Privacy

The short version

Your email address, and what your family does on the site. We never ask for anything about your child, not even a name. No child accounts, ever.No adverts, and nothing is sold or shared for anyone else’s use.

Who we are

Eric & Wally is run by Alex Field, trading as Eric & Wally, 29 High Street, Swanley, Kent BR8 8AE, England. We decide what happens to the information described here, which makes us its “controller” under UK data protection law. Write to us at hello@ericandwally.com about anything on this page.

What we store

• Your email address, and when you agreed to hear from us.
• If you asked us to tell you when we open: your first name and email, used only for that news. You can stop it from any email we send.
• Whether you are a member, and which plan. Card details never touch our servers.
• If you used an offer code: which code, when, and when your free months end. That is how one household has one offer.
• Which story you are on, so it opens where you left off.
• When a story is opened and finished. This is how we know the books work.
• Your reading settings, so they follow you between devices.
• Any ideas you send for what Eric should draw next. Only Eric (that is, us) reads them, to choose what to draw; nobody else sees them and we never reply to them.
• The colours in Eric’s Sketchbook pictures, and which ones you pinned up, so your colouring is on every device you sign in on. Only which crayon went in which shape: nothing your child draws, writes or uploads.
• What is planted on your Plot 28, in which bed, and when it was sown and picked, so the plot grows and keeps its shelf. Nothing about who looked at it or how often.
• Your plot’s name, if you give it one. It goes on the sign at Plot 28 and nowhere else: never shown to anyone else, never emailed, and you can take it down on its own without closing your account. It’s a name for the plot, so there’s no need to use your child’s.

Why we use it

• To give you what you asked for (your account, membership, the books opening where you left off, your plot and your colouring): we need it to run the service you signed up to.
• Because you said yes (the emails you tick, counting your visits, your plot in Eric’s letters, the books-finished note): you can take back any of these at any time, and nothing else changes.
• To keep the site and your account safe (noting new sign-ins, the check that you’re not a robot, error reports, stopping too many tries, backups): our legitimate interest in a service that works and can’t be broken into, which we’ve weighed against your privacy and kept to the least we need.
• Because the law says so: records of payments, which Stripe keeps for us for as long as tax law requires.

Who else sees it

Companies that do a job for us, only for that job, under contract:

• Supabase: where your account and everything above is stored (in London).
• Netlify: runs the website, so it sees each request as it passes.
• Cloudflare: points ericandwally.com at the site, and runs the “not a robot” check when you sign in.
• Brevo: sends our emails. It holds your email address (and first name, if you gave it for opening news) and the few facts under “Emails” below.
• Stripe: takes payments. Your card details go to Stripe, never to us.
• Sanity: holds the stories, pictures and letters. Nothing about you.
• Shopify, once the shop opens: your order, address and payment when you buy something.
• Prodigi, who print and post what you buy from the shop: your name and delivery address, for that order only.
• PostHog: how the site is used (see “Counting visits” below). Never your email, never your plot’s name. It never looks up where your internet connection is.
• Google (Google Analytics, run for us by Google Ireland Limited), only if you say yes when we ask: which of our public pages your browser opened, and how you found us. Never your email address, your name, or anything about your child. Its advertising features are switched off, and we have not let Google use what it counts for anything of its own.
• Sentry: when something on the site breaks, what broke and on which page. Nothing about who you are.

Emails

You choose what you get, from five: Letters from Eric, News from Elmsham, the Village Shop, Gift reminders, and Help shape Elmsham. Each is its own tick, and every email has a link to change them. Emails about your account, membership and orders always come.

One exception, and you are told before you agree to it: if you join with an offer code, Help shape Elmsham is switched on as part of the offer, so we can ask what you think. You can switch it off whenever you like, and you keep your free months if you do.

So that what we send is useful rather than noisy, Brevo keeps a few facts about you as a grown-up: whether you're a member and when it renews, what you've bought from the shop (through Shopify), how you first found us, and which emails you open. If you ticked “prints of the books we’ve finished”, it also keeps how many books your family has finished and the latest one. Nothing else about your child’s reading or play is ever used for emails, and we never email anyone because of something a child did on the site.

If you have an account you can also ask for your plot in Eric’s letters, with its own tick. Each letter then has a few lines on what grew on your Plot 28 the month before: crop names and dates, nothing more. We work them out in the two hours before a letter goes and put them on your contact with Brevo for that letter, then clear them once it has gone.

Counting visits

The first time you visit, we ask “May we count your visit?”. Your browser’s “don’t track me” setting counts as a no until you say otherwise.

• If you say no, or don’t answer: each page you open is counted once, on our own server, with nothing that could tell your visits apart. No cookie, no number, nothing about who you are.
• If you say yes: a random number in your browser joins your visits into one journey: how you found us, which pages you looked at, which stories you read, and where a story was put down (which page, and how long each page stayed open). If you have an account, that journey is joined to your account’s own random number, never your email. If you signed up for letters or opening news, the same random number is noted on your contact with Brevo, so we can see which emails bring families back.
• The same yes, and Google: on our public pages (the home page, the stories shelf, joining, Letters, the about page, the village, the Village Shop and pages like this one) Google Analytics counts the visit too, so we can see how families find us through Google. It keeps its own random number in two cookies. It is told the page’s address, with anything personal taken out first, and the kind of browser you use. It works out roughly where you are from your internet address, and does not keep the address. It is told when someone signs up for Letters, makes an account, starts to join, takes a basket to the till or opens a book: that it happened, which book or what was in the basket, and never who did it. Never inside a book, the Sketchbook, Plot 28, Eric’s Satchel or your account. A no removes Google’s cookies.
• What we never do: record your child, use anything for advertising, or follow you to other sites. On the pages children use (the books, the sketchbook, Plot 28) we count only what the page itself reports: never clicks or screen recordings.
• When you answer, we keep a note of the answer, the date and your country as proof you were asked. It holds nothing that identifies you.

You can change your answer at any time: “Change your choices” at the bottom of every page, or on your account page. Every cookie is listed here.

Where it is

Your account is stored in London. Some of the companies above are based, or keep copies, outside the UK (in the EU or the United States). Where they do, they are bound by the protections UK law asks for: the UK’s approved contract terms, or the UK–US data bridge.

How long we keep it

Everything about your family is kept for as long as you have an account, and deleted when you delete it. We keep an encrypted copy of the site’s data each night in case something goes wrong; each copy is deleted after 14 days, so anything you delete is gone from those within two weeks. If you said yes to counting but have no account, your visits are kept for as long as PostHog’s plan keeps them. Google Analytics keeps what it counts for 14 months. The note that you were asked is kept for six years. Stripe keeps payment records for as long as tax law requires.

Cookies

The ones that make the site work, and a few more only if you say yes to counting. No advertising cookies, no tracking across other sites. See every one.

Getting rid of it

There is a delete button on your account page. It removes your account, your reading, your colouring, your plot, your counted visits, and your contact with Brevo, everywhere we keep them, and it clears what is stored on this device. It cannot be undone.

Children

The site is made for grown-ups and children to use together. Accounts are for grown-ups. We never ask for anything about a child, we don’t build a picture of what a child does, and nothing on the pages children use nudges them to come back. We follow the ICO’s Children’s Code.

Your rights

You can ask to see what we hold about you (your account page has “Download everything we hold”), to have it corrected or deleted, to stop us using it, or to take back any yes you gave. Write to hello@ericandwally.com and we will answer within a month. If you’re not happy with how we’ve handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.