Privacy Policy
This policy explains how MyKidsTime collects and uses personal data. It covers people who visit our website, subscribe to our newsletter, join the MyKidsTime Club, enter our competitions or contact us.
1. Who we are
MyKidsTime (www.mykidstime.com) is a family lifestyle website run by Mead Media Limited, trading as MyKidsTime, a company registered in Ireland under company number 758021. Our registered office is 81 The Willows, Athenry, Co. Galway, H65 KX73.
Mead Media Limited is the controller of the personal data described in this policy. That means we decide how and why it is used.
To contact us about privacy, or to use any of your rights, email info@mykidstime.com. You can also write to us at the address above. We do not have a data protection officer because the law does not require one for a business of our size and type.
2. What we collect and why
We collect only what we need for each purpose below. The "lawful basis" is the reason the law allows us to use the data.
| What you do | Data we collect | Why we use it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscribe to our newsletter or join the MyKidsTime Club | Email address, and your name, county and interests if you give them | To send you the newsletter and Club emails you asked for | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Enter a competition | Name, email address, county, entry date and time, and how you found the competition | To run the competition, check entries, pick a winner and contact them | Contract (the competition rules you accept when you enter) |
| Win a competition | Delivery address and phone number, collected from the winner only | To deliver your prize | Contract |
| Contact us by email or through the contact form | Name, email address and your message | To reply to you and keep a record of the conversation | Legitimate interests (answering the questions people send us) |
| Ask about advertising or partnerships | Name, business name, email address and phone number | To reply, send rates and manage any agreement with you | Steps before a contract, then the contract |
| Visit the website | Device and browser type, IP address, pages viewed and cookie identifiers | To run the website securely and, if you agree, to understand how it is used | Legitimate interests for security; consent for analytics cookies (see section 4) |
We do not sell your personal data. We do not use it to make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.
3. Newsletter, Club and competitions
Entering a competition does not sign you up to our newsletter. The newsletter, the Club and updates from our partners each have their own tick box, and you choose each one separately.
Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and you can unsubscribe with one click. We keep a short record of your email address after you unsubscribe so that we don't email you again by mistake.
We measure whether our emails are opened and which links are clicked, so we can improve them. If you haven't opened any of our emails for 24 months, we may stop sending them and remove you from the list.
When a prize comes from a sponsor, we may share the winner's name, delivery address and phone number with the sponsor only so they can deliver the prize. Each competition's terms will say if this applies. We publish a winner's name, for example "J. Smith, Cork", only if the winner agrees.
4. Cookies and analytics
When you first visit, a cookie banner asks which cookies you accept. Analytics and advertising cookies stay off until you choose to accept them. You can change your choice at any time using the cookie settings link at the bottom of every page.
We use Google Analytics to understand how people use the site, for example which pages are read most. Before you accept, Google receives only limited signals with no analytics cookies set. After you accept, it receives full usage data.
Our Cookie Policy lists every cookie we use and what each one does.
We do not show advertising from ad networks such as Google Ads. Some of our articles contain affiliate links to retailers such as Amazon. If you buy through one, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The retailer may set its own cookies, which its own privacy policy covers.
5. Who we share data with
We use the trusted service providers below to run MyKidsTime. They act only on our instructions and under written contracts that protect your data.
| Provider | What they do for us |
|---|---|
| Hostinger | Hosts the website and our domain names |
| Google (Google Workspace) | Our company email |
| Google (Google Analytics) | Website analytics, only if you accept analytics cookies |
| Google Cloud | Runs our newsletter and competition systems |
| Supabase | The database that stores subscriber and competition records |
| Amazon Web Services (Simple Email Service) | Sends our newsletters and other emails |
| CookieYes | Records your cookie choices |
| Cloudflare (Turnstile) | Protects our forms from spam and bots |
| Anthropic and OpenAI | AI tools that help us draft and sort email replies and manage our newsletter |
The AI tools may process the name, email address and message of the person we are replying to. A person at MyKidsTime checks every reply before it is sent, and our providers do not use this data to train their AI models.
We may also share data with a competition sponsor to deliver a prize (see section 3), with our professional advisers, or when the law requires it.
Familitime is a family discovery app from Mead Media Limited. We do not share MyKidsTime readers' or subscribers' personal data with Familitime. MyKidsTime may promote Familitime on its website, in its newsletter and on social media, but we do not send MyKidsTime subscribers separate Familitime emails.
International transfers
Our subscriber and competition records are stored in the EU, in Ireland. Some of our providers are based in, or use staff in, countries outside the European Economic Area, including the United States. Where personal data leaves the EEA, it is protected by an adequacy decision, such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, or by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
6. How long we keep data
We keep personal data only as long as we need it.
| Data | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Newsletter and Club subscribers | Until you unsubscribe, or after 24 months in which you have not opened any of our emails |
| Unsubscribe record (email address only) | For as long as we send emails, so that we never email you again by mistake |
| Competition entries | 12 months after the winner is drawn, then deleted (entrants who also subscribed stay on the newsletter list) |
| Winners' delivery details | 6 months after the prize is delivered |
| Emails and contact form messages | 2 years after our last contact |
| Advertiser and partner records | 6 years after the end of the financial year they relate to, for tax and company records |
| Analytics data | 14 months |
7. Children
MyKidsTime is written for parents and other adults. Our newsletter, Club and competitions are for people aged 18 or over, unless a competition's own rules say otherwise. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you think a child has given us their details, contact us and we will delete them.
8. Your rights
Under data protection law you have the right to:
- see a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- have inaccurate data corrected
- have your data deleted
- restrict how we use your data
- object to how we use it, including for direct marketing at any time
- get your data in a portable format
- withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent
To use any of these rights, email info@mykidstime.com. We will reply within one month. We may ask you to confirm your identity first.
9. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please contact us first so we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Data Protection Commission, the data protection regulator in Ireland, at dataprotection.ie.
10. Changes to this policy
We will update this policy when the way we use personal data changes. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If a change is significant, we will tell subscribers by email.