Privacy Policy

This page tells you how we use any personal data that we collect and process, and the ways in which we protect your privacy.

As a general philosophy we avoid collecting any personally identifiable data from visitors to our website wherever it is possible to do so.

Who we are

We are the Provincial Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons of Dyfed, the home of Mark Masonry in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire.

We operate under a charter granted by The Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons of England and Wales and its Districts and Lodges Overseas, based at Mark Masons’ Hall, 86 St James’s Street, London, SW1A 1PL.

Analytics

We use log files and an analytics service to gain insight into the overall usage of our site. These enable us to make changes to the layout of the site and to the information in it, based on the way that visitors move around it.

We use Clicky Web Analytics to gather anonymised aggregate data for this purpose.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here.

After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Photography policy

We understand that not every member wishes to appear in photos published on the public internet, and accordingly we endeavour to seek prior permission from everyone identifiable who appears in photography featured on this site.

In meetings and at events it is the responsibility of the photographer to make clear to anyone who appears in any pictures taken that they may be published on this website, and to invite those who are not comfortable with appearing here to absent themselves from any photographs.

However, should any member find that an image of them has appeared on this site against their wishes they should contact [email protected], who will see that the picture is removed or obscured as appropriate.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. As with any website, visitors can download images and extract any location data from them.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our 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 visit our login page, we 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, we 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.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after one day.

Our cookies do not contain any personal information. We only use cookies that are essential for the operation of our website (‘strictly necessary’ cookies) and we do not use cookies for storing preferences, tracking or marketing purposes (‘preferences’, ‘statistics’ and ‘marketing’ cookies)

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (eg videos, images, articles, etc). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

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

Who we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. Users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This may not include data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Exercising your rights under GDPR

EU citizens have the right to contact us at any time to request access to their personal data, to request that we rectify it, erase it or provide it to them, or to restrict or object to our processing of it. You may do that by contacting our data protection officer at [email protected]

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority at any time.

Changes to this privacy policy

If this privacy policy changes we will publish an updated version on this page. Regularly reviewing this page ensures you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we will share it with other parties.

Last updated 12 July 2022.