Privacy

Walthamstow.London is an independent guide to E17. This page explains what we collect about you, why, and who else handles it. Questions, or a request about your data: hello@walthamstow.london.

Last updated 7 November 2026.

The newsletter

• What we keep: your email address; when you signed up, confirmed and unsubscribed; and which issues were sent to you, so nobody gets the same email twice.
• Why: only to send the newsletter you asked for. Nothing is sent until you click the link in the confirmation email, and we never sell or share your address.
• Who handles it: the list is stored by Cloudflare, and emails are sent through Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) in London. Both handle it only on our behalf.
• Leaving: every email has an unsubscribe link, and one click is enough. Your address is deleted there and then; all we keep is an anonymous note that someone unsubscribed, and when. To have your address deleted before then, email us.
• Stopping misuse: to stop the sign-up form being used to email strangers, we count sign-ups per hour against a scrambled (hashed) form of the visitor’s IP address, never the address itself. The form also uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks in the browser that you’re a person, usually without asking you anything. It sets no cookies, and Cloudflare uses what it sees only for that check.

Cookies and visitor statistics

If you accept, we use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages people read. It sets cookies and sends Google the pages you view, your browser and device, and your approximate location. Google’s privacy policy explains what Google does with it. If you reject, or have not chosen, nothing is loaded from Google and no analytics cookies are set.

Your choice is remembered in this browser. Change your cookie choice

Tests of the site’s design

Now and then we show visitors one of two versions of part of a page, to see which works better. So that you keep seeing the same version, your browser keeps a random id in a cookie called xp_id for a year, with xp_v (30 minutes) and xp_s (a year), which note the versions you’ve seen. They hold nothing about you, and we don’t use your IP address for this. We count which version you saw and whether you clicked or signed up, in our own statistics, not Google’s.

You can opt out. You’ll then always see the usual version, and nothing is counted. Your choice is kept in a cookie called xp_optout for a year, on this browser.

“Did you find what you came for?”

At the end of a page we ask whether it had what you were looking for. If you answer, we record the page, the date and time, your answer and anything you type in the box, as you typed it. With it go the kind of site you came from (a search engine, social media, this site, another site or none, never its address), whether it’s your first visit, and your rough country and type of device (phone, tablet or computer). There are no accounts here, so you’re never signed in. We don’t record your name, email or IP address. To tell a person from a bot, the design-test cookie above is read, and only a code that changes every day is passed on with your answer; it isn’t kept.

Only we read the answers, to improve the site’s pages. They’re never shown on the site or to anyone else, and each is deleted 12 months after it’s given. If you’ve opted out of tests, the question still shows, but your answer isn’t recorded.

Error and speed reports

To find and fix problems, a small script reports when a page breaks or loads slowly. As you leave a page it sends:

• which page it was, without anything after a “?” in the address;
• your browser (Chrome, Safari and so on) and whether you’re on a phone;
• any error messages, and where in our code they happened;
• how long the page took to load.

It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. Your IP address is never kept: it is replaced as soon as it arrives by a scrambled code that can’t be turned back into it. Reports are deleted after 32 days.

Maps

Maps on place pages load straight from OpenStreetMap’s servers, which see your IP address in the process. See the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy.

Hosting

The site is hosted by Cloudflare, and pictures come from Contentful or, for some places, the business’s own website. Each sees your IP address when your browser loads from it.

Your rights

You can ask to see the data we hold about you, correct it or delete it — email hello@walthamstow.london. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.