Privacy

Who is responsible for this site

Fran Annaford is the author of this website and the data controller for the small amount of personal information described below. You can reach her at franannaford@gmail.com, and that is the address to use for anything on this page, including any request about your own information.

What this site does not do

It is easier to start with what is absent, because almost everything is. This site:

• sets no cookies of its own, and nothing it loads sets a cookie either;
• uses no analytics — not Google Analytics, not a privacy-friendly alternative, not server-side page counting;
• carries no advertising, tracking pixels, beacons or fingerprinting;
• embeds no third-party scripts, videos, maps, fonts, social buttons or comment systems;
• has no contact form, no newsletter sign-up, no account and no login;
• builds no profile of you, and makes no automated decisions about you;
• needs no JavaScript in order to be read.

The two typefaces, Bodoni Moda and Karla, are originally Google fonts, but they are downloaded once when the site is built and then served from this domain. Your browser never contacts Google to read this site.

Information the hosting provider records

The site is hosted by Vercel Inc., a company based in the United States. Like every web server, Vercel’s servers write a technical log entry each time a page or image is requested. Those entries can include your IP address, the address of the page requested, the time of the request, and the browser and operating system your request announced.

That logging is how a website is delivered and kept secure; it is not something layered on top for our benefit. Neither Fran nor anyone working on the site reads these logs to identify readers, copies them elsewhere, or keeps a separate record of them. Vercel deletes them on its own retention schedule, which is measured in days rather than years. Under the UK GDPR the lawful basis is legitimate interests: serving the site to you and protecting it from attack and abuse.

Because Vercel is in the United States, these log entries are processed there. Vercel acts as a processor under a data processing agreement that incorporates the standard contractual clauses approved for transfers out of the UK and the EEA. Its own privacy notice at vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy describes that processing in full.

If you email Fran

The Contact page offers an email address and nothing more. If you write, Fran will hold your email address, your name if you give it, and whatever you chose to put in your message — for as long as it takes to reply and, where a letter is one she wants to keep, afterwards as part of her correspondence. The lawful basis is again legitimate interests: answering a letter you decided to send. Her email is Gmail, so Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC handle it as her email provider.

She will not add you to a mailing list, because there is no mailing list. She will not pass your message or your address to anyone else unless you ask her to or the law requires it. Ask her to delete your message and she will.

Links to other websites

The books are sold by other people, so this site links out to Fran’s publisher and to booksellers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Thrift Books, Google Books, Booktopia, Medimops, Fruugo and iMusic. These are plain links. They carry no affiliate code, no tracking parameter and no referral identifier, and Fran earns nothing if you follow one.

Once you arrive at one of those sites you are in their hands, not hers: they will set their own cookies and apply their own privacy policies, and this policy stops at the edge of this domain. The same is true of the sample excerpts, which are PDF files served from this site — but note that a PDF opened in a separate reader application is governed by that application’s own behaviour.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR you have the right to ask what personal information is held about you, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to its use, and to receive a copy of it. Given how little this site collects, in practice a request will almost always be about an email you sent.

Write to franannaford@gmail.com and Fran will respond within one month, as the law requires. Exercising any of these rights costs nothing. If you are unhappy with her answer you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, or to the supervisory authority in your own EU country.

Readers in the United States

If you live in California, or in another state with a comparable privacy law, the disclosures those laws require are short in this case. This site collects no personal information from you beyond the server logs described above. It has never sold or shared personal information, and it does not use or disclose sensitive personal information. It serves no targeted advertising and does no profiling, so there is nothing to opt out of.

Because the site does no tracking at all, a Do Not Track header or a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser changes nothing — there is nothing here for it to switch off. You may still exercise the rights above by email, and you will not be treated differently for doing so.

Children

Fran writes adult fiction. This site is intended for adult readers, is not directed to children, and collects nothing from anyone knowingly. If you believe a child has sent personal information to the address above, write and it will be deleted.

Changes to this policy

If the site ever starts doing something this page does not describe — adding a contact form, say, or a newsletter — this policy will be updated before that change goes live, and the date below will change with it.