Privacy Policy

01 Overview

This Privacy Policy describes how GDM ("I", "me", or "my") handles information in connection with this personal portfolio website located at gdmstudios.com.

This is a personal, non-commercial website. I take your privacy seriously and am committed to being transparent about the minimal data this site interacts with.

02 Information Collected

This website collects only the minimum information necessary to function:

• Contact form submissions — if you use the contact form, the name, email address, and message you provide are sent directly to me so I can respond to your enquiry.
• Newsletter sign-ups — if you subscribe to updates, your email address is collected for that sole purpose.
• Local storage preferences — public pages save a small preference flag in your browser's local storage to remember that you have acknowledged the cookie notice. Account, admin, license, and DarPayroll tools may use additional browser storage only where needed for their own local features.

For security, login, registration, newsletter, and contact form requests may use your IP address temporarily for rate limiting and abuse prevention. Session records may also store limited request metadata such as IP address and user agent to protect account access.

If you enable two-factor authentication, the site stores the authenticator secret required to verify your one-time codes. You can disable 2FA from your account page at any time.

03 Cookies & Local Storage

This site does not use tracking or advertising cookies of any kind.

Public pages use a localStorage key — gdm-cookies-ok — which stores the string "1" when you dismiss the cookie notice. This preference does not leave your device and contains no personal information.

If you sign in, the site uses an essential secure session cookie to keep you authenticated. DarPayroll stores payroll records locally in your browser using localStorage and IndexedDB. Licence checks may store the licence email, licence key, and a random browser device ID locally so the product can validate access without using hardware fingerprinting. You can clear browser-stored data at any time by clearing site data for this domain.

04 Third-Party Services

This website loads resources from a small number of trusted third-party providers:

• Google Fonts — typography is loaded from fonts.googleapis.com. Google may log your IP address as part of this request. You can review Google's privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy.
• Cloudflare CDN — libraries (MDB, Font Awesome) are loaded from Cloudflare's CDN. Cloudflare may process request metadata in accordance with their privacy policy.
• Unsplash — some images are served directly from Unsplash's servers. Unsplash may log request metadata.

None of these services receive your name, email, or any information you submit through the contact form.

05 How Your Data Is Used

Any information you voluntarily submit through the contact form or newsletter sign-up is used solely to:

• Respond to your message or enquiry.
• Send you the project updates or articles you subscribed to.

Your data is never sold, rented, shared with advertisers, or used for any purpose beyond direct communication with you.

06 Data Retention

Contact form messages are retained only as long as necessary to resolve your enquiry. Newsletter subscriptions are retained until you unsubscribe.

You may request deletion of your data at any time by contacting me directly.

07 Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data I hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate data.
• Request deletion of your data.
• Withdraw consent for any processing based on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, please get in touch using the contact details below.

08 Contact

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how your data is handled, please reach out:

I will respond to all privacy-related enquiries within a reasonable timeframe.

09 Changes to This Policy

I may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Continued use of the site after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.