Last updated: 22 October 2026
Ellen’s Cozy Kitchen (ellenscozykitchen.com) is run by AKKO BV, a small Belgian company owned by Ellen Van Gool and Michiel Smulders. This page explains what personal data we collect when you visit the site, why we collect it, and what you can do about it. It covers ellenscozykitchen.com only. Our Dutch-language site, kokerellen.be, has its own policy.
The short version
- There are no ads on this site at the moment, and we never sell your data.
- We use Google Analytics to see which recipes people read. Visitors in Europe are only measured with cookies after they click Accept.
- If you leave a comment, rate a recipe or sign up for our newsletter, we keep what you send us for that purpose only.
- You can change your cookie choice at any time with the Cookie settings link at the bottom of every page.
Who is responsible for your data
AKKO BV, trading as Ellen’s Cozy Kitchen
Edgard Casteleinstraat 10 bus 2, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium
Company number BE 0717.996.770
For anything about your privacy, email Michiel at privacy@kokerellen.be.
What we collect and why
We only collect what we need to run the site. Under the GDPR every use of personal data needs a legal basis, so we list it for each one.
| What for | What we collect | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Visitor statistics (Google Analytics) | Pages you view, how you found the site, device and browser type, approximate location (country and city), and a random ID stored in a cookie. Google Analytics does not store your IP address. | In Europe (EEA, UK, Switzerland): your consent. Elsewhere: our legitimate interest in knowing which recipes are read. You can object at any time through Cookie settings. |
| Remembering your cookie choice | Whether you clicked Accept or Reject | Necessary to respect your choice (legal obligation) |
| Comments | Name, email address, website if you give one, your comment, IP address, browser details and the time you posted. Comments are checked for spam by Akismet. | Our legitimate interest in running a comment section and keeping spam out |
| Recipe ratings | Your star rating and your IP address, so the same person can’t rate a recipe many times | Our legitimate interest in fair ratings |
| Newsletter | Your first name and email address | Your consent. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link. |
| Emails you send us | Your email address and whatever you write | Our legitimate interest in answering you |
| Site search | The words you search for and your IP address | Our legitimate interest in improving the site |
| Security | IP address, browser details, the page requested and the page you came from | Our legitimate interest in protecting the site against attacks |
| Brand collaborations | Contact details of the people we work with, contracts and invoices | Performing the contract, and our legal obligations under Belgian accounting and tax law |
We don’t use your data for automated decisions or profiling.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file a website stores in your browser. This site uses one cookie to remember your cookie choice, and the Google Analytics cookies. There are no advertising cookies.
| Cookie | Set by | What it does | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|
eck_consent | ellenscozykitchen.com | Remembers whether you accepted or rejected cookies | 6 months |
_ga | Google Analytics, on our domain | Tells visits from the same browser apart, with a random ID | 2 years |
_ga_Y9H6NXTTEJ, _ga_L7ZM2265HK | Google Analytics, on our domain | Keeps track of your current visit. There are two because we measure the same traffic twice: once in Belgian time and once in US Eastern time. | 2 years |
How your choice works. We use Google Consent Mode, which tells Google what you allowed before anything is measured.
- Visitors in Europe (EEA, UK and Switzerland) see a cookie banner on their first visit. Accept and Reject are equally easy to click. Until you click Accept, no analytics cookies are set. Google Analytics then only receives a basic signal without an ID or cookie: that a page was viewed, when, and with what kind of browser. If you click Reject, any Google Analytics cookies already in your browser are deleted.
- Visitors outside Europe are measured with Google Analytics cookies by default. You can switch this off with the Cookie settings link.
- Everyone can change their choice at any time with the Cookie settings link at the bottom of every page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The site works fine without them.
Advertising signals in Google Consent Mode (ad storage, ad user data and ad personalization) are switched off for every visitor.
Other services the site loads
To show fonts, icons and the newsletter form, your browser connects to a few other companies when you open a page. None of them set cookies, but like any website they receive your IP address and basic browser details. We use them because the site needs them to look and work properly (legitimate interest).
| Service | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Google (Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics) | Visitor statistics, as described above |
| Adobe Fonts | The fonts on the site. Adobe counts page views for font licensing. |
| Font Awesome | The icons on the site |
| jsDelivr | Delivers a small script for the photo sliders |
| MailerLite | The newsletter sign-up form at the bottom of each page, including a small request MailerLite uses to measure the form |
The Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook icons are plain links. Nothing is shared with those platforms unless you click through, and from then on their own privacy policies apply.
Advertising
There are no ads on Ellen’s Cozy Kitchen right now, and no advertising scripts or cookies load on the site.
Once the site has grown enough, we plan to show ads through an advertising network, most likely Mediavine, which already runs the ads on kokerellen.be. Before that happens, we will update this policy, and the cookie banner will ask visitors in Europe for permission before any advertising cookies are used.
Who receives your data
We never sell or rent your data. The companies below process it for us, only for the purpose we use them for.
| Company | Role |
|---|---|
| Combell (Belgium) | Hosts the website and its database |
| Microsoft Azure (Belgium region) | Stores our encrypted backups of the website |
| Visitor statistics (Google Analytics) | |
| Automattic (Akismet) | Checks comments for spam |
| MalCare | Firewall and security monitoring of the website |
| MailerLite | Sends the newsletter and keeps the subscriber list |
| Adobe, Font Awesome, jsDelivr | Fonts, icons and scripts, as described above |
Some of these companies are based in the United States or use servers there. When your data leaves the European Economic Area, it is protected by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the company is certified under it, or by standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission.
How long we keep your data
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Google Analytics data | 14 months, then Google deletes it |
| Cookies | See the cookie table above |
| Comments | As long as the comment is on the site. Ask us and we delete it. |
| IP address with a recipe rating | As long as the rating is on the site |
| Newsletter subscription | Until you unsubscribe |
| Emails you send us | Up to 3 years after our last contact |
| Site search and security logs | 90 days |
| Website backups | Deleted after one year at the latest. Data you ask us to delete can stay in older backups until they expire. |
| Invoices and contracts with brands | As long as Belgian accounting and tax law requires |
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- show you the personal data we have about you, and give you a copy;
- correct it if it’s wrong;
- delete it;
- stop or limit using it, or object to how we use it;
- send it to you, or to another company, in a common format.
Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time: through Cookie settings for cookies, and through the unsubscribe link for the newsletter. Withdrawing doesn’t affect what we did before.
Email privacy@kokerellen.be and we’ll answer within one month. If you think we handle your data wrongly, you can file a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority (dataprotectionauthority.be), or with the data protection authority where you live.
Visitors from the United States
We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t share it for targeted advertising. You can send any request about your data to the same address, and we’ll handle it the same way.
Children
This site is not aimed at children under 16, and we don’t knowingly collect their data. If you think a child has sent us personal data, let us know and we’ll delete it.
Changes to this policy
We’ll update this page when the site changes, for example when we start showing ads. The date at the top shows when it was last updated.