Privacy Policy
Last updated: 22 July 2026
The short version
This is a personal website. There are no accounts, no logins, no payments and nothing to buy. It sets no cookies and shows no ads. I don't sell your data and I don't build profiles on anyone.
There are three ways this site touches your information:
- If you send me a message, I get your name, email, subject and message so I can reply.
- The site counts visits — how many people come, which pages they read. This is done without cookies and without identifying anyone.
- The site reports errors so I find out when something breaks.
Everything below is the detail.
Who is responsible for your data
The data controller — the person who decides why and how your information is used — is:
Joe Seddon
20 Garrett Street
London EC1Y 0TW
For anything to do with your data, including any of the requests listed below, use the contact form and choose Privacy as the subject.
I am not registered with the Information Commissioner's Office. Having assessed it, the processing done by this site falls within the exemption for advertising, marketing and public relations in respect of my own activity, under the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations 2018. That exemption relates only to the fee. Every other obligation in data protection law still applies to me, and this policy sets out how I meet them.
What this policy covers
This policy covers joeseddon.com only.
It does not cover:
- Zero Gravity (zerogravity.co.uk). That is a separate organisation with its own privacy policy. I am its Chief Executive, but this site is mine personally and the two are not the same controller.
- Any other site you reach from here. The Media page links to well over a hundred articles on publishers' own websites. Once you click through, you are on their site under their policy.
- Substack, LinkedIn, X, or any other platform I link to.
1. The contact form
What you give me: your name, your email address, the subject you pick (General, Speaking, Media, Partnership or Privacy), and your message.
What happens to it: it is not stored in a database on this site. The form sends it straight to my inbox as an email, using an email delivery service called Resend (Resend, Inc.). Your email address is set as the reply-to so I can respond to you directly.
Why I'm allowed to do this (lawful basis): legitimate interests. You contacted me and expect a reply, and I have an interest in being reachable for press, speaking and partnership enquiries. Handling a message you deliberately sent me is a fair use of it and doesn't override your rights.
How long I keep it:
- If your enquiry doesn't lead anywhere, I delete it after 24 months.
- If it leads to work or an ongoing working relationship, I keep it for six years after our last contact. That is the period in which a contract dispute could still be brought under the Limitation Act 1980, so it is how long I may need the record.
I don't keep anything indefinitely. Resend also holds a copy in its sending logs for its own retention period — see Resend's privacy policy.
Anti-spam: the form limits how many messages can be sent from one internet connection in an hour. To do that, the server briefly holds your IP address in memory. It is never written to disk, never logged, and never sent anywhere. It disappears when the server restarts, and in any event within an hour.
A note on drafts: as you type, the form saves your unfinished message in your own browser's session storage so you don't lose it if you close the panel by accident. That stays on your device, is never transmitted to me, and is wiped when you close the tab or when the message sends.
2. Measuring traffic
I use Vercel Web Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they read.
It is cookieless. It does not set cookies, does not use device fingerprinting, does not follow you across sites, and does not build a profile of you. It reports aggregate numbers — page views, referring sites, broad country-level location — not individuals.
Lawful basis: legitimate interests. Knowing which pages people actually read is a reasonable thing for me to want, and doing it without cookies or identifiers is about as low-impact as measurement gets.
3. Errors
I use Sentry to tell me when something on the site breaks. This matters most for the contact form: if it fails silently, I would have no idea that enquiries had stopped arriving.
What it collects: the error itself, the page it happened on, and general browser and operating system information.
What it deliberately does not collect: I have configured it to strip user identifiers, cookies, request headers and query strings before anything is sent, and it does not collect personal information by default. Session recording is switched off. No browsing sessions are recorded.
Lawful basis: legitimate interests. Keeping the site working, and knowing when it isn't, is a minimal and expected use of technical information.
4. Hosting
The site is hosted by Vercel. As with any web host, its servers automatically log requests, which can include IP addresses, browser type and the page requested. This is ordinary infrastructure logging, used to serve the site and protect it from abuse, and is retained according to Vercel's own policy.
5. Embedded content
There is none. No video player, no social widget, no third-party script.
Where the site points at something hosted elsewhere — a broadcast on BBC iPlayer, a podcast episode, a news article — it is an ordinary link. Nothing from those services is loaded into this site, so they receive nothing about you unless you choose to follow the link, at which point you are on their site under their terms.
Every image on this site, including podcast and press artwork, is served from this domain. Nothing is fetched from a third-party content delivery network.
Everything in one table
| What | Why | Lawful basis | Who processes it | How long | Leaves the UK? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name, email, subject, message | So I can read and reply | Legitimate interests | Resend; my email provider | 24 months, or 6 years after last contact if it led to work | Yes — Resend is US-based |
| IP address (contact form only) | Rate limiting, to stop spam | Legitimate interests | Held in server memory only | Under 1 hour; never written to disk | Processed on Vercel infrastructure |
| Draft message text | So you don't lose an unfinished message | n/a — never leaves your device | Your browser | Until the tab closes or the message sends | No |
| Page views, referrer, country | Traffic measurement | Legitimate interests | Vercel Analytics — cookieless, no profiling | Per Vercel's retention policy | Yes — US/global |
| Error reports | Fixing faults | Legitimate interests | Sentry — identifiers stripped | Per Sentry's retention policy | Yes |
| Server request logs | Serving and securing the site | Legitimate interests | Vercel | Per Vercel's retention policy | Yes — US/global CDN |
Sending data outside the UK
Resend, Sentry and Vercel are based in or operate from the United States. Where your information is transferred outside the UK, it is protected by the safeguards those providers have in place — standard contractual clauses, the UK extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, or equivalent. You can ask me for details of the mechanism relied on for any particular provider.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- Know what information I hold about you and get a copy of it.
- Correct anything that is wrong or incomplete.
- Have it deleted, where there is no good reason for me to keep it.
- Restrict how I use it while a concern is being resolved.
- Object to my using it on the basis of legitimate interests. If you object, I have to stop unless I can show compelling grounds that override your rights.
- Portability — receive certain information in a machine-readable form.
You will never be charged for making a request, and I will respond within one month.
To exercise any of these, use the contact form and choose Privacy as the subject.
If you are unhappy with how I have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office — ico.org.uk, or 0303 123 1113. I would rather you came to me first so I can put it right, but you are entitled to go straight to them.
Children
This site is aimed at journalists, event organisers, partners and people interested in my work. It is not directed at children, and I don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Changes to this policy
If I change how this site handles information, I will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes will be described here rather than made quietly.