Privacy & Cookie Policy

Privacy at Off-Pitch Journal

This policy explains how Off-Pitch Journal (OPJ, “we”, “us” and “our”) handles personal information when you visit offpitchjournal.com, read our stories or contact us. It covers the website’s essential technology, optional analytics and the choices available to you. You can read the journal without creating an account or accepting optional analytics.

Information we process

When you visit, the services that host, deliver and protect the website receive technical information needed to handle your request. This can include your IP address, browser and device information, requested page or image, referring page, request time and security signals. This information helps deliver content, diagnose problems and detect misuse.

When you contact us, we receive the name, email address, subject and message you provide, together with any information in our subsequent correspondence. Contact-form messages pass through an email delivery provider to the journal’s inbox; they are not saved in the website’s content-management database. Providing a message is voluntary, but we need the required form fields to process and reply to it. Please avoid sending passwords, payment details or other sensitive information.

We use contact details to handle your enquiry, not to enrol you in a newsletter. The website does not offer reader accounts, paid subscriptions or a public comments system.

Why we use information

We use technical information for our legitimate interests in operating a reliable website, delivering our journalism, preventing abuse and investigating faults. We use correspondence for our legitimate interests in responding to readers, handling editorial enquiries and resolving concerns. Where an enquiry asks us to take steps towards an agreement with you, we may also process it for that purpose.

Optional analytics is based on your consent. We may also retain or disclose information where necessary to meet a legal obligation or establish, exercise or defend a legal claim. We do not use visitor information to make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

Cookies and browser storage

Cookies are small files stored by your browser. Similar browser storage can remember settings without using a cookie. Essential technology supports website security and your privacy choices; optional analytics helps us understand readership only when you allow it.

Consent preference storage — first-party browser storage provided by OPJ. It records your analytics choice, the version of the choice settings and the time you selected them. It contains no reader ID or email address. Your choice is valid for 180 days; an expired record may remain in the browser until it is replaced or you clear site data.

Analytics cookies — _ga and _ga_<measurement-id>. If analytics is enabled and you consent, these first-party cookies distinguish browsers and maintain visit information. Our website configures them to expire after 180 days without automatically extending that expiry on each visit. They are not set by our analytics integration before consent. Deleting a cookie does not delete information already received by the analytics provider.

Your choices

When optional analytics is available, you can select Accept analytics, Reject optional or Manage choices. Reading the journal does not depend on accepting it. Open Your Privacy Choices in the footer at any time to change or withdraw your decision. Withdrawing consent stops further analytics collection through our integration and removes accessible first-party analytics cookies. A page reload may be needed to stop an already loaded analytics script. Withdrawal does not affect processing that took place before it.

Your choice applies to the browser and website address where you made it. We ask again after 180 days or when relevant choice settings change. You can also delete or block cookies and site data through your browser. If browser storage is blocked, your choice may apply only to the current page; blocking essential technology may prevent the contact form from working.

If your browser exposes a Global Privacy Control signal, we keep optional analytics off. Our analytics integration does not enable advertising storage, advertising user data or personalised advertising.

Optional analytics

Where enabled, we use Google Analytics to understand which pages are read and how people reach the journal. It can process browser identifiers, page visits, referring pages, device and browser information, and approximate location. Its script loads only after you allow analytics. We do not load it for visitors who have not consented. Advertising features are disabled in our integration. Read how the analytics provider collects and processes data.

The page and referrer addresses supplied by our integration exclude query strings and fragments. We do not include contact-form names, email addresses or message contents in the analytics events our website sends. Your Privacy Choices shows when analytics is unavailable; choosing to allow it does not turn on a service that is disabled for the website.

Service providers and security

We use specialist hosting, security and email services to run the website and handle messages. An abuse-prevention check loads when you interact with an enabled contact form. It processes technical signals, including IP address and browser information, to distinguish people from automated traffic. This security check is separate from optional analytics. The security provider also uses these signals to improve bot detection.

A content-management service stores the journal’s articles and images. When your browser requests an image, the image-delivery service receives the technical request information needed to serve it. Fonts are hosted with the website. Ordinary links to social networks and other websites do not embed their tracking scripts here; following a link takes you to a service with its own privacy practices.

Within OPJ, information is used by the people who need it to handle the relevant enquiry or operate the website. Service providers receive information needed for their functions. Information may also be disclosed to professional advisers or authorities where necessary for a legal obligation or claim.

International processing

Our service providers operate internationally, so information may be processed outside your country, including outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. The protections available under local law can differ. Where applicable data protection law requires a transfer safeguard, the transfer must be covered by a recognised adequacy decision, approved contractual safeguards or another permitted basis.

You can ask about the providers involved in your information and the applicable transfer arrangements through Contact Us. You can also ask about processing a provider carries out for its own security purposes.

How long information is kept

Retention depends on the information and why it is needed. For correspondence, the relevant factors are whether the enquiry is resolved, whether follow-up is reasonably expected, and any applicable record-keeping or legal-claim requirements. For technical records, they include troubleshooting, detecting repeated abuse and investigating security incidents, together with the service provider’s applicable retention arrangements.

The 180-day periods described above apply to privacy choices and analytics cookies in your browser. They do not set a universal deletion period for messages, security logs or analytics information held by a provider. Where analytics is used, server-side retention is governed separately by the analytics account configuration and the provider’s terms. Contact us if you need information about a particular record or want to request its deletion.

Your rights and how to contact us

Depending on the law that applies to you, you may have rights to access your personal information, correct it, request deletion or restriction, receive a portable copy, or object to processing based on legitimate interests. You can withdraw consent to optional analytics through Your Privacy Choices. These rights have legal limits and do not always require deletion of every record.

For a privacy question or request, use Contact Us and include “Privacy” in the subject. Tell us what your request concerns and provide enough information for us to locate any relevant record. We may ask for proportionate information to confirm your identity before disclosing personal information. We respond within the period required by applicable law.

You may also complain to a data protection authority, including the authority where you live or work where applicable. Find an EU/EEA data protection authority, or contact the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. You do not need to contact us first to exercise that right.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when the website or our use of personal information changes. The date below identifies the latest version. Where a change requires a new choice about optional technology, we ask for that choice before using it.

Last updated: 9 October 2026.