audiobook.co.uk

Privacy policy

The short version: we do not have accounts, the only thing you can give us is an optional star rating, analytics stays off unless you allow it, and we do not try to identify you.

Last updated: 26 September 2026

Who we are

audiobook.co.uk is an independent UK website about audiobooks, run by Centraserve Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 03191014) with its registered office at Unit 1.4 Lanwades Business Park, Kennett, Newmarket, CB8 7PN. Centraserve Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described on this page. For any privacy question, or to exercise any of the rights below, email [email protected].

What we collect

We do not have user accounts, we do not run a contact form, and we do not ask you for your name, email address or any other personal details. The only thing you can send us is an optional star rating on a series page, described below.

A few things nonetheless involve data about you:

1. Server logs

Our web server records ordinary access logs — the page requested, the time, your browser user agent, and your IP address. This is standard for any website and is used only to keep the site running securely and to diagnose faults. We do not use these logs to build a profile of you.

Lawful basis: legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)) — keeping the site available and secure.

2. Other companies your browser contacts

Pages here are put together from more than one place. As a page loads, your browser connects to the companies below, and each of them receives your IP address and your browser’s user agent in the process.

Google, Amazon and Wikimedia are told our domain name as the source of the request, not which page you are reading. We do not control what any of these companies record, and each handles it under its own privacy notice. All of them are based in the United States and may process it outside the UK.

Lawful basis: legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)) — delivering the site securely and displaying its typefaces and images. Analytics is the exception: it runs only with your consent.

3. Affiliate links

When you click a link from this site to Audible, Amazon, Audiobooks.com or another retailer, the retailer — or the affiliate network that runs its programme — records that you arrived from us, so we are credited if you go on to sign up or buy. That record, usually a cookie, is set by them, on their sites, under their own privacy policies — not by us, and not on this site.

Links to Audible go through our own /go/ address and then through Awin (awin1.com), the affiliate network that runs Audible’s UK programme. Awin records the click, and may set cookies of its own, before sending you on to Audible. Links to Audiobooks.com go through our own /go/ address and then through Post Affiliate Pro (audiobookscom.postaffiliatepro.com), the tracking service Audiobooks.com uses, which records the click and passes an identifier for your visit on to Audiobooks.com.

The reports these programmes give us are about orders, not people. They can show what was bought or signed up for, when, and the commission due, but not your name, contact details or payment details, and we make no attempt to work out who placed an order.

The privacy notices of Amazon, Audible, Audiobooks.com, Awin and Post Affiliate Pro govern what they do with that data, and you should read them if that matters to you.

4. Reader ratings

Each series page lets you give the series one to five stars. You do not need an account and no cookie is set. When you rate, we store the number of stars, which series it was for, the time, and a scrambled code derived from your IP address — made with a secret key held only on our server, so the address itself is not stored and cannot be read back out of the code. We use that code for one thing: so that each reader counts once per series, and rating again changes your earlier rating rather than adding a second one. The same code is used to stop any one address sending more than 20 ratings an hour, which is what keeps the averages honest.

No written review is collected and nothing you send is shown against your name. What appears on the page is only the average and the number of ratings, and only once 5 people have rated that series. The same average and count are given to search engines in the page’s structured data, so a search result may show them.

After you rate, your browser remembers which star you chose (in its local storage, not a cookie) so the stars show your own choice when you come back. That never leaves your browser.

Lawful basis: legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)) — publishing a fair reader average that one person cannot stuff with repeat votes.

5. Analytics

We use Google Analytics to see which pages are read, in aggregate — but only if you allow it. Until you choose Allow analytics in the banner, the Google Analytics script is not loaded at all: your browser makes no request to Google for it, and no analytics cookie is set. Choose No thanks, or simply ignore the banner, and that stays true on every page.

If you allow it, your browser loads Google’s script from www.googletagmanager.com and sends Google Analytics a record of each page you view: the page address and title, the site or page you came from, your browser, device type, screen size and language, and your IP address, from which Google works out an approximate location. Google Analytics also records how long you spend on each page, when you scroll to near the bottom of a page, and each click on a link that takes you straight to another website, including the address of that link. Cover images from Amazon link straight to Amazon, so clicking one tells Google which Amazon product page you went to, and that address carries our Amazon Associates tag. It also sets two cookies on this domain, _ga and _ga_EDRMEFF48D, which last about two years and let it recognise a returning browser. We look at the results only in aggregate and do not combine them with any other data.

You can change your mind at any time with Cookie settings at the foot of every page. If you switch analytics off after allowing it, the page stops sending anything to Google straight away, those two cookies are deleted, and the script is not loaded on later pages. Blocking it with a browser extension works too.

Lawful basis: your consent (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(a)), which is also what the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations require before an analytics cookie is set. You can withdraw it at any time, as above.

Corrections. Until 6 September 2026 Google Analytics loaded on every page and set its cookies without asking, while this page said we set no first-party cookies at all. From then until 11 September 2026 it set no cookie until you agreed, but its script still loaded for every visitor and sent Google a cookieless record of each page view — including for visitors who had chosen No thanks — while the banner and this page said analytics was off, and a choice could not be changed once made. The code and this page were both corrected on 11 September 2026. Until the same date this page and the banner described only a record of each page view, and left out the scrolling and the clicks on links to other websites that Google Analytics also records once allowed.

What we do not do

How long we keep things

Server access logs are rotated and deleted on the hosting provider's standard schedule, within a matter of weeks.

We also count clicks on links that leave this site through our own /go/ address. For each click, the click count records the time, the kind of link (an Audible search, say, or an Audiobooks.com link), the title, name or search term the link was for, and the page on this site it was clicked from — or only that it came from elsewhere. The click count holds no IP address and no user agent. A click is still an ordinary request to our web server, though, so like every other request it also appears in the server access logs described above, with your IP address and user agent alongside the /go/ address, which contains that title, name or search term. Each day’s click count is deleted once it is more than 90 days old; the clean-up runs on the first click of each new day.

Star ratings are kept for as long as the series page exists, because they make up its average. The scrambled code stored with each rating is erased once it is 365 days old, leaving only the star and the date; after that, nothing links a rating to anyone.

We keep no other data about visitors.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, correct, erase, restrict or object to our use of your personal data, and to data portability. We have no accounts and ask you for nothing, so in practice there is usually nothing we can find that is linked to you — but ask, and we will tell you honestly what we do and do not have. For anything held by the companies named above, their own privacy notices explain how to ask them.

For star ratings: because we hold only a scrambled code, we cannot look up your ratings from your name. If you tell us the IP address you rated from, and roughly when, we can recreate the code and find or delete those ratings. You can also change a rating at any time simply by rating the series again.

If you are unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

This site is not aimed at children, and it asks no one, of any age, for personal details. The optional star rating asks for nothing but a number.

Changes

If we change how the site works — most likely by adding a newsletter, or by loading something from another company — we will update this page and change the date at the top before the change goes live.