Privacy Policy

Membership Data

If you sign up to become a member of SPS, we collect information necessary to administer your membership. This typically includes your name, email address, and any additional details you provide as part of the sign-up process. Membership data is used to manage your membership, communicate with you about Society activities, and provide access to member-only resources.

Comments

When you leave a comment on this site, the information you submit (such as your name, email address, and comment content) is collected, along with your IP address, to help with spam detection and moderation. Comments are reviewed before being published.

Contact Form

If you use the contact form on this site, we collect the information you provide — typically your name, email address, and message content. This information is used solely to respond to your enquiry and is not used for marketing purposes or shared with third parties, except as necessary to operate the form itself (see Section III, Third-Party Services).

Newsletter / Mailing List

If you sign up to our email newsletter, we collect your email address (and, where provided, your name) in order to send you updates about SPS activities, publications, and research. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link provided in every newsletter email, or by contacting us directly.

Analytics

This site uses Google Analytics to understand how visitors use the site — for example, which pages are viewed, how long visitors stay, and what device or browser they're using. Google Analytics collects data such as your IP address (which may be anonymised), approximate location, browser type, and pages visited. This data is used in aggregate to help us improve the site's content and performance, and is not used to identify you personally.

Cookies

This site may set cookies for the following purposes:

• Essential cookies — required for core site functionality, such as keeping you logged in to a member account, where applicable.
• Comment cookies — saving your name, email address, and website for your convenience when leaving future comments.
• Analytics cookies — set by Google Analytics to distinguish unique visitors and track usage patterns.

You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings. Disabling cookies may affect how parts of the site function, including member login.

Where UK GDPR applies, the legal bases we rely on for processing personal data are:

• Consent — for example, when you sign up to the newsletter, leave a comment, or submit the contact form.
• Contract — for example, when we process your data in order to administer your membership of SPS.
• Legitimate interests — for example, using analytics to understand and improve the site, and using spam-prevention tools to keep comments functional and free of abuse.

This site is custom-built and may use the following third-party services, each of which has its own privacy policy:

• Google Analytics — for website usage analytics. Privacy policy: policies.google.com/privacy
• Email newsletter provider — used to manage and send our mailing list. Your email address is stored with this provider in order to deliver newsletters and process unsubscribe requests.
• Hosting infrastructure provider — your data (such as IP address) may be processed by our hosting provider as part of normal website operation.

We don't sell, rent, or trade your personal data to third parties for marketing purposes.

• Membership data is retained for as long as your membership is active, and for a reasonable period afterwards in case you choose to rejoin or for record-keeping purposes, after which it is deleted or anonymised.
• Contact form submissions are kept only as long as necessary to respond to and resolve your enquiry, after which they may be deleted periodically.
• Comments and associated metadata are retained for as long as the comment remains published on the site.
• Newsletter data is retained until you unsubscribe or request deletion.
• Analytics data is retained according to Google Analytics' default retention settings.

If you are in the UK or EU, under data protection law you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate personal data.
• Request erasure of your personal data (for example, you can ask for a comment or membership record to be deleted).
• Object to or restrict certain processing, including analytics tracking or newsletter communications.
• Data portability, where applicable.
• Withdraw consent at any time, for example by unsubscribing from the newsletter.

To exercise any of these rights, please get in touch via the contact form on this site.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk.

We take reasonable steps to protect personal data collected through this site, including appropriate technical and organisational measures relating to our custom-built systems and any third-party services used. However, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

Where members or visitors share accounts of personal experiences as part of our research and study activities, we treat such accounts with respect and confidentiality, in line with our Code of Ethics. Personal experiences shared for research purposes are not published or attributed without explicit consent.

This site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

We may update this privacy policy from time to time, for example to reflect changes in the tools or services this site uses. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date.

If you have questions about this privacy policy or how your data is handled, please get in touch via the contact form at paranormalsociety.co.uk.