Privacy & Cookie Policy

Last Updated: May 2026 | Website: https://irelandelection.com

This policy explains how we collect, process, and protect your data in strict compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Irish data protection laws.

1. Information We Collect & Why

We minimize data collection to the absolute bare essentials required to run this website securely and efficiently.

A. Contact Form Submissions

  • What we collect: Name, email address, and any text message content you submit.
  • Why: Entirely to reply to your feedback, queries, or election data corrections.
  • Legal Basis: Legitimate interests (responding directly to your explicitly initiated requests).
  • Retention: We delete these messages from our mail server after 6 months. We never use this information for marketing or newsletters.

B. Security & Server Logs

  • What we collect: Your IP address, browser type (User-Agent string), and timestamp data.
  • Why: To maintain server stability, mitigate security threats, and block malicious activity (such as DDoS attacks or contact form spamming).
  • Legal Basis: Legitimate interests (securing our hosting application infrastructure).
  • Retention: Internal logs are automatically overwritten and purged by our hosting framework within 30 days.

2. Third-Party Services We Use

We partner with specific, trusted third parties to secure our assets and safely monitor traffic patterns:

  • Cloudflare & Turnstile: We use Cloudflare to secure our site and Turnstile to challenge suspicious form submissions. Turnstile processes minimal non-identifiable browser telemetry data purely for bot prevention without tracking you across external web properties.
  • Google Analytics 4 (GA4): We use GA4 to study aggregate traffic levels on our election tracker. We strictly enforce full IP Anonymization, meaning your full IP address is permanently truncated and is never stored by Google.

3. Cookie Disclosure

Cookies are tiny text files dropped onto your device. To respect your privacy, our cookies are split into two clear tracking thresholds:

Necessary Cookies (Always Active)

These cookies are structurally mandatory for standard security and site operations. They do not track personal user identities.

  • Cloudflare / Turnstile: Deploys specialized system cookies explicitly built to identify threat vectors, verify human activity, and maximize load performance.

Analytics & Marketing Cookies (Consent Required)

  • Google Analytics / AdSense: These cookies analyze basic page views and serve ads. Under modern GDPR rules, these elements will remain inactive until you explicitly grant permission by clicking "Accept All" via our cookie consent banner interface.

4. Where Your Data Goes

We do not sell, rent, license, or trade your personal data with third-party brokers. Data is processed exclusively via secure technical endpoints:

  • Hosted locally using Hostinger data center architectures within the European Union.
  • Proxied and encrypted mid-transit via the Cloudflare global network.
  • Anonymized aggregate behavioral patterns handled via Google analytics networks.

5. Your GDPR Rights

As a resident inside the European Economic Area (EEA), you retain clear legal control over your personal footprint:

  • The right to request a full inspection of any personal data we hold about you.
  • The right to request that we delete your history (e.g., your old form submission emails).
  • The right to instantly adjust or fully revoke your cookie consent preferences at any time.

To exercise any of your statutory rights, please reach out to us directly through our web contact form.