Introduction
Welcome to Grow Your Office. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you visit our website, how we use that information, and the choices you have about it. We have written it in plain English, because privacy should be easy to understand, not hidden behind legal language. Please read it carefully. By using growyouroffice.com, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree with any part of this policy, please do not use this website.
Grow Your Office is a small, independent website about home offices. We publish practical guides on small-space setups, desk comfort, storage, lighting, plants and remote-work routines. We do not sell products directly, and we do not run a membership area. Most visitors simply read our guides, and that is how we like it. This policy covers the website at growyouroffice.com, including every page, post and guide published on it.
Who we are
Grow Your Office is run by the Grow Your Office Team. We are a small team of writers who work from home offices ourselves, in small rooms, spare corners and shared spaces, and we write about what we have actually tried. Our website address is https://growyouroffice.com. You can contact us at any time by email at hello@growyouroffice.com, and that address is the main way to reach us about privacy or anything else on this site.
For the purposes of this policy, we are the ones who decide how and why personal information collected through this website is used. In some privacy laws that role is called the data controller. We do not have a separate data protection officer, because we are a small team, but the Grow Your Office Team handles privacy questions directly, and every message sent to hello@growyouroffice.com is read by a member of the team.
What information we collect
We collect only the information we need to run this website, answer readers, understand how our guides are used, and keep the site safe. We do not collect information just because we can, and we do not buy personal information from other companies. The main types of information we collect are described in the sections below: information you give us when you leave a comment or send us an email, information collected automatically through cookies, analytics and log files, and information collected by embedded content and advertising partners when you view their content on our pages.
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 with spam detection. The name, email address and website address you enter in a comment form are collected for the purpose of publishing and moderating your comment. Your comment itself, together with the name you provide, may be visible to everyone who reads that page, so please do not include private information in a comment that you would not want other readers to see.
An anonymised 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 at https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. If you leave a comment, you can ask us to remove it, and we will do so unless we have a good reason to keep it, for example if we need it to resolve a dispute or to comply with the law.
Contact by email
When you send us an email to hello@growyouroffice.com, we collect your email address, your name if you include it, and the contents of your message. We use this information only to read your message, reply to you, and, where your message raises a useful point, to improve our guides. We do not add your email address to a mailing list unless you have clearly asked us to, and we do not share your email address with other companies for marketing. If you write to us about a correction, a question about a home office setup, or feedback on a guide, we keep your message only for as long as we need it to deal with your enquiry and to keep a record of what was said.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device when you visit a website. They help websites remember things, such as your preferences, and they help us understand how visitors use the site. Grow Your Office uses cookies in a limited way. 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 last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal information and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we 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, the login cookies will be removed. Most of our readers never see the login page, so most of these cookies do not apply to them at all.
Analytics
We use analytics tools to understand how readers use Grow Your Office, so that we can improve our guides and write more of the topics people actually need. Analytics tools collect information such as the pages you visit, the order in which you visit them, how long you spend on each page, the links you click, the type of device and browser you use, and the general location from which you visit, such as your country or city. This information is collected in aggregated form, which means we look at patterns across many visitors rather than tracking individual readers one by one. We do not use analytics to identify individual visitors, and we do not combine analytics data with information that identifies you, such as your name or email address.
Log files
Like most websites, our web hosting provider keeps server log files. When you visit Grow Your Office, the server automatically records information such as your IP address, the date and time of your visit, the pages you requested, and the browser and operating system you used. Log files are a normal part of running a website. We use them to keep the site secure, to find and fix technical problems, and to protect the site from spam, attacks and misuse. Log files are not used to identify individual readers, and they are not shared with advertisers.
How we use your information
We use the information we collect for a small number of clear purposes. We use comments to publish discussion on our guides and to moderate that discussion. We use email messages to answer your questions, correct our mistakes, and improve our content. We use cookies to make the site work properly and to save you from re-entering information. We use analytics and log files to understand how the site is used, to improve our guides, to keep the site secure, and to fix technical problems. We use advertising cookies, described below, to allow advertising partners to show ads on the site, which helps pay for the cost of running Grow Your Office. We do not use your information to send you marketing emails, we do not sell your information, and we do not use it for any purpose that is not described in this policy.
Advertising and cookies disclosure
Grow Your Office may display advertising on its pages. Advertising helps us keep our guides free to read, and we want to be open about how it works. Third-party ad partners, including Google AdSense, may use cookies to serve ads based on your visits to this site and other sites on the internet. This means that the ads you see may be chosen because of pages you have visited before, on Grow Your Office or elsewhere. Google uses a cookie called the DoubleClick cookie, which enables Google and its partners to serve ads to visitors based on their visits to this site and other sites on the internet. If you would like to know more about how Google uses information from sites that use its services, you can read Google’s Privacy and Terms at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
You can opt out of personalised advertising. You can visit Google’s Ad Settings at https://adssettings.google.com to change your advertising preferences, including opting out of personalised ads from Google. You can also opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for personalised advertising by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/choices. If you opt out, you will still see ads, but they will not be based on your browsing history in the same way. You can also control cookies in general through your browser settings, where you can block cookies and delete cookies that have already been placed. Please note that if you block all cookies, some parts of websites, including ours, may not work as intended.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles and pages on this site may include embedded content, such as videos, images and articles from other websites. Embedded content from other websites behaves in exactly the same way as if you had visited the other website directly. These other websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content. We do not control the privacy practices of other websites, and this Privacy Policy does not cover them. We recommend that you read the privacy policy of any other website you visit.
How long we keep your information
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose for which it was collected. If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely, so that we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue, and so that the discussion on that page remains complete for other readers. If you send us an email, we keep your message for as long as we need it to answer you and to keep a record of the conversation, and then we delete it when it is no longer needed. Analytics and log file data are kept for a limited period and then deleted or anonymised.
Your rights over your information
You have rights over the personal information we hold about you, and we take those rights seriously. If you have an account on this site, or if you 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 does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal or security purposes. You can also ask us to correct information that is wrong, or to delete a comment you have left.
If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Union, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office in the United Kingdom, if you believe we have not handled your information properly. We hope you will contact us first, so that we can try to put things right. To exercise any of these rights, please email hello@growyouroffice.com and tell us clearly what you would like us to do. We will respond within a reasonable time, and we may ask you to confirm your identity before we act, so that we do not give your information to the wrong person.
Children’s information
Grow Your Office is written for adults who are setting up or improving a home office. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13, and our website is not directed at children. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at hello@growyouroffice.com, and we will delete that information promptly. Children should not leave comments or send us emails without the permission of a parent or guardian, and they should never include personal information such as their full name, address, school or phone number in a comment or a message.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, for example if we start using a new service, if the law changes, or if we want to explain something more clearly. When we make a change, we will update the policy on this page, and the new version will apply from the date it is published here. We encourage you to check this page occasionally, so that you always know how we handle your information.
Contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, about the information we hold about you, or about how we use it, please contact us by email at hello@growyouroffice.com. Please include enough information for us to understand your question, such as the page you are writing about and the name or email address you used if you left a comment or sent us a message before. We read every message and we will do our best to reply promptly. Thank you for reading this policy, and thank you for visiting Grow Your Office.