Privacy & cookies

The Ozone is designed to collect as little as possible. We follow the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Ireland’s Data Protection Act 2018 and, for cookies, the ePrivacy Regulations (S.I. No. 336 of 2011).

The Ozone is published by The Ozone, which is the data controller for personal data collected through this site. You can reach us through ourcontact form. See who publishes The Ozone.

Reading the site

You can read The Ozone without an account. We don't use analytics or visitor-tracking tools, so we don't build a picture of what you read. As with any website, our hosting provider handles the technical details of each visit, such as your IP address, to deliver pages and protect the site from attacks.

Live train times and Met Éireann weather are fetched by our own servers, so Iarnród Éireann and Met Éireann do not see your visit. We never ask for your location.

Comments

When you comment we store your chosen display name, your comment, the page it was posted on and the time. To prevent spam we store a one-way hash of your IP address, which cannot be turned back into your address. We don’t ask for your email address. Comments are stored in Western Europe by our hosting provider, Cloudflare.

To check comments for spam, abuse and legal problems, their text is passed to a content-screening service provider, which processes it on our behalf to return a decision, when you post and in a daily review. A comment that is removed is kept with the reason it was removed, so we can answer questions about it. See ourcommunity guidelines.

If you report a comment, we store a one-way hash of your IP address with the report so that the same connection can’t report it twice.

Contact form

When you use our contact form we store what you send us: your name, email address, phone number if you give one, the story it’s about, the details of an advertising enquiry (your business, what you’d like to promote, dates and budget) and your message, with a one-way hash of your IP address to prevent spam. Messages are stored by our hosting provider, Cloudflare, and our team reads and answers them in a private inbox on this website.

The copy stored on our website, including any advertising details, is deleted automatically 90 days after we receive it, whether or not we have dealt with it. To let our team know a message has arrived, our code-hosting service provider sends them a private notification, with an email, that gives only the message’s topic and reference number.

Reader polls

Viewing poll results does not set a cookie. When you choose to vote, we set a random voting identifier in a cookie called __Host-oz-polls, which lasts up to 90 days. It is strictly necessary for the vote you ask to cast: it records that this browser has voted in a poll and prevents a second vote, so the law doesn’t require a separate consent for it. Clearing cookies or using another browser can allow another vote.

We store your chosen answer with a one-way identifier that is different for each poll. These records are kept alongside the poll results; they contain no name, email address or raw IP address. Only combined counts are published. Votes are stored by Cloudflare in the same database as the site’s comments.

To limit rapid repeat voting, we also count attempts using a hashed connection identifier for a ten-minute period. Expired attempt counters are removed when another voting request is processed. Your raw address is not saved in the voting database. If you have a question about voting data, contact us.

Reader photographs

Photo submissions include a reduced JPEG copy, title, location, caption, chosen public credit, private email address and confirmation of permission. Image metadata is removed. A salted connection hash limits uploads; the raw address is not stored in the photo database. Submissions are stored by Cloudflare and remain private until a moderator approves them.

Approved images, captions, locations and credits are published on this website. Your email and connection hash are never included in the public gallery. Pending submissions more than 90 days old are removed when the queue next processes an upload or review request. Rejected photos are deleted. Approved submissions and their permission record are retained while the photograph is published. To request removal, use our contact form and include your submission reference.

On your device

The mortgage and budget calculators work within your browser tab; the figures you enter are not sent to us or saved. If your browser supports it, copies of the pages and data you open are saved on your device so they work with no signal. We also remember, on your device only, whether you chose the dark or light theme, your progress in this week’s puzzles and whether you’ve dismissed the offer to install the app. None of this is sent to us, and clearing your browser’s site data removes it.

Cookies and advertising

Apart from the voting cookie above, which is set only when you vote, we set no cookies: no advertising or analytics cookies. If we switch on advertising, adverts and their cookies will load only after you have agreed to them, and we will update this notice first.

The Photography page and photo of the week load credited images from Wikimedia’s image servers. Those servers receive your IP address to deliver the photograph; we do not send them the address of the page you are reading. Photographer, source and licence links take you to the named external website when you choose to open them.

Why we can use your information

The law requires a reason, called a lawful basis, for each use of your personal data. Ours are:

• Comments: our legitimate interests in hosting readers’ discussion of our stories and keeping it free of spam, abuse and unlawful content.
• Contact form and email: our legitimate interests in reading and replying to your message and dealing with what you raise, such as a correction or a complaint. For an advertising enquiry, it is also to take the steps you ask for before agreeing an advert with you.
• Polls: our legitimate interests in running fair polls, with one vote per browser. The voting cookie is strictly necessary for the vote you choose to cast, so we don’t ask for separate cookie consent.
• Reader photographs: your consent, which you give when you submit a photograph and confirm permission. You can withdraw it at any time by asking us to remove the photograph; this doesn’t affect how it was used before you asked. Limiting uploads to prevent abuse is in our legitimate interests.
• Running the site safely: our legitimate interests in delivering pages reliably and protecting the site and its readers from attacks and spam, including the one-way hashes described above.
• Email briefings and notifications: we don’t send email newsletters or push notifications yet. If we start, we will send them only to people who sign up, on the basis of their consent, which can be withdrawn at any time with the unsubscribe link or in the device’s settings. We will update this notice before they start.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights and interests, and you can object at any time (see your rights). Giving us your personal data is never a legal or contractual requirement: you only need to give it if you want to comment, vote, send a photograph or write to us.

People in our stories

Our stories name people, mostly public figures and people named in official records. Section 43 of the Data Protection Act 2018 exempts journalism from parts of the GDPR, but only where applying them would be incompatible with journalism. If you are named in a story and think we have got something wrong, or that we shouldn’t name you,tell us and a person will look at it.

Who else handles your information

We never sell your personal data or share it with advertisers. These service providers handle it on our behalf:

• our hosting provider, Cloudflare, a company based in the United States, which runs the site from data centres around the world and stores our database (comments, contact messages, poll votes and reader photographs) in Western Europe;
• a content-screening service provider in the United States, which checks comments for spam, abuse and legal problems;
• a code-hosting service provider in the United States, which runs our daily comment review and tells our team when a contact message arrives, giving only its topic and reference number;
• an email provider, when you email us or we reply to you by email;

We will also share personal data where the law requires it, for example under a court order, and with our professional advisers if we need their help with a legal complaint.

Where personal data is handled outside the European Economic Area, as it is in the United States, it is protected by standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission. You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards.

How long we keep it

• Comments, including any we have hidden or removed, and the one-way hash of the address each was sent from: until you ask us to delete them. There is no fixed date for deleting them.
• Comment reports and the one-way hash stored with each: kept with the report, with no fixed date for deleting them.
• Contact messages on our website: 90 days from when we receive them (see Contact form).
• Poll votes: your answer and its one-way identifier are kept with the poll’s results, with no fixed date for deleting them. The voting cookie lasts up to 90 days, and attempt counters expire after ten minutes.
• Reader photographs: as described in Reader photographs. The connection hashes used to limit uploads are removed once they are two days old, when the next upload or review is processed.
• Emails you send us, and our replies: for as long as we need them to deal with what you’ve asked.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• get a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• have it corrected if it is wrong;
• have it deleted;
• restrict how we use it;
• object to our using it, including where we rely on legitimate interests;
• receive data you gave us in a format you can reuse, or have it sent to another organisation;
• withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it;
• not be subject to a decision made solely by computer, including profiling, that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you. Screening a comment is not a decision like that, and you can ask a person to look again at any comment we removed.

To use any of these rights, including to ask for a copy or deletion of a comment you posted or a message you sent us, use our contact form. We will reply within one month.

If you’re unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, you can complain to the Data Protection Commission, Ireland’s data protection authority, at dataprotection.ie (how to contact them). We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.