The short version
This site is run by volunteers, not a commercial company. We collect the minimum needed to run the service: anonymous interaction counts, a coarse location when you share it, and - if you create an account - your email and a phone number for login codes. We don't sell data, we don't show ads, and there are no third-party tracking scripts.
What we collect
- Anonymous usage analytics (legitimate interest). We count interactions with the site - which listings are viewed, which phone numbers, websites, or directions are clicked, which favourites are tapped. These counts are aggregated; they tell us what visitors actually use so the volunteers can keep the site useful. The analytics beacon is first-party: no advertising platform or third-party analytics provider sees it.
- Approximate location (consent). When you allow location sharing, we use it to sort results by distance. Only a coarse value - rounded to roughly a kilometre - is ever stored; your precise position is processed on your device and never sent to us.
- Account details (consent). If you create an account (to manage a listing), we store an email address and a phone number used solely to send you login codes. We never publish these.
- Content you submit (consent). Descriptions, photos, and other material you supply for a listing are published as part of that listing, under the licence described in the owner terms.
- Session cookie (necessary). A small cookie keeps you logged in. There are no advertising or cross-site cookies.
What we deliberately don't do
- No advertising, sponsored placements, or paid listings.
- No third-party analytics, advertising, or profiling scripts (no Facebook, Google, or similar pixels or trackers).
- No selling, renting, or sharing of personal data with anyone.
- No storing of precise location history.
Where and how data is stored & processed
Data is stored on servers within the EU (UK/EU hosting), in encrypted-at-rest storage, with access limited to the volunteer administrators. Uploaded images are held in private object storage and served only through this site. Published listing data is also replicated into automated backups; if you ask us to remove a listing, it is hidden from the public site immediately, and purged from the live database and (on the next cycle) from backups as part of our routine maintenance.
"Processing" of your data means the ordinary operation of the service: storing it, showing it on the public site where appropriate, counting anonymised interactions with it, and reviewing submissions before publication. No automated decision-making is used on any personal data.
Your rights
Under UK data-protection law (UK GDPR / DPA 2018) and the EU GDPR you have the right to: access the personal data we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted (erasure), object to processing, and ask for a copy in a portable format.
In practice: if you manage a listing, your account page is your self-service access - you can update or hide your listing there, and request account deletion by contacting us. If you don't have an account, use the help page or the account request flow to contact the volunteers and we'll respond promptly. You can also lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) if you're unhappy with how we've handled a request.
Data controller & contact
The site is run by volunteers; the data controller for the purposes of UK GDPR is the volunteer team behind Explore Minehead. The quickest way to reach us is through the site itself - the account request flow for listing matters, or the help page for anything else. For any data-protection question - or to exercise your access, correction, erasure or objection rights - write to gdpr@minehead.info. We aim to respond to all requests within 30 days.