Privacy Policy

Who is responsible for your information?

North East Heritage Library (NEHL), operated by Kieran Carter, is responsible for the personal information used to run this website and its member features. Please use our Contact form for questions, privacy requests or comment reports. You can also contact kieran@northeastheritagelibrary.co.uk.

Membership and Patreon sign-in

When you choose Continue with Patreon, Patreon asks you to authorise the NEHL connection. We use your Patreon identity, verified email address, first name and membership information to recognise your account and check eligibility. A private Wix member account supports your website session. We do not receive your Patreon password or payment-card details.

We retain the account identifiers and protected authorisation credentials needed to maintain this connection. Access is checked on the server. If your paid membership ends, your saved places and journeys remain dormant so they can be available again if you return. You can still request access to or deletion of your information.

Saved places, journeys and activity

Your bookmarks, saved journeys, account preferences and personal notification read state are private to your account. Saved journeys contain the route name, waypoints and selected places. Anyone you give a route-sharing link to may be able to view the route represented by that link, so avoid including a private home address or other sensitive information in a shared route.

My Library can show your own purchases, event bookings and ticket links. Older purchases are matched using the verified account identity and email information available to the service. The member interface does not display postal addresses, payment details or information belonging to other customers. Order and ticket records remain in the underlying Wix services.

Comments, replies and photographs

Published archive comments and replies are public. They include your display name, comment text, date and time, any edit indication and photographs you attach. Only eligible members and the verified owner can contribute. Please do not include private contact details or other sensitive information, and only upload photographs you have permission to share.

You may attach up to three JPEG or PNG photographs, up to 10MB each. Photographs are resized and re-encoded before publication to remove embedded metadata, including location metadata. This does not remove personal information visible within the photograph itself. Optional image descriptions are public too. Article discussions continue to use Wix Blog commenting. My Library shows article comments linked to your signed-in Wix member identity and replies to those comments; guest comments are not linked by name or email. Reading a reply updates your private notification state.

Importing your Patreon profile photograph and displaying it beside public comments are separate choices. Importing it does not automatically make it public. You can change these choices in Account.

Authorised moderators can remove comments from public view and restore them. Removed comments and their photographs are retained privately for moderation and possible restoration. New requests for their photographs are refused while the comment is removed; a photograph already downloaded or temporarily cached cannot be recalled from another person's device. Permanently deleting a comment also deletes its stored attachments.

Notifications and announcements

We use account activity and read markers to show unread replies and member announcements. Authorised moderators also receive notices of new comments and unresolved reports. Opening a menu does not mark these items as read. Your personal read state is not public. Reports are available only to authorised staff who handle them.

How and why we use information

We use account, membership, saved-content, purchase and booking information to provide the services you request. We rely on performance of our agreement with you where this is necessary to provide those services. We use legitimate interests to keep the service secure, prevent misuse, moderate contributions and respond to support requests, taking account of your rights and expectations. We use consent for optional profile-photo choices and optional marketing subscriptions. You can withdraw those choices without losing ordinary website access. We also retain information where necessary to meet legal obligations.

Service providers and maps

Wix hosts this website, its databases, member sessions, media, shop and event services. Patreon supplies sign-in and membership information. Their services may process information outside the UK under their applicable data-protection arrangements. Their own privacy notices explain their processing and international-transfer safeguards.

Maps, route calculation and related tools use external services, including CARTO/OpenStreetMap, MapTiler, Esri satellite maps, OpenRouteService, Nominatim place search, Open-Meteo weather and Historic England or Planning Data services. Libraries, fonts and assets may be delivered by Wix, Google Fonts, Cloudflare cdnjs and unpkg. When a map or external resource loads, its provider receives network information such as your IP address and the resource or map area requested. Route and search services receive the locations or search terms necessary to answer your request. External links, including Open in Maps, take you to the named provider's service.

Location access is requested only when you choose a location-based control. You can stop it using the control or your browser's permission settings. We do not intentionally save a continuous GPS movement history in your member account. A route you choose to save may contain location coordinates.

Cookies and browser storage

Wix uses cookies and similar technologies for sessions, security and site operation. NEHL tools also use browser session storage for requested functions such as route restoration, units and sign-in continuity. Before optional analytics or marketing technologies are enabled, we will request consent where required. Any consent choice must be available to change. Your browser also lets you clear or block cookies and site storage. Blocking necessary storage may prevent sign-in or route restoration from working.

How long we keep information

Saved content remains while your account is active or dormant unless you remove it or request deletion. The owner reviews dormant-account retention annually and considers whether continued retention remains necessary for account recovery and returning members. Published comments remain associated with their entries until deleted or moderated. Moderation material is retained only while needed to handle the issue or a related dispute.

Abandoned comment uploads become eligible for cleanup after 24 hours and are removed by the scheduled cleanup process. Account deletion is processed through the member-data cleanup workflow, including saved content, comment media and Patreon credentials. Native Wix Blog contributions and other Wix application records are checked separately through the privacy-request process; deleting a Wix member profile alone is not confirmation that all application data has been erased. Order, payment or event records may need separate retention for fulfilment, accounting, refunds or legal obligations; deleting a member profile does not necessarily erase those records immediately.

Your choices and rights

Use Account to manage your display name and photograph choices and to export the member information available there, including your own linked article comments. The export also offers temporary private download links for your retained comment photographs. These links expire after 15 minutes; you can generate a fresh export when needed. For a complete access request, corrections, deletion, restriction, portability or an objection to processing, please use Contact. We may need to verify your identity before acting. The rights available depend on the processing and applicable law. You can withdraw consent where we rely on it and complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

We update this notice when the service changes and will draw attention to material changes. This version accompanies the members-area update and will take effect when that update launches.

Exploration visits and photographs

Exploration stores your self-reported visit date, photograph, optional comment and progress by site type and named location privately in your account. No location tracking or proof of attendance is required. To collect a visit, you must confirm your right to share the photograph and grant NEHL non-exclusive permission to use it on the website, social channels and promotional materials with your chosen credit. We retain the permission wording, version and date. A private visit does not make that reuse permission private: the photograph may subsequently be used publicly. Public posting of your visit into an entry discussion is a separate, optional choice. Shared visits may also appear in the entry’s public check-in row with your chosen display name and, only if enabled, your public profile photograph. Unshared visits and your personal Exploration map remain private. Authorised Wix administrators can manage Exploration settings and reversibly hide or restore visits for moderation; these actions are logged.

Your highest Exploration badge appears beside archive comments unless you turn it off in Exploration. Badges remain earned as archive totals grow. Visits and awards are retained when membership is dormant, subject to the annual retention review. Removing a visit removes its photograph and linked visit comment; earned awards remain unless removed through moderation or account erasure. Contact us to withdraw permission for future photograph reuse or request deletion, including review of copies already used in NEHL publications. Visit records, permission records, awards and retained photographs are included in your NEHL data export and account-erasure process.