Privacy and Cookies

What we collect

Cookies

Cookies fall into three groups here, and only the first is set without asking.

• Strictly necessary — remembering your cookie choices and basic security. These cannot be switched off, because switching them off would mean asking you about cookies on every page load.
• Analytics — anonymised measurement of which pages are read and where the site performs badly. Set only with consent.
• Advertising — set by third-party advertising providers to serve and measure adverts. Set only with consent.

You can change your choices at any time through the cookie settings link in the footer, or by clearing cookies for this site in your browser. Declining non-essential cookies does not restrict any content — everything on this site is readable either way.

Most browsers also let you block third-party cookies entirely. That is a legitimate choice and the site is designed to work normally if you do.

Retention: how long anything is kept

Data that is not held cannot be lost, so we keep as little as the site can function on and delete the rest on a schedule.

The 30-day server log window is the shortest we can run while still being able to investigate abuse or diagnose an outage after the fact. The 24-month correspondence window exists so that if you report a correction and we get it wrong, there is a record of what you actually told us.

Deletion on request

You can ask us to delete correspondence at any time and we will, unless we are legally required to keep it — which for a site like this essentially never arises. Because there are no accounts, there is nothing else of yours for us to delete.

Third parties

Some data is processed by others on our behalf, or collected directly by them when you interact with their content.

• Analytics provider — aggregated site measurement.
• Advertising partners — serving and measuring adverts, which may involve transfers outside the UK under approved safeguards.
• Affiliate networks — attributing a subscription to a click from this site.
• Hosting and CDN provider — serving pages, and processing server logs for security.
• Email provider — handling correspondence sent to our published addresses.

Where a transfer outside the UK occurs, it is made under the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or an adequacy decision. We do not transfer personal data to any party that cannot demonstrate an appropriate safeguard.

Why this site collects so little

Not a virtue signal — an architectural consequence worth understanding, because it determines what could ever go wrong.

TellyWise is a static site. Every page is generated in advance and served as a plain HTML file. There is no database, no application server, no user accounts, no login, no comment system and no forms that submit anywhere. When you read a page, a file is sent to you and nothing is written down at our end beyond a standard server log.

That removes most of the categories of breach that affect publishers. There is no credential store to compromise because there are no credentials. There is no customer database because there are no customers in a data sense. There is no payment processing because we never take a payment — every transaction happens on the provider’s own site under their systems.

The realistic worst case is that correspondence you sent us could be exposed. That is why we keep it for a limited period and delete on request rather than archiving indefinitely.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the following rights, and we will respond to any of them within one month.

• Access — a copy of any personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — correction of anything inaccurate.
• Erasure — deletion, where we have no overriding reason to keep it.
• Restriction — limiting how we use it while a dispute is resolved.
• Objection — to processing based on legitimate interests, including any profiling.
• Portability — a machine-readable copy of data you provided to us.
• Withdrawal of consent — at any time, without affecting processing already carried out.

To exercise any of these, email [email protected]. In practice the only personal data we are likely to hold is correspondence, since the site has no accounts.

If you are unhappy with our response you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK supervisory authority. You do not need our permission to do so, and we would ask that you raise it with us first only because we can usually fix it faster.

How affiliate tracking actually works

Worth explaining properly rather than burying in a clause, because it is the only part of this site that tracks you across to somewhere else.

When you follow a link from here to a provider such as Sky or Amazon, that link carries an identifier telling them the visit came from us. If you then subscribe or buy something, the provider tells the affiliate network a sale occurred and credits it to our account. That is how the site is funded.

What is shared	With whom	What it does not include
A publisher identifier for this site	The affiliate network and the provider	Nothing about you personally
A click timestamp and reference	The affiliate network	Your name, email or address
Whether a sale occurred, and its value	Reported back to us in aggregate	Which individual made it

What we receive back is a count and a value, not a list of people. We have no way to identify who subscribed to what, and we do not want one.

Once you land on a provider’s site you are governed by their privacy policy, not ours. We have no visibility of what you do there beyond whether a sale was attributed to this site.

Analytics: what we actually look at

Being specific here is more useful than a generic paragraph about "improving our services".

With your consent, we collect aggregated measurement so we can tell which guides are useful and where the site is failing people. In practice we look at four things and nothing else.

1. 1Which pages get read, so we know what to update first. Pricing on a heavily read page gets re-checked sooner.
2. 2Where people leave, because a sharp drop-off usually means a page answered the wrong question or buried the answer.
3. 3Approximate region, only to confirm the audience is British — the entire site is written for a UK household and that assumption is worth checking.
4. 4Device and screen size in broad categories, so layout problems get found. The mobile ordering of our guides changed because of this.

We do not build profiles of individuals, we do not attempt to identify anyone, we do not track you across other websites, and we have no account system that could link browsing to a person. If you decline analytics cookies, none of this is collected and nothing on the site stops working.

Managing cookies yourself

Our banner is not the only control you have, and browser-level settings are more durable because they survive us changing anything.

• Block third-party cookies entirely. Every major browser offers this. It stops advertising and most analytics cookies across every site, and this one is designed to work normally without them.
• Use tracking protection. Firefox, Safari and Edge all ship with it enabled by default now, and it blocks most cross-site measurement before it starts.
• Clear cookies for this site. That resets your consent choice and you will be asked again on your next visit.
• Use private browsing. Nothing persists after the window closes, including our record that you made a choice.
• Send Global Privacy Control. Where your browser or extension sends a GPC signal, we treat it as an opt-out of non-essential processing.

None of these degrade the site. There is no content behind a cookie wall, no feature that requires tracking, and no nag if you decline. The only functional cookie is the one remembering that you declined — which is why it is classed as strictly necessary.

Children, security and changes

Children

This site is aimed at adults making household purchasing decisions. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS. It is a static site with no database and no user accounts, which removes most of the categories of breach that affect publishers — there is no credential store to compromise.

Changes to this policy

Material changes will be noted at the top of this page with a revised date. The date at the head of this page is when it was last reviewed.

For how we handle editorial matters rather than data, see our editorial policy, and for who we are see about TellyWise. General enquiries go through our contact page.