Privacy Policy

Effective date: 29 September 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information Ledger Line ("we", "us", "our") collects when you visit this website, why we collect it, who we share it with, and what rights you have. It is written to be readable rather than to be defensive, and it includes the specific advertising disclosures that Google requires of publishers using its services.

If you have questions about anything below, contact us at the address in the final section and we will answer.

1. Who we are

Ledger Line is an independent editorial publisher of personal finance content. We are the data controller for personal information collected through this website.

• Website: the domain shown in your browser's address bar
• Contact email: see section 12
• Editorial contact: see our Contact page

We are not a bank, broker, insurer, credit reference agency or law firm, and we do not provide personalised financial advice.

2. What we collect

2.1 Information you give us directly

We only collect what you choose to send:

• Contact form submissions. Your name, email address, and the content of your message. We use this solely to respond to you.
• Newsletter sign-ups. Your email address, and the date and source of your subscription. The address is added when you submit the sign-up form; every email we send carries a one-click unsubscribe, and you can also be removed by asking us at any time.
• Corrections and editorial feedback. Whatever you choose to include.

We do not require an account to use this website. There is no login, no password, and no user profile.

2.2 Information collected automatically

When you load a page, certain technical data is processed. This is standard for every website on the internet:

• Your IP address (seen by our hosting provider in server logs, and by Google only when advertising is active and you have consented)
• Browser type, version and language preference
• Operating system and device type
• Referring page or search query
• Pages visited, time on page, and clicks
• Approximate geographic location derived from IP address (country and city level only)
• Date and time of the request

2.3 Cookies and similar technologies

We use cookies, as do third parties operating on this site. A full list, with durations and purposes, is on our separate Cookie Policy page. In summary:

3. The Google AdSense disclosure

This section contains the specific statements Google requires of publishers using its advertising services.

Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to this website or other websites.

Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to our users based on their visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.

Users may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting 0. Alternatively, users can opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising by visiting www.aboutads.info/choices or, in the EU, www.youronlinechoices.eu.

3.1 Advertising cookies Google may set

Google may also use NID, SEARCH_SAMESITE, AEC and SOCS cookies for related purposes. In non-personalised ads mode, persistent advertising cookies are not set for targeting purposes, though a request is still made to Google's servers which includes your IP address and the page URL.

3.2 Google's authorised ad technology partners

Google works with a published list of ad technology providers that may receive information when ads are served on this site. The current list is maintained at Google's Ad Technology Provider disclosure page. You can review it there, and you can restrict which providers are used via your consent choices described in section 6.

3.3 Consent and advertising

Where you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we obtain your consent before advertising cookies are set or personalised ads are served, in line with Google's EU User Consent Policy. Our own banner implements Google Consent Mode v2 with defaults set to denied, and once advertising is active on this site, consent requests in these regions are handled by Google's certified "Privacy & messaging" consent message — the IAB TCF v2.2-compliant platform provided inside AdSense — working alongside our banner.

We implement Google Consent Mode v2. Before you make a choice, our default consent state is set to denied for ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization and analytics_storage, so no advertising or analytics cookie is set and no advertising data is used until you grant consent. If you decline, we request non-personalised (contextual) ads, which are based on the content of the page you are reading rather than on your browsing history.

You can change or withdraw your consent at any time using the Cookie preferences link in the footer of every page. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it.

4. How we use your information

We process personal data for these purposes only:

• To respond to messages you send us (legal basis: our legitimate interest in answering enquiries, or your consent where you provide it)
• To send you the newsletter, if and only if you have subscribed and confirmed (legal basis: your consent)
• To understand how our content is used so we can improve it. We currently do this without analytics scripts, using only aggregate server-log counts. If we ever introduce analytics cookies, this policy will be updated and your consent requested first (legal basis: consent)
• To display advertising that funds the site (legal basis: your consent to advertising cookies, or our legitimate interest for non-personalised contextual ads)
• To keep the site secure and to prevent abuse (legal basis: our legitimate interest)
• To comply with legal and tax obligations, including record-keeping for advertising income (legal basis: legal obligation)

We do not sell your personal information. We do not rent it, trade it, or exchange it. We do not use your contact details to advertise third-party products to you.

5. Who we share information with

We share personal data only with these categories of recipient:

Every third party we use is contractually restricted to processing data only for the purpose described, and each is either an EU/UK adequacy-approved recipient or has executed Standard Contractual Clauses with us.

6. Your choices and rights

6.1 Cookie choices

You can accept all cookies, reject non-essential cookies, or choose categories individually, using the banner that appears on your first visit or the Cookie preferences link in the footer at any time afterwards.

6.2 Advertising opt-outs

• Google personalised ads: myadcenter.google.com
• Multiple vendors at once: aboutads.info/choices (US) or youronlinechoices.eu (EU)
• Browser-level control: most browsers let you block or delete third-party cookies in settings

Blocking advertising cookies will not remove adverts from this site. It will make them contextual rather than personalised, and it will reduce the revenue the site earns, which is worth knowing since advertising is how we keep the content free.

6.3 Newsletter

Every email contains a one-click unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing removes your address from the list immediately and permanently. You can also email us and we will remove it manually.

7. Your legal rights

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of these rights. We honour all of them regardless of your location:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Rectification — correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data, where no legal obligation requires us to keep it
• Restriction — ask us to stop processing your data in certain ways
• Objection — object to processing based on our legitimate interests
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format
• Withdraw consent — at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing
• Complaint — lodge a complaint with your data protection authority

To exercise any of these, email us using the address in section 12. We respond within 30 days and will confirm your identity first, because we will not disclose personal data to someone who cannot show they are entitled to it. There is no fee.

8. GDPR, UK GDPR and international transfers

For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland:

• Our legal bases for processing are set out against each purpose in section 4
• Our legitimate interests are operating and improving this website, and keeping it secure. We have assessed these against your rights and consider them proportionate, because we process only the minimum data necessary and we obtain consent for anything intrusive
• Google LLC processes advertising data in the United States. Transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (2021 edition) as adopted by the European Commission, together with Google's supplementary technical and organisational measures. Google's Data Processing Terms apply where we use its advertising and analytics services
• Our EU/UK representative, where required under Article 27 GDPR, is listed on request — contact us and we will provide it
• You have the right to complain to your supervisory authority. In the EU, this is the authority in your member state of residence; in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office

9. California residents: CCPA and CPRA

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act gives you additional rights.

Categories of personal information we collect: identifiers (IP address, email address); internet or network activity (browsing behaviour on this site); geolocation data (approximate, derived from IP); and inferences drawn from the above.

We do not sell or share your personal information within the meaning of the CCPA. Note that under the CCPA's definitions, allowing third parties to collect information via cookies for targeted advertising can constitute "sharing"; we do this only with your consent and you can opt out at any time via the Cookie preferences link in our footer. That link functions as our Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information mechanism.

Your rights: to know what we collect, to delete it, to correct it, to opt out of sale or sharing, and to limit use of sensitive personal information. We do not use sensitive personal information for any purpose beyond what is necessary to operate the site. You may exercise these rights through an authorised agent.

Non-discrimination: we will never treat you differently for exercising a privacy right. The one nuance worth stating honestly is that if you opt out of advertising cookies, the adverts you see become less relevant to you and our revenue from your visit falls. That is a consequence of the ad market rather than a penalty we impose, and it does not affect your access to any content.

Financial incentive notice: we do not offer any programme where you receive money or a different level of service in exchange for your personal data.

10. Children

This website is not directed at children under the age of 13 (or 16 in the EEA and UK), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Our content concerns adult financial matters — credit, mortgages, tax, retirement — and is not intended for a child audience.

We do not permit interest-based advertising to be directed to children, and we have not enabled any feature that would allow it.

If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us using the address in section 12 and we will delete it promptly. Under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, parents may review and request deletion of any personal information we hold about their child.

11. Security and retention

We take these measures:

• All traffic is served over HTTPS with a valid TLS certificate; there is no unencrypted version of this site
• We collect the minimum data necessary — there is no account system, no payment processing and no sensitive data collection on this site
• Third-party access is limited to the providers named in section 5, each under contractual restriction
• Server logs are retained for a limited period and then deleted automatically
• Administrative access is limited, uses strong unique passwords, and is protected by two-factor authentication

Retention periods:

No system is perfectly secure and we will not claim ours is. If a breach occurs that creates a risk to your rights, we will notify the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours and notify you directly where the risk to you is high.

12. Do Not Track

Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" (DNT) setting that signals you do not wish to be tracked across websites. There is no uniform industry standard for responding to DNT, and most advertising systems do not honour it.

Our approach: we respond to DNT by treating it as a refusal of non-essential cookies. If your browser sends a DNT signal, we default to essential cookies only and request non-personalised advertising. You can change this at any time via the Cookie preferences link.

13. Third-party links

This website contains links to external sites — regulators, government data sources, consumer protection bodies, and providers we mention in our editorial content. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of any site we do not operate. Each external link opens in a new tab and carries a rel="noopener" attribute. Check the privacy policy of any site you visit from here.

Where we link to a commercial provider and may receive a commission, this is disclosed on the page and in our Affiliate Disclosure. Affiliate relationships never involve sharing your personal data with the provider beyond what occurs when you click a link and visit their site directly.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when our practices change, when a new law applies, or when we add a service. The effective date at the top of this page always reflects the current version, and material changes are announced on the site for at least 30 days before taking effect.

If we make a change that materially expands how we use data you already gave us, we will seek fresh consent rather than applying it retroactively.

15. Contact us

For any privacy question, request or complaint:

• Email: see our Contact page for the current address
• By post: the postal address listed on our Contact page
• Data protection queries: mark your message "Privacy" and it will reach the person responsible

We aim to acknowledge within three working days and resolve within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to your local data protection authority — in the UK the Information Commissioner's Office, in the EU your national supervisory authority, and in the US your state attorney general.

We would rather you told us first. In almost every case we can fix the problem.