1113 ·
ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
13. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice. The version in force is always the one on this page, with its version number and date at the top. Where a change materially affects how we use your data we will make that clear on the site rather than leave you to spot it.
We do not respond to “Do Not Track” browser signals, because there is still no agreed standard for what a site should do about them. The blocking methods in section 2(b) work regardless.
Version 1.6. In force from 24 September 2026. Controller: Callum Haywood, [email protected]. See also the terms of use.