Here I discuss in simple terms (meaning, non-lawyerese) how I’m using your personal data for this website and my newsletter. Please note that I will never share your data unless required to by law. You can request an exported file of your personal data or ask us to delete all of your stored data by using the following Contact Form.
Website
General
This website (www.thegoldenelm.org) tracks the IP addresses of anyone who visits. This is really only used to IP ban the overachieving hackers trying to break in or leave mess on the pages. If you create a login profile, it will store your email address, name, and any customized profile information you provide, so it can remember who you are when you return. This is data that can be removed on request.
Comments
You can also leave comments on the website, which will store what info you provide. In addition, there is some gobbledygook here straight from the WordPress privacy policy guide:
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.
Contact Form
If you use the Contact Me form, whatever data you provide is saved and used for private correspondence only; it isn’t used for marketing purposes.
Cookies (and not the edible kind)
This website also uses cookies. Once again, WordPress provides exact details on how these are used and stored:
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving 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.
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.
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.
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.
Embedded Images and Videos
I embed Amazon books and YouTube videos. Here’s what WordPress has to say about that:
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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Facebook Pixel and Amazon Ads
The website also has a Facebook Pixel which is used to track aggregate data like how many times a link has been clicked. I use this to judge the effectiveness of my ‘come to my site and buy my books’ marketing. The Pixel doesn’t track individual activity. Finally, the website has Amazon personalized ads which use cookies to customize what it shows based on your interests.
Newsletter
If you sign up to my newsletter, I store your email, name, and optional location using MailerLite. I also keep track of where the signups came from, like from my website or Instafreebie, so I can sort by genre in the future. Your link clicks and opens for each newsletter are also recorded, mostly to see how good or bad my newsletter was so I can improve the quality of what I deliver to you in the future.