This is Cathy Brockman’s Privacy policy. This policy addresses our privacy, data protection, and affiliate links, as per the policies outlined under GDPR and the FTC affiliate rules.
Who we are
Our website address is: https://cathybrockman.com. You can read more about her here.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
If you use our contact form, you will be sent to the owner’s email. This email will be treated as confidential correspondence.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to save your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use Jetpack and server-side analytics only. It’s all anonymously processed, though your IP address will be logged and stored in the count of visitors in our AWstats (Cpanel).
Who we share your data with
We do not share your data with anyone else. If you receive an email about another author, we’ll have sent it via our own list and your information will not be visible to them unless you sign up to their list or act on their offers.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information, as can our host. Our host operates in Europe so is fully GDPR compliant, though our servers are in Texas.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. We cannot extract you from any logs created by the server to keep track of stats, but it will only contain an IP address and date of access.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Any third party email service we choose to use will also be sent your information to allow us to send you email.
How we protect your data
We use various security plugins and log in regularly to update and protect content via our site. We comply with all hack notices sent by our host.
What data breach procedures we have in place
Our host cleans all hack or suspected hack issues and will ensure that anything that is discovered is reported to you.
What third parties we receive data from
Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks MAY send us data based on whether the login details are used. Any tweets or information about your liking or following may be displayed in our sidebar.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
We profile our content through Akismet for spam and our server checks information too. This data is all automated.
Industry regulatory disclosure requirements
Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate – we use affiliate links for various recommendations. We offer honest reviews, but we do receive affiliate fees or free copies of books to review. All views reflected on this blog are our own unless marked guest post or without a byline by Cat Brockman.