What we collect, why we collect it, and the things we deliberately do not.
The short version. Browsing this site collects nothing about you. We set no tracking cookies and run no advertising. If you click through to a retailer we record that the click happened — which shop, which listing, what time — but not who you are. If you sign up for price alerts we will hold your email address and the guitars you asked us to watch, and nothing else.
The String Gauge is run by Paul Flett, a sole trader based in England. For data protection purposes we are the data controller for the personal data described on this page.
Contact us about anything on this page at info@thestringgauge.co.uk.
Nothing that identifies you. We do not use tracking cookies, advertising pixels, social media embeds or third-party analytics that profile individuals. See our cookie notice for the detail.
Our host, Cloudflare, processes your IP address to deliver the site and protect it from attack. That is an unavoidable part of how the internet works — a server cannot send you a page without knowing where to send it. Cloudflare acts as our processor.
Every “view at” link on this site passes through our own redirect before it reaches the shop. That redirect writes one short record:
| What we record | Why |
|---|---|
| Date and time of the click | To match the click against that night's price and stock data |
| Which retailer, and the product page you went to | To know which listings people find useful |
| A reference code for the page and position you clicked from | To compare layouts and see what actually helps people |
| The page you clicked from, and your browser's user-agent string | To separate real visits from bots, and phones from desktops |
We do not record your IP address, and we do not set a cookie on you. These records carry no name, no email and no account. They are not used to build a profile of you and we make no attempt to work out who you are from them.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — we need to know which listings are useful in order to run and improve the site, and to evidence referrals to the shops we work with. We consider the impact on your privacy to be low because the records are not linked to you.
Price alerts are not live yet. When they launch we will hold your email address and the guitars and target prices you asked us to watch. Our lawful basis is your consent. You will have to confirm your address by clicking a link in an email before we send you anything (double opt-in), every email will carry a one-click unsubscribe, and we will not pass your address to anyone for marketing.
This is the part worth reading. Once you land on a retailer's website you are on their property, under their rules. The retailer — and, where we have an affiliate relationship, the affiliate network that handles the referral — will typically set their own cookies to remember that we sent you.
We do not control those cookies and cannot see them. Your relationship there is governed by that retailer's own privacy and cookie policies. If you want to know what they store, their policies are the place to look, not this page.
Where we have a live affiliate relationship, the network currently used is Awin. See how we make money for who that covers.
We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. Nobody pays us for access to it.
Our host and our email provider may process data outside the UK. Where that happens, the transfer is covered by the safeguards UK data protection law requires — typically an adequacy decision or the International Data Transfer Agreement.
Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, to have it transferred, and to withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis we rely on.
In practice, for most visitors there is nothing to give you — we hold nothing linked to you. If you have subscribed to alerts, email info@thestringgauge.co.uk and we will act within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you came to us first so we can put it right.
This site is aimed at adults buying musical instruments. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has given us their details, tell us and we will delete them.
If we change what we collect, we will change this page and update the date at the top before the change goes live. Material changes to how we use alert subscribers' data will be emailed to those subscribers.