Privacy notice

The short version

This site explains stove guards. It asks for no names or email addresses, and it sets no cookies unless you accept analytics. If you accept, we use Google Analytics to count visits. If you don’t, nothing is sent to Google.

Who we are

This site is published by Unicook Ltd, the data controller for it. We are registered in England and Wales, company number 05837028, and on the Information Commissioner’s Office register under reference ZB617328. Our address is Unit 1, Villa Farm, Blackham, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN3 9UN, United Kingdom.

For anything about your personal information, email enquiries@unicook.co.uk or write to us at Villa Farm.

What we collect, and why

Every visit

The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which processes your IP address and basic request information to serve pages and to protect the site from attacks. The site cannot work safely without it. Our fonts are served from this site, not from Google or any other font service.

Analytics – only with your consent

When you first visit, we ask whether you’ll accept analytics cookies. If you decline, nothing is sent to Google Analytics at all. If you accept, we use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to see how many people visit, which parts of the page they read, roughly where in the world they are, what kind of device they use, and how they found the site. It sets the cookies _ga and _ga_<id>, which we limit to 13 months.

GA4 is loaded through Google Tag Manager, a Google tool that lets us manage the site’s analytics code in one place. Tag Manager loads only if you accept, at the same moment as GA4, and is set up to load Google Analytics and nothing else. It sets no cookies of its own, but like anything fetched from Google, it means Google receives your IP address when it loads. Through it, GA4 also records some of what visitors do on the page – for example which links and buttons they click, and how far down they scroll.

We use it for statistics about the site, and nothing else. We don’t use it for advertising: the site tells Google on every page that advertising storage and ad personalisation are refused, and we don’t combine it with any advertising tools.

Analytics data is pseudonymous, not anonymous: it isn’t labelled with your name, but it is tied to an identifier that distinguishes your visits from other people’s. We don’t try to work out who you are from it, and we don’t allow Google to either.

The one cookie that is always set once you have chosen is stoveguard_consent, which remembers your answer so we don’t ask on every visit.

Changing your mind

Use Cookie settings – here, or at the bottom of the main page – at any time. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it, and stops any further collection. We ask again after six months.

Our legal grounds

• Hosting and security – legitimate interests: keeping the site working and protected.
• Analytics – consent: only if you accept, and you can withdraw it at any time.

Who receives it

• Cloudflare – hosts the site and protects it from attack (global).
• Google – analytics and Tag Manager, only if you accept (USA).

We don’t sell, rent or trade personal information. Where information goes to the United States, we rely on the UK government’s adequacy regulations where they apply, and otherwise on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

How long we keep it

• Analytics data – 14 months, then deleted by Google.
• Google Analytics cookies – 13 months at most.
• Your cookie choice – 6 months, then we ask again.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask to see, correct or erase what we hold about you, restrict or object to how we use it, take a copy in a portable format, and withdraw consent at any time. Email enquiries@unicook.co.uk; we respond within one month, free of charge.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time: ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.

Our other sites

unicook.co.uk has its own privacy notice. unicook.fr and unicook.eu are run by a different company, Sensia SARL, and have their own.