We collect
almost nothing.

01 What we collect

From the form

Your email address, your website address if you give us one, and whether you are asking about your own business or recommending someone else's. That is all three fields.

From email

Whatever you write to us, and your email address.

From our host

Standard server logs: IP address, browser type, pages requested, timestamps. Our host keeps these briefly for security and to keep the site running. We do not read them for marketing.

From clients

If you hire us, whatever you send us to build the site: logo, photos, text, hours, service areas, login details for your domain or host.

Three things do load from other companies. Our typefaces come from Google Fonts, and the animation code comes from public code libraries — both standard, both mean your browser makes a request to those services when you load the page, neither identifies you to us. The third is Google Analytics, which counts visits and tells us which pages people actually read. It sets a cookie and logs your approximate location from your IP address, your device and browser type, and the pages you viewed. That is enough to tell us the site is working, not enough to build a profile on you, and we do not use it for anything else. If you would rather not be counted, a browser extension such as Google's Analytics Opt-out Add-on, or most ad blockers, will stop it.

02 How we found you, if we emailed you first

Most of our clients hear from us before they hear of us, so this deserves a straight answer.

We look at publicly available information: business listings, search results, your own public website. We do not buy contact lists, we do not scrape private databases, and we do not use anyone's personal email. We write to the business address you publish for people to contact you on.

Every email we send tells you who we are, comes from a real address you can reply to, and includes a way to stop hearing from us. Ask us to stop and we will, within days rather than weeks, and we will delete what we hold about you.

03 Why we keep it

• To answer you.
• To build and run your website, if you become a client.
• To keep records of what we agreed and what you paid, which we are required to keep for tax purposes.

That is the complete list. We do not build profiles, we do not score leads, and we do not use your data to train anything.

04 Who else touches it

A few services we rely on, and only for the reasons listed:

Our web host

Serves this website and holds server logs.

Google Analytics

Counts visits and page views on this site. Google processes that on our behalf under its own privacy terms; we don't pass it to anyone else.

Email

We use Gmail. Your messages to us sit in that inbox.

Form handling

When our contact form is connected to a form service, your three fields pass through it on the way to our inbox.

Payments

Handled by a payment processor. They see the payment details. We never see or store your card number.

We do not give your information to anyone else, except if the law requires it.

05 How long we keep it

• Enquiries that go nowhere: deleted within 12 months.
• Previews we built for a business that did not buy: deleted within 12 months, or immediately if you ask.
• Client records: kept while you are a client, and for 7 years afterwards for tax and accounting.
• Anything you ask us to delete: deleted, unless we are legally required to keep it, in which case we will tell you that.

06 Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to do these things, and we will, free, within 30 days:

• Tell you what we hold about you.
• Send you a copy of it.
• Correct anything wrong.
• Delete it.
• Stop emailing you.

Email northgemstudios@gmail.com and say which one. You do not need to cite a law or use a particular form of words. We will not ask you why, and asking will never affect how we treat you.

If you are in California, that includes the right to know, the right to delete, and the right to opt out of sale or sharing. We do not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of, but the right stands and you will never be charged a different price for using it.

07 Children

This is a service for businesses. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. If you think we have, tell us and we will delete it.

08 Security

The site is served over HTTPS. Client logins and credentials are kept in a password manager, not in a spreadsheet or an email thread. We are two people, which means a small attack surface, and it also means we are not going to pretend we have a security department. If something happens that affects your data, we will tell you promptly and plainly.

09 Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects you, the date at the top will change and we will email current clients. We will not quietly start collecting something new.

10 Contact

Email northgemstudios@gmail.com.