This privacy policy explains how the Gaelic Gay Association ("we", "us") collects and uses personal data when you visit gga.ie. We are a small, volunteer-run independent project based in Ireland. We comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Irish Data Protection Act 2018.
Who we are
The Gaelic Gay Association is an unincorporated, concept-first project. It is not a funded service or a named delivery body. For data-protection correspondence, contact privacy@gga.ie.
What we collect
We only collect what we need. Specifically:
Things you give us directly
- Name (or nickname) and email if you sign up for the newsletter or submit the contact form.
- Any message text you include.
- County, if you choose to tell us (optional).
- Story or experience text submitted for editorial review, plus a pen name or reply email only if you choose to provide them.
About anonymous story submissions: the story form does not add your IP address or browser details to the editorial message and does not keep a copy in a website database. Like most websites, our hosting provider may keep short-term security and access logs that include an IP address. “Anonymous” on GGA.ie means no public name or byline, not invisibility from internet infrastructure.
Things collected automatically
- Anonymised analytics via Matomo (page views, referring site, approximate country, device type). IP addresses are anonymised before storage. No Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, no cross-site advertising trackers.
- Technical data your browser sends: user agent, language, screen size.
Why we collect it
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Contact form submissions | Replying to your enquiry | Legitimate interest — you initiated contact |
| Newsletter email | Sending the newsletter you asked for | Consent — unsubscribe any time |
| Fiction submissions | Editorial consideration and publishing | Contract — you submitted to us for this purpose |
| Anonymised analytics | Understanding how the site is used so we can improve it | Legitimate interest (no personal identifiers stored) |
How long we keep it
- Contact form emails: 24 months, then deleted.
- Newsletter subscribers: until you unsubscribe.
- Fiction submissions: retained with consent for hosting; you can ask us to remove your story at any time.
- Analytics: 14 months rolling, then aggregated.
Who sees it
Only the GGA.ie editorial team and service providers acting on our behalf process submitted data. The website host handles normal web traffic, and the configured email provider delivers contact and story submissions to the editorial inbox. We do not sell, rent, or trade personal data. Analytics is self-hosted on our own server.
Your rights under GDPR
You can ask us to: show you what data we hold about you (subject access request), correct anything that's wrong, delete your data, stop processing it, or export it in a portable format.
Email privacy@gga.ie and we'll respond within 30 days.
You also have the right to complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission: www.dataprotection.ie.
Cookies
See our separate cookie notice.
Private support tools
The support pathway, incident-note worksheet and first-message builder run in your browser. GGA.ie does not receive or store the selections, incident-note fields or generated message text. Standard hosting and analytics logs may still record that a page was visited or that a fixed tool action such as “copy” was used, but not the words entered into a tool.
Do not enter more identifying information than you need. Copy or print anything you want to keep before closing the page.
Sensitive personal data
We are an adults-only community resource for LGBTQ+ people. We do not require you to disclose your orientation, gender identity or any other special-category data to use the site. Do not submit safeguarding, complaint, health or other sensitive case details through the public form.
Changes to this policy
We post the date at the top when we change this policy. For substantive changes we'll also flag it in the next newsletter.