Privacy policy

This website is small and so is its appetite for your data. There is no account to create, no newsletter, no comment section and no form. What follows describes exactly what happens with personal data on woutervanmaercke.be and in the work I do for clients.

Who is responsible

The controller for the processing described here is Vanmaercke Wouter CommV, Tiegemberg 48, 8573 Tiegem, Belgium, company and VAT number BE 0726.677.280. You can reach me at info@woutervanmaercke.be or +32 476 59 87 78.

What is collected on this website

Analytics, only with your consent. If you accept cookies, Google Analytics 4 is loaded through Google Tag Manager. It records which pages are visited, roughly where in the world the visit came from, which device and browser were used, and how visitors move between pages. IP addresses are anonymised by Google before storage. If you decline, or ignore the banner, no analytics script is loaded at all — the tag is not merely disabled, it is never requested.

Server logs. This site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes technical request data — IP address, timestamp, requested URL, user agent — to deliver pages and to protect the site against attack. This happens regardless of your cookie choice, because a page cannot be served without it. The legal basis is legitimate interest in a functioning, secure website.

Email. When you mail me, I hold your message and address for as long as it takes to answer, and afterwards as part of ordinary business correspondence.

Fonts on this site are served from this domain, not from Google Fonts, so no third-party font request is made and no data leaves for that purpose.

What I do not do

• No advertising or remarketing pixels on this website.
• No selling or renting of personal data, to anyone, ever.
• No profiling and no automated decision-making about you.
• No tracking before consent.

Legal grounds

Analytics runs on your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time on the cookie policy page. Hosting and security run on legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)). Client work runs on the performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b)) and, for invoicing and bookkeeping, on a legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)).

Who else sees the data

Only processors that are needed to run the site and the business: Cloudflare (hosting and CDN), Google (Analytics and Tag Manager, when you consent), my email provider, and my accountant for invoicing records. Google may process data outside the European Economic Area; those transfers rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses and the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

How long it is kept

• Analytics data: 14 months, then deleted automatically.
• Email correspondence: as long as the relationship runs, then archived for up to seven years where it relates to an assignment.
• Invoices and bookkeeping: seven years, as Belgian law requires.
• Server logs at Cloudflare: short-lived, per Cloudflare's own retention policy.

Data in client work

In advertising and analytics work I usually act as a processor for the client rather than as a controller: I work inside accounts that belong to the client, on their instructions. Those accounts stay in the client's name and under their billing. When an assignment ends, my access is removed and nothing is copied out. Where a data processing agreement is required, I sign one.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask for access to your data, correction, erasure, restriction of processing, portability, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interest. Where processing rests on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting what happened before. Mail info@woutervanmaercke.be and you get an answer within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with how I handle it, you can lodge a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority — Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit, Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels, contact@apd-gba.be.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Material changes to how analytics works will also reset the cookie banner, so you get to decide again.