Privacy Policy for frostdates.com

Last Updated: 10 October 2025

1. Our Commitment to Your Privacy

Welcome to frostdates.com. Your privacy is critically important to us. This website is designed to be a privacy-respecting, cookieless service. Our goal is to collect the absolute minimum amount of information necessary to provide and protect our service. This policy explains what data we collect, why we collect it, and who we share it with.

The data controller responsible for your information is Veg Plotter Ltd, a company registered in the United Kingdom.

2. What Information We Collect and Why

We process two types of information:

• Location Search Term (Voluntarily Provided): When you use our service, you provide a location (such as a city, postcode, or coordinates). We use this information solely to process your request and provide you with the frost date and growing zone data. This location data is not stored after your request is completed.
• IP Address (Automatically Processed): We temporarily process your IP address to protect our service from automated abuse (bots) and to enforce our rate limits (e.g., 10 lookups per hour). Your IP address is stored for approximately one hour and is then automatically deleted. It is not used for tracking or any other purpose.

3. Legal Basis for Processing

Under UK data protection law, we process your data based on our Legitimate Interests. These legitimate interests are:

• Providing you with the free service you have requested.
• Protecting the security and stability of our website from misuse or automated abuse.
• Monitoring overall website traffic (in an aggregated, anonymous way) to ensure our service remains functional and available.

4. Who We Share Your Information With (Our Sub-processors)

To provide our service, we rely on a few specialist third-party services. These are our sub-processors. We only share the minimum data necessary for their services to function.

• OpenStreetMap (Nominatim): To convert the location you enter (e.g., "London") into geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude), we send this search term to OpenStreetMap's free Nominatim API.
  View OpenStreetMap's Nominatim Policy
• TRUSTCAPTCHA: To protect our website from spam and bots, we use the privacy-focused and cookieless TRUSTCAPTCHA service. This service may process your IP address to differentiate human users from automated traffic.
  View TRUSTCAPTCHA's Privacy Policy
• Plausible Analytics: To understand how many visitors use our site, we use Plausible, a privacy-focused analytics service that does not use cookies or collect any personal data. All data, such as page views and referral sources, is aggregated and anonymised.
  View Plausible's Data Policy
• Amazon Web Services (AWS): Our website is hosted on AWS servers located in their Europe region. All operational data, including the temporary IP address logs, resides on their secure infrastructure.
  View AWS's Privacy Notice

5. Data Retention

We do not store your location search terms. We retain IP address logs for security and rate-limiting purposes for approximately one hour, after which they are permanently deleted.

6. Your Data Protection Rights

Under UK data protection law, you have rights including:

• Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
• Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate.
• Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

Given the minimal and transient nature of the data we process, exercising these rights can be done by simply not using the service or waiting a short period for any temporary data to be deleted. However, if you have any concerns, please contact us.

7. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new policy on this page. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes.

8. How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:
By email: info@vegplotter.com