Privacy Policy
BioWellix is a health publication. We collect as little as we can get away with: an email address if you ask for the newsletter, and standard analytics and advertising data. Health details you type into our calculators never reach us at all.
Effective
Who is responsible for your data
BioWellix is an independent health publication run by one person, who is the data controller for the information described here. There is no company behind it.
For anything in this policy — questions, requests, complaints — write to hello@biowellix.com.
What you give us
One thing: your email address, if you subscribe to the newsletter. Alongside it we store which form you used (homepage, article sidebar, and so on) and the date you signed up.
We use it to send you the newsletter and nothing else. We do not sell it, rent it, or pass it to anyone for their own marketing. Every newsletter carries a one-click unsubscribe link, and you can ask us to delete you at any time.
If you email us, we keep that email so we can reply and so we have a record of what was asked.
What we deliberately do not collect
We also do not:
- Offer accounts, so there is no profile, password or login history.
- Ask for your name, address, date of birth or phone number.
- Keep any record of which articles a named individual has read.
- Collect or store health records, diagnoses, or anything you would recognise as a medical file.
Your browser stores one preference locally — whether you want metric or imperial units in the calculators. It stays on your device and is never sent to us.
What is collected automatically
Like almost every website, we use analytics and advertising services that collect data as you browse. These are run by Google, not by us, and the data goes to Google.
- Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
- Which pages are opened, how long they are read, roughly where in the world the visit came from, device and browser type, and which site referred you. We use this to see which articles are worth writing more of.
- Google AdSense
- Serves the adverts on this site and uses cookies and similar identifiers to select and measure them, including personalised adverts where you have allowed that.
- Server logs
- Our host records standard request information, including IP address and user agent, to deliver pages and to defend against abuse.
An IP address can identify you indirectly, which is why it is treated as personal data here even though we never look at individual visits.
Cookies and your choices
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this site for two purposes: measuring traffic, and selecting and measuring adverts. We do not use cookies to build a profile of you ourselves.
If you are in the UK, the EEA or Switzerland, you are asked for consent before advertising and measurement cookies are set, through Google's consent management. You can change or withdraw that choice at any time, and you can refuse without losing access to any article on this site.
You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and opt out of personalised advertising directly with Google or through the industry opt-out pages below.
Why we are allowed to use it
If the UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies to you, our legal bases are:
- Consent
- For the newsletter, and for advertising and analytics cookies. You can withdraw it at any time, which stops future processing but does not undo what happened before.
- Legitimate interests
- For keeping the site running, secure and free of abuse, and for understanding aggregate traffic. We use it only where your rights do not override it.
Who else handles it
We use a small number of service providers, each doing one job:
- Vercel
- Hosts the site and serves every page.
- Our database provider
- Stores the newsletter list on managed PostgreSQL. It is not used for anything else.
- Analytics, tag management and advertising, as described above. Google acts for its own purposes as well as ours.
We will also disclose information where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim. We do not sell your personal information for money.
Where your data goes
Our providers operate globally, and requests are typically processed in the United States. If you are in the UK or the EEA, that means your data may be transferred outside your country, protected by the safeguards those providers put in place — standard contractual clauses and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.
How long it is kept
- Newsletter subscriptions: until you unsubscribe or ask to be deleted.
- Emails you send us: for as long as needed to deal with the matter, and a reasonable period after.
- Analytics and advertising data: for the retention period set by Google, which we do not control.
- Server logs: a short rolling window set by our host.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask us to:
- Tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy.
- Correct anything inaccurate.
- Delete it.
- Restrict or object to how we use it, including objecting to direct marketing at any time.
- Hand it to you or another provider in a portable format.
- Withdraw consent you previously gave.
Write to hello@biowellix.com and we will respond within one month. We will not charge you or treat you differently for asking. In practice, the only thing we are likely to hold is your email address.
If you are in the UK or the EEA and you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to your national data protection authority. We would rather you told us first.
If you are in California
You have the right to know what is collected, to have it deleted, to correct it, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. You cannot be discriminated against for exercising those rights.
Children
This site is written for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us their email address, tell us and we will delete it.
Security
The site is served over HTTPS, the subscriber database is access-controlled and encrypted at rest by our provider, and only the operator can reach it. No system is perfectly secure, and we hold very little worth stealing — which is itself part of the design.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the effective date at the top changes with it. Significant changes to how we handle your data will be announced on the site, and by email to subscribers where the change affects them.