Privacy policy

Our mission at Mumsnet is to help make parents’ lives easier. We believe that securing your data, preserving your anonymity, protecting your privacy, and giving you control over your data are an important aspect of that mission.

We believe that employing data and data analytics appropriately can improve the user experience on Mumsnet. Data you give us when filling in forms (when joining, for example or when using the site or our apps) helps us show you more relevant things. It also allows us to see which aspects of the site are popular and well-used, meaning we can improve Mumsnet for everyone.

We don’t require your name or address when you view Mumsnet content or register with the site, and you can use Mumsnet fully without providing it.

Subject to your permissions and choices, we collect, store and process the data listed in this section. We believe we provide a useful service, and therefore have a legitimate interest in processing your data which benefits both Mumsnet and you as a Mumsnet user.

We store the following data for all users, whether registered or not:

• IP address, cookies, device ID – to identify your web browser and device.
• Page browsing information – to enable us to show you more relevant things and to understand how people use Mumsnet, so we can improve it.
• Within our user database, we assign your internet browser and device a unique 'Identity Number'. Against this identity number we record the topic of the content that your device is viewing or creating – in other words, your device’s 'reading habits'. This helps us understand what you may be interested in so that we can show you things we think may be relevant to you (such as ads or other Mumsnet content). When we look at this information from all users, we can see what is popular and less popular, helping us to develop Mumsnet over time.
• We also use Google Analytics to report on page views in aggregate to help us understand usage trends. We do not pass your personal data to Google and your IP address is anonymised before we share this information with Google Analytics. Google uses cookies and can learn about your browsing on Mumsnet and Gransnet to inform Google ads and other Google services, as explained here: https://policies.google.com/privacy/partners
• Ads viewed and clicked and searches you’ve made on site – to show you more relevant ads and content in future.
• Enquiries you make – we sometimes give you the option of using Mumsnet to enquire about a product or service (such as getting a quote to repair your boiler). This is optional and we only give users this option if we trust the company and think the service might be helpful to you. We will always explicitly ask for your permission before recording or passing this information to that company or to anyone else.

We store the following information for registered members:

• Username, password, email address – so that you can log in. If you choose to register to use a Mumsnet product we ask for your email address so that we can create an account for you and check you’re a real person (to prevent ‘bots’ signing up). We won’t send you newsletters or mass email communications that you haven’t asked for, and we don’t sell your email address to anyone else.
• Discussions that take place over email or via Private Messages between you and Mumsnet or Gransnet moderators – so that we have a record.
• A summary of any actions we may have taken with regard to your use of Mumsnet or Gransnet Talk (usually in response to reported posts) – so that we have a record and can moderate fairly.

We also store the following optional data for registered members:

• Registration data: facts about you that you choose to provide in the sign-up process, such as your date of birth, gender, whether you are pregnant, whether you have children, their ages and genders, and which email newsletters from us you would like to receive. If you give us this data it helps us to show you more relevant things (for example, sending you emails about pregnancy if you have asked for them). We do not share this information with anyone else. Provision of this data is optional; you can skip this stage.
• Permissions to email you, to send you newsletters that you have chosen to receive.
• Private Messages that you choose to send other users.
• Data that you provide when taking part in surveys, panels, product tests, quizzes or competitions. For these things, we sometimes ask for your name and address (for example to send you a product to test) or other data requested by the competition provider (such as your email address). Before recording or passing this information to another organisation, we will provide the organisation’s data policy and clearly ask for your permission each time.

Registered members of Mumsnet or Gransnet can start discussions and add comments, pictures and videos to existing discussions within Mumsnet or Gransnet Talk’s forums under our Terms of Use. This is optional in the sense that it’s up to you whether you post on a Mumsnet product or not; if you do post we always store the contents of those posts. These posts are public, but of your registration data, only your username is displayed on-screen. Your username is picked by you when you join a Mumsnet product; on Mumsnet you can change it at any time in My Account.

Mumsnet or Gransnet forums (with the exception of some topics, like 'Off the beaten track') are visible to search engines. This means that any personal information users choose to share in their posts on a Mumsnet product can be seen widely. We cannot control who sees these posts.

In all your posts across Mumsnet, in personal messages to other users, and in choosing your username, you should be mindful about the possibility that information you choose to disclose could lead to someone working out who you are in ‘real life’. For example, anything that references your real life name, your children’s real names, where you live or your date of birth could make it easy for someone to work out who you are.

Mumsnet and Gransnet are sites for grown-ups and we believe that our users are adults who can decide for themselves what information they choose to share on Mumsnet and Gransnet Talk. That said, if you’re ever worried that you’ve said too much, hit ‘report’ on one of your posts and explain the problem to our moderation team; they will be happy to help if they can.

You should be aware that the moderation team and a small number of other members of staff at Mumsnet and Gransnet have access to your Talk posts and can see that content in combination with your registration data. We restrict the number of staff who have access to this data to the minimum and we constantly review this. You can check your registration data in My Account.

We provide a copy of all Talk posts to a small number of organisations for analysis or to create software analysis tools to analyse brands and sentiment towards topics. Your personal data and username are not included in the copies of posts that we provide to these organisations.

Your registration data

You can change the information that you provided when you registered, including your email address and Mumsnet username, on your My Account page.

If you have signed in using Facebook or Google, you can stop access at any time via your Facebook or Google account settings. If you still wish to post on Mumsnet or Gransnet, you’ll then need to register a username and password via the Registration page.

Your email preferences

You can change which newsletters you receive, or ensure that you do not receive any newsletters from Mumsnet, by going to My Account.

Your posts

If you’re ever worried that you’ve said too much, hit ‘report’ on one of your posts and explain the problem to our site moderation team; they will be happy to help if they can. You can request a retrospective name change – this means that all your previous posts will appear under a different username.

Your cookies

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies. A cookie is a small, temporary file which a web server sends to your web browser to be stored. Cookies allow Mumsnet to identify your web browser and device if we see it again.

Cookies do not contain your name or other personal details and there are some benefits to you and Mumsnet:

• 'Information storage and access' cookies allow you to perform certain functions like logging into Mumsnet or Gransnet. Cookies improve your experience of the site. For example, they allow you to log in and post, and allow us to show you discussions you've already read in a different colour, and to display them top-down or bottom-up according to your preference.
• Cookies also help us to show you more relevant content and ads. These are formally known as 'Personalisation' cookies, 'Ad selection, delivery, reporting' cookies and 'Content selection, delivery, reporting' cookies. As an example: if we know you’ve read our pregnancy content, we can show you pregnancy-related ads from brands that might be particularly relevant to pregnant women. To help keep the site running, we earn money by showing ads to people who might be interested in them – relevant ads are more likely to be clicked on, and command a higher price. The technology companies that Mumsnet allows to place cookies (known as third-party cookies) on your device are listed in the section in this Privacy Policy called “Where your data is stored”. Some of these technology companies deliver advertising and, as well as delivering ads on Mumsnet, may use your cookies to deliver ads to you on other sites (which is called “retargeting”).
• 'Measurement' cookies allow us to gather information about how many people visit or use a Mumsnet product, how often, and what they look at while on the site (a process called ‘analytics’). If you visit multiple pages or come back to a Mumsnet product after a break, cookies mean we do not count you as a new visitor. Using cookies like this allows us to compile aggregate statistics about how many users Mumsnet has and how long people use the site for, on average. We share this anonymous information with advertisers. Understanding what’s well-used on Mumsnet means we can create more of what users find useful and less of what they don’t.

There are three ways for you to manage your cookie preferences:

1. The first time you visit Mumsnet you should see a pop-up along the bottom of the screen. You can choose to accept all cookies, by clicking ‘I Agree’, or you can manage your individual preferences by clicking ‘show purposes’.
2. At the bottom right-hand side of this page (The Privacy Policy) you should see a settings toggle which says ‘Privacy setting’. If you click on this, a pop-up should appear at the bottom of the screen. Here you can manage all your individual cookie preferences.
3. If you are a registered member of Mumsnet you can manage your cookie preferences at any time by clicking on ‘My Mumsnet’ and selecting ‘Settings’. Within your Mumsnet settings you should see a settings toggle which says ‘Privacy setting’. If you click on this, a pop-up should appear at the bottom of the screen. Here you can manage all your individual cookie preferences.

Deleting your Mumsnet Account

You can delete your account by going to My Account. Your Mumsnet posts won’t be deleted, but there will no longer be any personal information associated with them.

Data requests

If you’d like you can ask us to provide details of the personal information we hold about you, under the 2018 EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To request this information, please email us at dataenquiry@mumsnet.com or write to Mumsnet Limited, Studios 13-16, Deane House Studios, 27 Greenwood Place, London NW5 1LB.

To give some examples: data provided by members of our Insight panel for that specific purpose is retained for as long as the user remains a member of the panel. Information provided when entering competitions is held for a maximum of three months. Information you give us when you sign up is stored permanently unless you choose to delete it or unless you delete your Mumsnet account.

Private Messages are stored until you delete them. If you delete your account, your messages will also be deleted.

We regularly review the data held by Mumsnet’s different teams and delete information that is no longer needed. All the data we hold is stored securely and only accessible to authorised staff members, who have regular data training.

If you choose to join a Mumsnet product you are asked to create a username and password. If you prefer, you can log in using Facebook or Google instead, meaning you don’t have to create and remember another password.

If you log in via Facebook or Google you will grant us access to your Facebook or Google registered email address only. We do not use (and cannot obtain) your Friends list and we do not ask for or receive other Facebook data. By default, the Facebook login process says it requires access to your Public Profile, but we do not store or use that data. However, if you choose this option, Facebook and Google will know that you have logged in to Mumsnet or Gransnet. We do not know whether Facebook or Google use this data (for example to make ads more relevant) but it is quite likely.

You may stop access at any time via your Facebook or Google account settings. If you want to carry on being able to post on Mumsnet or Gransnet you will then need to register a username and password.

Your data is stored by our web server hosting providers: DSC Limited, Amazon Web Services, and our email service provider: Maxemail.

The following companies store your cookies on our behalf. We do not share personal data (such as your name or email address) with these companies.

Tag management

Tags are lines of code that run on sites and apps. Mumsnet uses tag management software to run code that connects to third-party technology companies. These third-party technology companies deliver Social Log-In, Advertising and Analytics.

Google Tag Manager

Social log-in

These companies allow you to use your social media account to log in to Mumsnet and Gransnet. This is optional when you join Mumsnet. If you choose to log in via Google or Facebook, those companies will know that you have logged in to Mumsnet.

Facebook Connect

Google

Competitions, surveys, quizzes, events and product tests

We use third parties to collect data for insight activity and competitions that we run. These are the companies we may use:

Survey Monkey

Wufoo

Riddle

Advertising

The third-party companies below help us to deliver advertising. These companies use cookies to select and deliver advertisements and to measure the delivery and effectiveness of such advertisements. This will include using collected information about your interests in order to select ads for you, processing data about what advertisements were shown, how often they are shown, when and where they are shown, and whether you took any action related to the advertisement, including for example clicking an ad or making a purchase.

We use the following third-party company to help deliver advertising across Mumsnet:

Google Ad Manager

GAM is the ad server we use to display advertising around our sites and on our apps and also allows us to segment users into categories based on their browsing behaviour across the web and third-party data. Google Ad Manager will classify user interests eg pregnancy, health, food, etc. This is then used to show users relevant advertising.

Google Publisher Tags and Media Trust monitor and block bad ads, for example, ads that are fraudulent or contain malware.

Carambola and Insticator are third-party companies we use to deliver advertising.

Quantcast Choice is the tool we use to manage and record cookie consent.

Blockthrough allows us to show non-personalised advertising to users who use ad blockers. Any advertising shown would not be based on the user’s browsing behaviour, but would simply be relevant to the Mumsnet website as a whole.

Oriel allows us to monitor the number of users who have ad blockers installed on their devices.

SkimLinks and Monetizer insert affiliate tracking codes onto links on the site which allows us to make a small percentage commission from any purchases made from these links.

Captify analyses what users are searching for on Mumsnet and then use that data to re-target these users elsewhere on the web.

Analytics

These companies help Mumsnet understand our users:

Google Analytics

GA Audience

SnowPlow

SnowFlake

Hotjar helps Mumsnet and Gransnet understand how our sites and apps are performing (for example, reporting on the speed that pages take to load).

New Relic

Lead Forensics helps the Mumsnet and Gransnet commercial teams identify possible sales leads by telling us the IP address match of people visiting the ‘Advertise with Us’ page.

Copper is a tool used by our commercial team to store and manage sales leads.

NeoReach is used by our commercial team to manage a database of influencers.

HelpScout is customer service software used by our community team to manage correspondence with users.

If there are compelling safeguarding considerations, we may share your data with public authorities without your permission. We understand 'compelling safeguarding considerations' to mean credible evidence of imminent risk of serious harm, especially to a child or vulnerable person.

In such circumstances, on the judgement of a senior person within Mumsnet and in consultation with the Data Protection Officer, we may proactively contact relevant authorities (the police or ambulance service, for example) and share any relevant data we have, such as location data, relevant posts, private messages, details of any children who might be at risk, and descriptions of the situation.

If contacted by the police about possible breaches of the law disclosed in posts, we may sometimes – on the judgement of a senior person within Mumsnet and in consultation with the Data Protection Officer – share your personal information with them. We will share your personal information if compelled to do so by a court order, for example under Section 5 of the 2013 Defamation Act.

The way that we store and process data is compliant with the following legislation:

UK Data Protection Act 1988 (DPA)
EU Data Protection Directive 1995 (DPD)
EU General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR)
ePrivacy Directive 2002 (amended 2009)

As well as keeping up-to-date with laws about data, we aim to make sensible decisions based on common sense, listening to users’ views and industry best practices.

If, via human error, or via a breach of our security, we fail to comply with the law, we will let affected users know as soon as we are aware of it. We will report any data breach to the Information Commissioner in UK and, depending on the circumstances, the Police.

All Mumsnet use best practice, multi-tier web application security for our servers including Denial of Service protection and Web Application Firewall at the network edge. For staff access to all administrative systems, we enforce 2-step verification and IP-based access restrictions. Regular security updates keep staff informed of the latest security threats.

General

When you use our skills you have to talk to Alexa. This voice input is sent to Amazon and us, where we use it to understand what our skill should do for you. This is absolutely necessary for our service to give you an appropriate answer.

Data

We only collect personal data necessary to run our skill – this is your due date. We do not share this with anyone outside of Mumsnet.

To improve our services we analyse automatically how often utterances are spoken and other analytics. This is done automatically by Amazon in the Amazon Developer Portal.

For some of our skills, it is necessary to save data for you in our databases. This data is connected to your Alexa-UserId but never to your name or any other personal information. In the case of our 'Mumsnet Pregnancy' skill, we save your due date. Otherwise, we would not be able to provide this service.

Changes

Our skills or parts of them may change or be updated at any time. Further, this Privacy Policy might change. You can find a link to this policy on the description page of the skill in the Alexa App or in the Alexa Store.

In order to process your payment, we use Stripe, a third-party payment processor, to manage recurring payments for this product. Stripe store the following information about anyone who subscribes:

• Email address
• Payment information (including name on card)
• Postcode

Your payment will be processed by Stripe, who collect, use and process your information, including payment information, in accordance with their privacy policy.

22 May 2018: deletion policy on Private Messages updated
8 May 2018: privacy policy updated
17 September 2018: cookie explanations updated to reflect new consent process
29 August 2019: updates to 'what data is stored and why'
12 September 2019: Alexa Skills privacy policy included
8 April 2020: Mumsnet Premium subscription privacy policy included
20 April 2020: updated throughout the policy to clarify how data is used across all Mumsnet
20 April 2020: updates to ‘where is your data stored’ section