Protecting Your Privacy on Our Website: A Guide to Our Data Collection Practices
As an online platform, we understand how important privacy is to our visitors. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to explain our data collection practices and how we use your information. We collect data from you in several ways, including comments, media, and cookies, and we want to make sure you know what information we collect and how we use it.
Comments: What We Collect
When you leave a comment on our website, we collect the data you enter in the comments form, as well as your IP address and browser user agent string. This data helps us detect spam and ensures that comments are legitimate. We also create an anonymized string from your email address (known as a hash) to check if you are using the Gravatar service. If your comment is approved, your profile picture will be visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media: What We Collect
If you upload images to our website, please be mindful of any embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included in the images. Visitors to our website can download and extract this location data from images on our site.
Cookies: What We Collect
When you leave a comment on our site, you have the option to save your name, email address, and website in cookies. This feature is for your convenience, so you don’t have to fill in your details again when leaving another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, 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 set up several cookies to save your login information and screen display preferences. 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.
Embedded Content: What We Collect
Articles on our website may include embedded content from other websites, such as videos, images, and articles. This content behaves in the same way as if you visited the other website directly. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that content. If you have an account and are logged in to that website, they may track your interaction with the embedded content.
Who We Share Your Data With
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email. We do not share your data with any third parties for marketing purposes.
Data Retention
If you leave a comment, your comment and metadata will be retained indefinitely. This is so we can automatically recognize and approve any follow-up comments instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For registered users, we store personal information provided in their user profiles. 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.
Your Rights Over Your Data
If you have an account on our website or have left comments, you have the right to request an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you provided. 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.
Automated Spam Detection Service
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Conclusion
We hope this guide has helped you understand our data collection practices and how we use your information. Our goal is to provide a safe and secure online experience for all visitors to our website. If you have any questions