Privacy Policy

Horizon is the learning and reflection platform at widehorizon.app. Horizon — Life Without Compromise is the trading name of a UK sole-trader business, owned and run by its founder as an individual. That individual is the data controller for the information described here, which means they decide why and how it is used. Horizon is not a limited company.

For any question about this notice, or about your own information, write to ian@widehorizon.app. Our geographic business address is being finalised and will be published here as soon as it is set; in the meantime email reaches us directly, and a correspondence address is available on request.

Depending on how you use Horizon, we hold some or all of the following:

• Your account. Your name, your email address, how you signed in (email and password, or Google), your membership level and your role. Passwords are not held by Horizon itself; sign-in is handled by our platform provider. (In the case of Google sign-in, we receive your name, email address and Google account identifier.)
• Your membership and payments. The membership you hold, its status, and the identifiers Stripe uses for you and your subscription. Card details are entered on Stripe's own secure pages and are never seen or stored by Horizon.
• Your purchases. Which Tiny Courses you have bought, when, and the amount paid, linked to the email address you bought with.
• Your journal and saved items. Everything you write in your journal, the reflections you save, and the practices or learning you bookmark.
• Your learning. Which lessons you have worked through, so your progress stays where you left it.
• My Horizon. The answers you give in the opening reflection, used to suggest a starting point and to show your own words back to you.
• Conversations and applications. When you request a community or private conversation we hold your name, email address, where you are based, the date and hour you asked for and anything you chose to tell us. A confirmed conversation is also written into Horizon's own calendar, as explained below. The same applies to an application for Live Teaching, including whether you have asked about a scholarship.
• Messages to us. Anything you send to our email address, and our replies.
• Technical basics. The small amount of browser storage needed to keep you signed in and to remember your reading comfort and cookie choices. Our Cookie Policy explains this in full.

We do not ask for information we do not need, and we do not buy or sell personal information.

Under the UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for each thing we do. Ours are:

• To provide what you have asked for (contract). Creating your account, giving you the access your membership includes, taking payment, delivering a Tiny Course you have bought, arranging a conversation you have asked for and replying to you.
• To run Horizon well and keep it safe (legitimate interests). Keeping the platform working and secure, understanding how it is used in general terms, preventing misuse, and keeping records of payments and requests. We only rely on this where our interest is not outweighed by your rights, and you can object at any time.
• Where you have chosen to tell us something (consent). Where you give consent for a particular use, you can withdraw it at any time by writing to us. Withdrawing it does not affect anything done before then.
• To meet our legal duties (legal obligation). Accounting, tax and record keeping, and responding to lawful requests.

One measurement runs at platform level. Our platform provider records basic usage figures on our behalf: how many pages are viewed, and when a member signs in. It tells us whether Horizon is reaching people and which writing is useful. It is held on the provider's own systems rather than in your browser, and Horizon adds no cookie and no tracking script of its own for it. It is not used to build a profile of you, it is not used for advertising, and it is not sold. If you would rather it did not run at all, write to us and we will switch it off.

Marketing. Horizon does not send marketing email and has no newsletter. If that ever changes we will ask for your consent first, and every message will carry a way to stop receiving it.

Horizon is a reflective place, and some people write about their health, their beliefs, their relationships or their grief. That kind of information has extra protection under the UK GDPR, so we set out plainly how we treat it.

• Your journal is private to your account. Nothing in it is used for any other purpose, and it is never shared.
• You are never asked to write about your health or beliefs, and Horizon works perfectly well if you choose not to.
• The opening reflection in My Horizon asks what matters to you. Those answers are your own words, used only to suggest a starting point and to show them back to you.
• Where you choose to give us this kind of information — in a journal entry, in My Horizon, or in a note with a conversation request — we rely on your explicit consent. You can withdraw it at any time by deleting what you wrote or asking us to delete it, and withdrawing it does not affect anything done before then.
• We do not use any of it for profiling, advertising, insurance, employment, or automated decisions of any kind.

Your journal is yours. Inside Horizon, entries are visible only to the account that wrote them: no other member can read them, and no page of Horizon shows your journal to anyone but you.

Horizon's own administrator can reach stored records at database level, as in any small business run by its founder. That access is limited to what is needed to run the platform, keep it secure and answer your questions. We do not read journal entries as part of normal operation, and if a technical problem you reported could only be understood by looking at your own records, we would ask you first. Please write to ian@widehorizon.app if you would like to know more about this.

We use a small number of established providers who handle information for us or alongside us:

• Base44 is the platform Horizon is built and hosted on, and holds its servers in the United States. It provides the website, the database where member records are held, sign-in, verification emails, private file storage for member documents, and the email delivery Horizon uses to reply to you.
• Stripe provides payments and the billing area where you manage your membership, and is a United States company. Stripe handles your card details and billing records directly.
• Google provides the calendar Horizon uses. When a conversation is confirmed, we add it to Horizon's own Google Calendar, where the entry holds your name, the email address you gave us, the kind of conversation, the date and hour, where you said you are based, and anything you wrote in your note. Google is a United States company.
• Zoom provides the video meetings for community and private conversations, and is a United States company. When you join a meeting, Zoom handles that session under its own privacy notice.
• Unsplash provides the photographs on our pages. Your browser fetches them from Unsplash's servers, which sees the request.

We share information with these providers only for the purposes described. Stripe and Zoom each incorporate a data processing addendum into their terms, Google provides one for its Workspace services, and our platform provider publishes a data processing agreement for the platform. We may also share limited information where the law requires it, or to establish or defend legal rights. We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising.

Horizon is used from the United Kingdom, and our providers hold information in the United States, so information is transferred outside the UK. Each transfer has to be protected, and this is how:

• Stripe and Zoom are certified under the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which the UK government recognises as providing an adequate level of protection, and both also offer standard contractual clauses.
• Google is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension, which covers the Google Workspace services we use.
• Base44 publishes a data processing agreement covering the platform and its transfers. We will send you a copy of it, or of any of the safeguards above, if you ask us.

We keep information only for as long as we need it for the purposes in this notice, plus any period the law requires:

• Your account, journal, saved items and progress: while your account is open, so you can return whenever you wish. If you ask us to close your account, we remove them within 30 days.
• Membership, payment and Tiny Course records: six years from the end of the tax year in which the payment was made, because HM Revenue & Customs requires payment records to be kept that long.
• Conversation requests, applications and messages: two years after we last hear from you, and sooner if you ask us to delete them.
• Conversation calendar entries: removed from Horizon's calendar once the conversation has taken place, or when you ask us to remove them.
• Usage figures: held by our platform provider in aggregate, without your name attached.

When you ask us to delete something, we do so unless the law requires us to keep it, and we will tell you which rule applies.

Information is held on our platform provider's managed infrastructure, reached over an encrypted connection, and member documents sit in private storage rather than at any public address. Sign-in is protected by password and by email verification codes. The rules inside the database mean that your journal, saved items, purchases and progress can be read only by the account they belong to. Administrator access is limited to the founder. Your reading comfort and cookie choices never leave your browser.

We would rather describe these arrangements accurately than claim certifications we do not hold. We keep a written record of the technical and organisational measures Horizon relies on, and if you would like the detail for your own assurance, please ask.

Under UK data protection law you can:

• ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, and be told how it is used;
• have anything inaccurate corrected;
• ask us to delete information, where there is no overriding reason for us to keep it;
• ask us to restrict what we do with it;
• object to processing based on legitimate interests, including the usage measurement described above;
• receive information you gave us in a portable, machine readable form;
• withdraw any consent you have given.

Horizon does not profile you, and no decision about your access or membership is made by automatic means alone.

Write to ian@widehorizon.app and we will reply within one month. There is no charge. If you are unhappy with how we have handled a request, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would always rather hear from you first so we can put things right.

Horizon sets no advertising or analytics cookies. Our Cookie Policy sets out exactly what is stored in your browser and why, and you can change your preferences at any time from the footer of every page.

Horizon is written for adults. It is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly hold information about children. If you believe a young person has created an account, please write to us and we will remove it.

If the way we handle information changes, this notice changes with it. The date at the top always shows the current version, and significant changes will be made clear on the site. If you would like us to email you when this notice changes, just ask.