Introduction

Welcome to the latest version of the privacy and cookie notice and other information covering the activities of me, Mark Pack, including those carried out using the labels Liberal Democrat Newswire, Lib Dem Pointing and UK Election Law. My contact information is here and I am registered under the Data Protection Act 1998 (registration number Z2531576).

This page was last updated on 22 December 2023, with the changes since the previous version being the addition of extra information regarding Amazon.

Any subsequent changes to any of the information set out here will be posted on this page and you can view the previous version of this page here.

Imprint and hosting information

This site is published by and on behalf of Mark Pack, 2a Heathville Road, London, N19 3AJ. It is hosted by WP Engine, 30 Dukes Place, London, EC3A 7LP.

For material published by or on behalf of the Liberal Democrats and which promotes more than one of the party’s candidates or future candidates, the imprint is Liberal Democrats, 1 Vincent Square, SW1P 2PN.

How I may gather your personal data

I primarily use the legal basis of consent for processing personal data that you supply to me and therefore I only receive such data after you have given your consent. I may also process data under the legal basis of legitimate interest, such as to ensure the security of the sites and services I run.

The routes via which I may gather your personal data include via:

  • Sign-up forms, comment submission forms, buttons or surveys, both offline and online,
  • When you visit a digital website or service I am operating,
  • If you join a list or group that I’m administering,
  • If you make a donation or other payment to me, and
  • Cookies placed on your device(s) and tracking pixels.

This gathering of data includes both data you directly supply, such as by filling out a form, and also data provided when you interact with one of the services I operate digitally, such as the IP address, browser type and operating system of the device used.

The data gathered via surveys and forms may include special category data, such as whether or not you are a member of the Liberal Democrats. Such data may also come from you posting a comment in which you choose to reveal such information, e.g. “As a member of the Liberal Democrats, I disagree with your claim that…”

What I may do with your personal data

I may use personal data you provide to keep you informed about my views, my activities and other news and information which I think you will find of interest. This final category focuses heavily, but not exclusively, on information about UK politics and in particular opinion polls and the Liberal Democrats.

I may tailor the content supplied to you based on the personal data you have previously provided and may also use the data to ensure the security of the systems and to check comments before publication, both for spam and to apply the comment moderation policy (see below).

I may also use your personal data to process any donations or payments (such as to purchase a book) that you make to me. I may also use the information you provide, when requested by you, to organise a video call.

Any special category data you have consented to give me will be used only for the purposes of analysing the results of the surveys or forms used to gather it, and for providing direct follow-up to any points raised in those answers, unless the data is contained in a comment that you have chosen to submit for publication, in which case it may be published.

The routes via which I may contact you include:

  • Email (if you have provided an email address),
  • Video call (if you request one),
  • RSS feeds (if you have subscribed to one or more of them),
  • Website notifications (if you have subscribed to them),
  • Online advertising (if you have provided information or taken actions that permit me to target advertising at you, such as by liking a Facebook page, visiting one of my websites and accepting cookies, or providing your email address),
  • Telephone or post (if you have provided your phone number or postal address),
  • Via publishing content on webpages, and
  • Vias WhatsApp (if you have signed up to a group I administer or otherwise given me your WhatsApp contact details).

Sharing and storing data

I will not share your data with anyone else except:

  • If required to do so by law (for example, by the police with appropriate legal authority),
  • If I have first asked for, and been given, your permission to do so, or
  • If I am using their services to deliver one of the methods of communication set out above, such as to send you emails, or to ensure the smooth and secure provision of those methods of communication, such as to check submitted comments for spam before publication.

A service provider will only have personal data passed to them under this final category if their own systems, standards and legal terms are compliant with the requirements of GDPR. Their right to process your data will also be governed by their own privacy notices. Some of the service providers mentioned above may store personal data outside the E.U. and they will only be used in this way if the transfer of data outside the E.U. is done in accordance with Chapter V of GDPR. (You can read more about the safeguards involved on the Information Commissioner’s website here.)

If you choose to interact with one of my profiles or pages on a social network, such as Facebook or Twitter, that interaction may result in personal data being shared with me by the social network operating under its own legal contract with yourself.

For your convenience, here is a list of the main service providers and affiliate services, with links to their own privacy policies:

Note that with several of the services I use, if you take part in them some of your information may be shared with others in line with that service’s own privacy policy. For example, if you join a WhatsApp group then other members of the group can see your phone number.

My own data records are separate from those of the Liberal Democrats. Any data provided to me as a member of the Liberal Democrats is kept separate and data is only shared if there is a clear legal basis for doing so, such as having asked your consent before gathering the data.

You may at any time withdraw the consent you have given for me to process personal data from you.

This includes:

  • Email: via the unsubscribe link including in emails or by emailing mark.pack@libdemnewswire.com,
  • WhatsApp: via leaving any relevant group, by using the ‘block’ function or by emailing mark.pack@libdemnewswire.com,
  • RSS feeds: by unsubscribing from the RSS feed in the application used to subscribe to it,
  • Website notifications: via the normal unsubscribe/block settings for such notifications in your web browser (instructions here),
  • Online advertising: by blocking either all ads or just the ads from myself using the options provided by the relevant advertising network, such as the option in Facebook to block all ads from the Lib Dem Newswire Facebook page; you can also request via mark.pack@libdemnewswire.com that I do not use your email address for targeting adverts via features such as Facebook’s custom audiences or Twitter’s tailored audiences,
  • Cookies and tracking pixels: by blocking one or more of the cookies and tracking pixels that my site(s) would otherwise place, and
  • Telephone or post: by responding to the message from me, or by emailing mark.pack@libdemnewswire.com.

Cookies and tracking pixels

My family of sites may place cookies and tracking pixels on the device from which you are accessing them. The emails I send out may also use a tracking pixel. You can opt-out of any or all at any time by using the blocking features in your web browser or a third-party tool such as Ghostery.

To find out more about what cookies are, see this article from the BBC. To find out more about what tracking pixels are, see this article from Digiday.

The sites provide information about this privacy policy when you first visit them and they respect requests to block cookies, such as via the cookie options in your web browser. If you do not wish to accept any cookies from my sites, and have already accepted the initial cookie message on first visiting, please adjust your settings accordingly. You can also use the setting in your email service/program to block the tracking pixels in emails.

The sites may use cookies and/or tracking pixels for the following purposes (full details can be found by clicking on the links, including what anonymous, pseudonymous and/or personally identifiable data they gather):

  • Collecting anonymous usage data for Google Analytics and for WordPress Statistics from Automattic,
  • Providing embedded videos from platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo,
  • Operating affiliate links, with no personal data reported to me,
  • Integrating with services from Twitter and from Facebook,
  • Analysing website visits from email subscribers using MailChimp,
  • Publishing web notifications using OneSignal,
  • Remembering whether or not you have seen and accepted the privacy pop-up message on visiting the site, and
  • Servicing any requests that you make (e.g. to remember your details when you post a comment).

If you want to find out more about any individual cookies that any one of my sites use, please either email mark.pack@libdemnewswire.com or install a tool such as Ghostery, which provides detailed information about cookies on all the sites you visit.

Retention of data

Personal data which you provide via cookies will be retained for no more than two years.

Other data which is not special category data will be retained as long as it is required to accurately deliver information to you by the means set out above and to meet regulatory requirements (e.g. for tax purposes and for compliance with laws on electoral finance).

This may include retaining data after you have made an unsubscribe or similar request to ensure that you are not subsequently sent information by mistake and to protect against, for example, malicious attempts to add you to lists you do not wish to be a member of.

Special category data will not be retained for longer than five years.

You can, in addition, exercise your legal rights for data to be deleted if you wish.

Anonymous aggregate statistics may be retained when personal data is deleted.

GDPR provides the following rights for individuals:

  • The right to be informed,
  • The right of access,
  • The right to rectification,
  • The right to erasure,
  • The right to restrict processing,
  • The right to data portability,
  • The right to object and
  • Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

You can find out details of what these rights cover and how to exercise them here.

If you have a complaint of a query, you can raise it with me via mark.pack@libdemnewswire.com or, if appropriate, contact the regulator, the Information Commissioner.

Sponsored content and affiliates

I am a participant in the Amazon Europe S.à.r.l. Associates Programme, in the Bookshop.org affiliate program and in several Awin affiliate programmes. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I also occasionally participate in other affiliate schemes.

In all cases, these third parties do not supply any of your personal data to me and if you choose to provide any personal data to them via their systems, you should contact them direct for details of their privacy policies and information on how to opt-out from their systems.

I have occasionally run sponsored posts. All of these are labelled as such in the post and only express views I freely and genuinely hold.

Unless otherwise noted all my content on this site is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Please note in particular that photographs frequently have other copyright terms, and that content from others which is embedded on this site may also have other copyright terms.

Comment moderation policy

Comments are very welcome. I moderate comments based on whether they are polite, whether they are really from who they say they are, whether they are on topic (so please take care to post your comment on the right post) and whether they add something to the discussion rather than, for example, being a repetition of what has already been said or the repetition of a tired old insult.

You don’t have to agree with me, and indeed comments that point out errors are particularly welcome.