I am, as the popular meme goes, some sort of permanently exhausted pigeon who has neither the time, inclination nor skill to do anything scammy with your information.

I collect and store information that is necessary for me to manage my business – contact details for clients so I can actually speak to you, notes from our sessions because my memory isn’t good enough to remember everything that we talk about, details of purchases you have made (although no payment processing details are held – all of that goes through Stripe) for HMRC and, for anybody who agrees to me doing so, clients or not, email addresses so I can send you information about services that you may be interested in, blog posts, special offers etc.

My website is set up to track usage – which pages get visited most and by people in which areas of the world.  I believe this includes your IP address but I have no idea how to find them and wouldn’t know what to do with them if I did.  

So, you know how your browser remembers your login details for your favourite websites, and the web address often fills in automatically if you start typing?  That’s all down to Cookies.  You can turn them off in your browser settings if you want, but it will mean all sorts of stuff will stop working like it does now.

Technical stuff: If you leave a comment on my site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, I* will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, I will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

*Ha! As if I know what I’m doing!  This is done automatically by my site

***** Official wordy cookie policy *****

Cookie Policy for Helen Soutar Ltd

This is the Cookie Policy for Helen Soutar Ltd, accessible from https://helensoutar.com

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the site’s functionality.

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

• Forms related cookies

  When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

• Site preferences cookies

  In order to provide you with a great experience on this site, we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences, we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

• This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

  For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

• As we sell products it’s important for us to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to our site actually make a purchase and as such this is the kind of data that these cookies will track. This is important to you as it means that we can accurately make business predictions that allow us to monitor our advertising and product costs to ensure the best possible price.

More Information

Hopefully, that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site. This Cookies Policy was created with the help of the Generator of GDPR Cookies Policy Template and the GDPR Cookies Policy Template based on the Privacy Policy Generator from TermsFeed.

However, if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through one of our preferred contact methods:

• By emailing: helen@helensoutar.com

If you comment, some anonymised data (a hash) may be sent to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it.  If you are, your profile picture will be visible next to your comment after approval and publication. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.

Not really, but I do use Google Analytics to track how many of you wondrous people are visiting my site, which pages you spend most time looking at and where in the world you are.

I’m told this also collects your IP address but I don’t know how they work and almost certainly have a whole acre of paint to watch drying before I have any desire to learn what they can be used for.

Okay, so this is the juicy bit!

I store your data in a couple of different places for different reasons, depending on what data I hold on you and why:

This website – If you leave a comment or register an account (you can’t do this yet, but maybe in the future), that data will be stored here.  Only I and my amazing tech buddy have access to this and as we are both self employed, home educating parents quite frankly we have no time or energy to do anything interesting with this, even if we had any inclination!

Active Campaign – If you sign up to my email list or for anything that has to be emailed to you, this will be done via Active Campaign.  They tell me they are GDPR compliant and if you get fed up and want to stop them, you can click on the unsubscribe button at the bottom of any email.  I also use Active Campaign for my CRM system and it stores information on whether you open emails I send you, if you click on any of my website links and, if you’re a client, it also stores the notes from our sessions (password protected).

Acuity Scheduling – If you book any sessions with me, Acuity will collect and store your name, contact details (email and phone number).  The type and date / time of your appointments is stored along with details of payments made (no payment processing details – just amounts / dates / what for).

Zoom.us – Name and appointment time / date is sent from Acuity to Zoom to automatically create a virtual meeting room for our sessions.  If we agree to record our session(s), these will be stored in my Zoom cloud account (password protected) for 7 days or until you have downloaded it if before then.  After that, all recordings are deleted.

Googledrive – All documents, spreadsheets, and other files related to our interactions are securely stored in Google Drive. This includes contracts, invoices, and any work-in-progress files. Google Drive is secured with encryption, and I follow strict access controls to ensure that only I and authorized collaborators have access to these files. Regular backups ensure that your data isn’t lost in case of technical failures.

Paperform – When you fill out forms on my site, such as feedback forms or sign-up sheets, this data is managed through Paperform. Paperform ensures that your data is stored securely and is GDPR compliant. Only authorised personnel (that’s me and occasionally a designated assistant) have access to this information, which is used solely to respond to your inquiries or manage your requests.

Heights Platform – If you participate in any online courses or workshops I offer, your enrolment and progress information are managed through Heights Platform. This includes your registration details, course progression, and any submissions or tests. Heights Platform complies with all relevant privacy laws ensuring that your educational data is handled responsibly and with respect.

Pabbly Connect – I use Pabbly Connect to automate workflows between apps. For example, when you sign up for a webinar, Pabbly Connect helps in registering your information across platforms like Zoom and Active Campaign seamlessly. Your data is only used to automate processes you’ve engaged with, and Pabbly’s robust security measures ensure your information is protected at all times.

When you book any sessions with me or buy any products/courses, you will pay through Stripe.  I don’t see any card or bank details at all.  Stripe is GDPR compliant, more details here:https://stripe.com/privacy-center/legal.  

If you want to join my email list, you can add your email address in the appropriate box on my website.

I’m pretty rubbish at email to be honest, so it’s unlikely you’ll get fed up of me clogging up your inbox…in fact, it’s more likely you’ll forget you ever signed up because of the lack of handy reminders.

There is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email though so if even my infrequent and irregular emails are too much, just click the link and Active Campaign will automatically remove you from the list.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.