At Spey Academy, we are committed to maintaining the trust and confidence of our visitors and students. This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, and protect your personal data when you visit our website or register for our courses.

1. Who we are

Our website address is: https://speyacademy.com. Spey Academy is an independent educational hub based in London, operating under an official license from the Edinburgh Whisky Academy (EWA).
 

2. Information We Collect and Why

Comments: When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, along with the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to assist in automated spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to verify if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. Once your comment is approved, your profile picture becomes visible to the public within the context of your comment.

Media: If you upload images to our website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images hosted on the site.

Account & Course Registration Data: For users who register on our website or enroll in our training programs, we store the personal information provided in their user profile. This data is necessary to process your registration, deliver our educational services, and manage your student account.

3. Cookies

Comments: If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again for future comments. These cookies last for one year.

Login & Authentication: If you visit our login page, we set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

Session & Display Preferences: When you log in, we establish several cookies to save your login information and screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies are automatically removed.

Content Management: If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 24 hours.

4. Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor had visited the third-party website directly. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

5. Data Sharing

We do not sell or rent your personal data to third parties. Your data is only shared under strict administrative requirements, such as:

  • Security & System Emails: If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
  • Spam Protection: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

6. Data Retention

Comments: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This allows us to recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

User Profiles: For users who register on our website, we securely store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can view, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also view and edit that information for technical and course management purposes.

7. Your Rights Over Your Data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.