What happens to your information
Privacy
What this means
Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity collect basic visit data when a page opens. Numbers typed into calculators and the words you add to an email draft stay in your browser unless you choose to send them.
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.
Submitting an MSP review
Your review, rating, chosen display name, relationship to the experience and approximate interaction date are stored in a private Supabase moderation queue. Gmail emails the moderator a short alert and private moderation link; Resend may be tried as a fallback if Gmail cannot send. The full account and any optional contact address stay out of either alert. Email is optional and collected only if you ask to be considered for a follow-up about a fuller public-interest article. Nothing is published automatically, rejected submissions are deleted, and any email is never copied to the public review table.
Entering a postcode
It is sent to a public lookup service to work out your council area, MP and MSPs. It is then placed in the email draft so the office can confirm you live in the area. The site code does not save it or send the email.
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 graeme@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.
- The site code does not save your postcode or add it to a list. It is sent only when you ask for a postcode lookup.
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 contact forms and sign-ups to a real inbox | What you typed into the relevant contact or sign-up form |
| Google Gmail | Sends a new-review alert and private moderation link to the moderator | The MSP, rating, chosen display name and whether follow-up permission was given. The full account and optional reviewer email are not included |
| Resend | May send the same limited new-review alert if Gmail cannot send it | The MSP, rating, chosen display name and whether follow-up permission was given. The full account and optional reviewer email are not included |
| Supabase | Stores MSP reviews while they are moderated and publishes approved reviews | The review fields you submit. If you opt into a possible follow-up, your email remains in the private moderation queue and is excluded from the public review table |
| Mailchimp | Stores the mailing list | Your email address |
| postcodes.io | Turns a postcode into a council area | The postcode you entered |
| UK Parliament | Provides the public record of who your MP is | The constituency found from your postcode. Your postcode is not sent to UK Parliament |
| Scottish Parliament | Provides the public record of who your MSPs are | Usually only an area name. If postcodes.io cannot identify your Scottish Parliament areas, the postcode you entered is sent to the Scottish Parliament postcode finder |
| 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. Depending on what you used, that may be a mailing-list address, a contact message or an MSP review. If a review has no contact email, say which MSP it concerned and the display name or headline you used so it can be found without collecting anything new.
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 form and 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.