Legal
Privacy Policy
What information Mad4Pets collects, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have.
At a glance
Your personal information is never sold or rented to anyone.
We collect personal details only when you contact us or subscribe.
Saved articles and favourite names live in your own browser.
No advertising or analytics tracking cookies at this time.
Secure connections, limited access and clear deletion timelines.
Ask to see, correct or delete your information at any time.
This Privacy Policy explains what information Mad4Pets (“we”, “us”, “our”) collects when you visit our website, how we use it, who we share it with and the choices and rights you have. We have written it in plain language and kept it specific to what this site actually does.
01 Who we are
Mad4Pets is an independent online pet-care magazine that publishes guides, articles and interactive tools for pet owners. For the purposes of data protection law, the operator of Mad4Pets is the controller of the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us at any time through our contact page.
02 Information we collect
Information you give us
| When | What we collect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You use our contact form | Your name, email address, reason for contacting us, subject, message, optional pet type and optional article link | To read, respond to and keep a record of your message |
| You sign up to our newsletter | Your email address and any pet types you choose to share | To send you the newsletter and relevant content |
| You send us a pet story, topic idea or guest post pitch | The information and any files you choose to include | To consider your submission and reply to you |
Information collected automatically
- Server and security logs: like almost every website, our hosting provider automatically records technical information such as IP address, browser type, pages requested and the date and time of each request. This is used to deliver the site, keep it secure and diagnose problems.
- Spam protection: when you use the contact form, we use a one-way scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address for up to one hour to limit repeated submissions. We do not store your raw IP address with your message.
- Anonymous content statistics: we count article views and “Was this article helpful?” votes. These counts are not linked to you or your device.
Information stored only on your device
Some features remember your preferences using your browser’s local storage. This information stays on your device and is never sent to us:
- Articles you save with the heart button
- Your favourite names from the pet name generator
- Your preferred article text size
- Your latest pet-match quiz result and whether you have voted on an article
You can clear this at any time by clearing your browser’s site data for Mad4Pets.
03 How we use your information
- To reply to your messages and handle your requests
- To send newsletters you have signed up for
- To review corrections, topic suggestions and submissions
- To operate, secure and improve the website and its features
- To prevent spam, abuse and fraud
- To comply with legal obligations
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
04 Legal bases for processing
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or another region with similar laws, we rely on the following legal bases:
- Consent: when you tick the consent box on our contact form or subscribe to our newsletter. You can withdraw consent at any time.
- Legitimate interests: to run, secure and improve our website and to prevent spam, where these interests are not overridden by your rights.
- Legal obligation: where we must keep or disclose information to comply with the law.
05 Cookies and similar technologies
We keep cookies to a minimum. Visitors to the public site are not tracked with advertising or analytics cookies at this time. WordPress may set essential cookies if you log in to the site, and our caching system may use technical cookies to serve pages quickly. The interactive features described above use local storage rather than cookies.
If we introduce analytics, advertising or affiliate services in the future, we will update this policy before doing so and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent through a cookie banner.
06 Third-party services
We use a small number of trusted services to run Mad4Pets:
- Web hosting: our website and its database are hosted by Hostinger, which processes technical data needed to deliver the site.
- Email: messages sent through our contact form are delivered to our team’s email inbox, which is provided by an email service provider.
- Profile images: author images may be loaded from Gravatar, a service operated by Automattic, which may receive your IP address when the image loads.
- Emoji images: WordPress may load emoji images from the WordPress.org content delivery network in some browsers.
- Photography: many photos are sourced from Pexels but are stored on our own server, so viewing them does not send your data to Pexels.
- AI writing tools: some articles are drafted with the help of AI services. We do not send your personal information to these services.
Our fonts are hosted on our own server, so no data is sent to font providers. If you click a share button or a link to another website, that website’s own privacy policy applies.
07 How long we keep information
- Contact messages: kept for up to 24 months after our last correspondence, then deleted, unless we need them longer to resolve an issue or meet a legal requirement.
- Newsletter subscriptions: kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete your details.
- Spam-protection data: the hashed IP record is deleted automatically after one hour.
- Server logs: kept by our hosting provider for a limited period in line with its own retention practices.
08 How we protect your information
We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), access controls on our website administration area, spam protection and regular software updates. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect your information and will act promptly if we become aware of a problem.
09 International transfers
Our service providers may store or process information in countries other than your own. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses offered by our providers, to protect information transferred internationally.
10 Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you
- Ask us to correct inaccurate information
- Ask us to delete your information
- Object to or ask us to restrict certain processing
- Receive a copy of your information in a portable format
- Withdraw consent at any time, without affecting earlier processing
- Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell or share it)
- Complain to your local data protection authority
To make a request, use our contact page. We may need to verify your identity before acting, and we aim to respond within 30 days. We will not treat you differently for exercising your rights.
11 Children’s privacy
Mad4Pets is written for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13 (or under 16 where local law requires a higher age). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.
12 Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy as our website, services or the law change. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page and, for significant changes, highlight them on the site. Please check this page from time to time.
13 Contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your information, please get in touch through our contact page. We are happy to help.
Questions about this page?
We are happy to explain anything here in plain language.