Privacy policy

This site does not track you

No cookies. No analytics. No advertising pixels. Nothing on these pages is loaded from another company's server, so nobody is watching you read this, including me.

One small exception, and it is worth stating plainly. The first time you arrive, the site makes a note in your own browser that you have seen the opening animation, so it does not play again while you are here. It is forgotten when you close your browser, it never leaves your device, and nobody, including me, can read it.

That aside, there is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.

Who I am

Colin Weldon, GIA Graduate Gemologist, Dublin, Ireland. I am the data controller for the information described here. Email hello@colinweldon.com.

What I hold, and why

When you use the enquiry form. Your name, email, phone if you give it, what you tell me about your jewellery, and any photographs you attach. The form is handled by Netlify, who host this site. Submissions sit in my account there and are emailed to me.

When you email me. Your name, your email address and whatever you write to me. I keep it so I can answer you and keep a record of what was agreed.

When you book an appointment. Name, email, phone number and what we agree about the work. Appointments are arranged by email and go into my calendar.

When you pay. I invoice you by email. I do not take card payments through this website and I do not hold your card details. I hold the invoice and the record of it being paid, as Revenue requires.

When I do the work. Descriptions, measurements, test results and photographs of your jewellery, and the report itself. If the work is for probate, that will include the name of the deceased and the date of death.

The legal basis for most of this is performing the contract between us. Keeping records afterwards is my legitimate interest in being able to stand over work I have done, and in some cases a legal obligation, since Revenue requires business records to be kept.

Who else sees it

Only the services I use to run the business, and only what they need:

Google Workspace for email and my calendar. Netlify for hosting this website and for the enquiry form.

Some of these are based outside the European Economic Area, and they transfer data under the safeguards required by GDPR.

Beyond that, I share your information with your insurer, your solicitor or anyone else only when you ask me to, or where the law requires it. I do not sell anything to anybody, ever, and I do not add you to a mailing list.

How long I keep it

Valuation records and the photographs that go with them are kept for seven years. Valuations get questioned years later, by insurers, by executors and occasionally by Revenue, and I need to be able to produce what I actually saw and wrote.

Ordinary email correspondence that leads nowhere is deleted once it is clearly finished with. Financial records are kept for six years, as Revenue requires.

Your rights

You can ask me for a copy of what I hold about you, ask me to correct it, ask me to delete it, or object to how I am using it. Ask by email and I will come back to you within one month.

Deletion has limits. Where I have to keep a record for tax, or to defend a valuation I have signed, I will tell you what I am keeping and why.

If you are unhappy with how I handle your information you can complain to the Data Protection Commission, dataprotection.ie.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.