Privacy notice

This notice explains what personal information TV Fanzines (tvfanzines.co.uk) keeps, why, and for how long. We keep as little as we can. If you have any questions, or want to use your rights, email hello@tvfanzines.co.uk.

If you just visit

You can read everything on TV Fanzines without an account. We don’t use analytics, advertising or social media trackers, and nothing on our pages is loaded from other companies’ servers — our fonts and images come from our own site. Like most websites, our web host keeps standard server logs (such as IP address, the page requested and browser type) for security and to fix problems.

When you use a link to another website, it goes through a short /go/ address on our site. We count how many times each link is used, without recording who used it.

Cookies

tvf_s — keeps you signed in, and protects our forms (joining, signing in, reporting) from misuse. It’s set only when you sign in or open one of those forms, and lasts up to 14 days or until you sign out. It’s strictly necessary, so we don’t ask for consent.
A separate cookie is used only by the site owner when signed in to the admin area.

We don’t use any other cookies. If we ever show a video, nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.

If you join

Account: your display name, email address, your password (stored only as a one-way scrambled “hash”), the time you confirmed you are 13 or older and agreed to the rules, and when you confirmed your email address.
Profile: your bio and profile picture, if you add them.
Your works: the text, images, labels and tags you submit, when you submitted them, and your confirmation that they’re your own work. Images are re-saved by our server, which removes hidden information such as camera details and location.
Hearts you give (other people see the total, not who gave them).

Your email address is never shown on the site. We use it only to confirm your account, reset your password and tell you about your account and works (for example when a work is approved or wasn’t approved, and why). We don’t send newsletters or marketing, and we don’t sell or share your information with advertisers.

Reports

If you report something, we keep the reason and any note you write. If you’re signed in we record which account sent it; if you add an email address we keep that so we can reply. The member you report isn’t told who reported them.

Keeping the site safe

To stop spam and password guessing, we count attempts (for example sign-ins and reports) using a scrambled version of your IP address that we can’t turn back into the address. These counts are deleted after 48 hours. We also keep a moderation record of actions such as “work approved”, “work removed” or “account suspended”, with the work title or display name and the reason. This helps us run the site fairly and meet our online safety duties.

Why we use your information

To run your account and show the works you ask us to publish (to provide the service you signed up for).
To keep the site safe, prevent abuse and deal with reports and complaints (our legitimate interests, and our legal duties under UK online safety law).

How long we keep it

Accounts that never confirm their email address are deleted after 7 days.
Email confirmation links expire after 48 hours; password reset links after 1 hour.
Your account, profile, works and hearts are kept until you delete them. Deleting your account removes all of them straight away.
Reports and the moderation record are kept for up to 2 years.
Deleted information may remain in server backups for a short time before they are overwritten.

Your rights

You can see and change most of your information yourself, and delete any work or your whole account from your account page. You also have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, and to object to how we use it. Email us at hello@tvfanzines.co.uk and we’ll reply within one month.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).