Privacy policy

Questions about your data: privacy@binweek.co.uk.

What you give us, and what we do with it

• Your postcode. We use it to work out which council collects your bins. That check goes to postcodes.io, a free postcode service, which receives the postcode and nothing that identifies you.
• Your address or house number. Some councils need your exact address. We pass it, with your postcode, to the council’s own bin day service to get your dates, and we use an address lookup service to list the addresses at your postcode. We do not keep the address text. The cache of results is keyed by a one-way hash. The one exception is a reminder you ask for: see “Reminders” below.
• Web addresses. Your postcode and address are sent in the body of a request, never in a web address. They do not appear in our logs, in page addresses, in analytics or in the information sent to advertisers.

Visitor statistics

BinWeek measures how the site is used without cookies and without sending anything to an analytics company. Our own web server records each request (the page asked for, the time, the response, the browser type and the referring page if there is one) and, for a few seconds, your network address, which is used only to work out your country and whether the request looks like a person or an automated program. The address is not stored in our statistics: it becomes a code that is thrown away at midnight (UK time), so nobody can be followed from one day to the next. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control we do not keep even that code: you are only added to an anonymous daily total, and your network address is not written to our log.

Reminder links. Calendar feed, confirmation, manage and unsubscribe links contain a secret. We remove that secret from our server logs and statistics, so only the route (for example “a reminder was confirmed”) is counted.

Counters. We keep totals such as how many lookups were made for a council, whether they worked, and how many people asked for reminders. These totals hold no postcode, address, email address or anything that identifies a person.

Reminders

Reminders are optional and need your consent, which you give by ticking a box on the sign-up form. For an email reminder we store your email address, the property reference the council needs to find your dates (a UPRN, or your postcode and house number or name), what you asked to receive, random link codes for confirming, managing and unsubscribing, and the wording you agreed to with the time you agreed. The property reference is encrypted in our database. A calendar link needs no email address: we store only the encrypted property reference and a random code. We ask your council for your dates about once a week, overnight, and several people at one address share one check.

Emails are sent only after you press Confirm in the first email, carry no advertising, and each has an unsubscribe link that works with one click. Unsubscribing, or deleting a calendar link on its manage page, erases your email address and your stored address at once. If an address bounces for good or reports us as spam, we stop writing to it and keep only a one-way hash of the address so that we do not start again.

Cookies and storage

BinWeek does not set cookies. If you tick “Remember this address on this device”, we save the council, your postcode and house number or name in your browser’s local storage under the key binweek.v1.property, so you do not have to type them again. It never leaves your device until you ask for your bin day, and “Forget this address” removes it.Advertising is the exception: see “Advertising” below for Google’s cookies, which are set only if you accept, and for the one value we store to remember your answer.

Advertising

BinWeek is paid for by advertising from Google AdSense. Ads can appear only on guide pages and council pages, and only after you accept them (see “Your choice” below). They are Google’s Auto ads: Google chooses where on those pages each ad goes. There are no ads on the home page and its postcode box, the A to Z of councils, the About, Contact, Privacy and Methodology pages, the reminder pages, the unsubscribe page or any error page. A council page also holds the bin day lookup, so an ad may appear near it, but your postcode, address and email address are never given to Google: they go only to our own server, in the body of a request, and an ad request carries only the address of the page you are on, which never contains them.

What loads before you choose. Google’s advertising script is part of the home page, the A to Z, the guides and the council pages, so when you open one of them your browser fetches it from Google, and Google receives your network address, your browser details and the address of the page. It is not on the reminder or unsubscribe pages. Until you choose, the script is told (Google Consent Mode) that it may not store or read anything on your device for advertising, may not use your data for ads and may not personalise them, and it is told to make no ad request at all.

Your choice. A banner at the bottom of those pages asks you to Accept or Reject advertising cookies. Nothing is pre-selected. If you reject, or do not answer, everything stays switched off as above and no ad is shown. If you accept, Google may set its cookies and use your device’s storage for ad selection, frequency capping and measurement, may personalise ads, and may combine what it learns with your Google account activity; ads then appear on guide and council pages. We keep your answer on your device only, in your browser’s local storage under the key binweek-ad-consent (the word accepted or rejected, nothing else), so we can respect it on your next visit. You can change or withdraw it at any time with “Privacy and cookie settings” at the bottom of the same pages, and clearing your browser’s site data removes it.

Google acts for itself in using that information. How it does so is described in How Google uses information from sites that use its services, and you can manage your Google ad settings at adssettings.google.com.

Who else sees what

• Hosting: Vultr, in the UK.
• Postcodes: postcodes.io (postcode only).
• Addresses: Ideal Postcodes, our address lookup provider (the postcode only, to list the addresses at it).
• Councils: your council’s bin day service (your address, to answer your request).
• Email delivery for reminders: SMTP2GO (your email address and the reminder text, only if you ask for email reminders; its servers may be outside the UK).
• Advertising: Google (AdSense). Its script loads on the home page, the A to Z, the guides and the council pages; ads appear only on guide and council pages, and only after you accept. See “Advertising” above.

How long we keep things

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete what we hold, and you can object to how we use it. Email privacy@binweek.co.uk from the address you signed up with and we will answer within one month. You can also stop email reminders or delete a calendar link yourself, at any time, from the link at the bottom of every email or on the manage page. If you are unhappy with our answer you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Notices

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right. Postcode and council boundary data from the Office for National Statistics under the Open Government Licence v3.0. More on where our data comes from is on the methodology page.