What happens to your information
Privacy
What this means
Nothing is collected unless you type it and press send.
Postcodes are used to find your area and never stored. The calculators work entirely inside your browser.
If you join the mailing list I keep your email address, and nothing else. You can have it deleted at any time by asking.
The short version
What is collected, and when
Joining the mailing list
Your email address, and nothing else. There is no name field. It is stored in Mailchimp and used to send occasional updates about this site.
Using the contact form
Your email address so a reply can reach you, your message, and the subject you picked. There is also a name box, which is optional — leave it blank and nothing is collected from it.
Entering a postcode
It is sent to a public lookup service to work out your council area, MP and MSP, and it is used for that and nothing else. It is not stored by this site and it is not written to your emails.
Using the calculators
Nothing at all. The take-home pay and council tax sums run entirely in your browser. No wage, band or figure you enter ever leaves your device.
Be aware
How visits are measured
This site uses Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity to understand which pages people find useful and where they get stuck. These set cookies and load when the page does. If you would rather they did not run, the controls below all work.
What they record
- The pages you visit, roughly where in the world you are, and which site or search sent you.
- Your device, browser and screen size.
- Clarity also records how the page is used — scrolling, clicks and mouse movement — so layout problems can be spotted. Text you type is masked and is not part of that recording.
How to turn it off
- Switch on Do Not Track or tracking protection in your browser. Firefox, Brave and Safari block these tools by default.
- Install Google's official Analytics opt-out add-on, which stops it on every site, not just this one.
- Use any content blocker. Nothing on this site breaks when these are blocked — every page, the letter builder and the postcode lookup all work exactly the same.
This is measurement, not identification. There is no attempt to work out who you are, nothing is combined with the mailing list, and none of it is sold or shared. If you would like your data removed, email hello@strathmarkconsulting.com.
Just as important
What is never collected
- Nothing you type is ever sent to the analytics tools. The letter box, your name and your postcode are masked before anything is recorded.
- No advertising, no ad networks and nothing sold or shared with anyone.
- No profiling, no automated decisions and no attempt to work out who you are.
- No account, no password and no sign-up needed to use anything here.
- Your postcode is never stored, never logged against you and never added to a list.
Who else is involved
The services this site uses
A handful of other companies are involved in making the site work. None of them are given anything about you beyond what is needed for the job described.
| Service | What it does | What it sees |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Hosts the site | Standard server logs, which include IP addresses, for security and to keep the site running |
| Web3Forms | Delivers the contact form and sign-ups to a real inbox | Only what you typed into the form |
| Mailchimp | Stores the mailing list | Your email address |
| postcodes.io | Turns a postcode into a council area | The postcode you entered |
| UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament | Provide the public record of who your MP and MSP are | Nothing about you — the site asks them about an area, not a person |
| YouTube | Plays the video, but only after you press play | Nothing until you click. Nothing loads from YouTube on a normal page view |
Your rights
Asking for your information back, or gone
Under UK data protection law you can ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, and ask for it to be deleted. Because the only thing kept is an email address, that is usually a one-line request and it is done the same day.
Every mailing list email has an unsubscribe link, which removes you immediately. You do not have to give a reason and nothing is kept afterwards.
To ask for anything, use the contact formand pick “Something else”, or write to the address on that page.
If you are not happy with how a request is handled you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Scotland Counted is a personal, independent project by Graeme at Strathmark Consulting. It has no funding, no advertising and nothing to sell, which is the main reason there is so little to say on this page. If anything here does not match what the site actually does, tell me and it will be corrected.