Privacy Policy
This privacy policy has been compiled to better serve those who are concerned with how their ‘Personally identifiable information’ (PII) is being used online. PII, as used in US privacy law and information security, is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context.
Please read our privacy policy carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect or otherwise handle your Personally Identifiable Information in accordance with our website.
My site complies with the GDPR. Here is how your data is used:
- Any WordPress Cookies are necessary for the operation of the site.
- My site uses Google Analytics and MonsterInsights to track website usage. If you prefer not to have your usage of the site tracked, Google recommends you install the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Addon.
- My site does not store, process, or track data of people who comment on our website. This is done through Disqus. You can read more about them and take action on your global profile.
- When you fill out the optional opt-in form, your email address is sent to me by MailerLite. Please refer to MailerLite’s’ privacy policy. If you wish to have your email removed simply unsubscribe.
- For concerns, please reach out to me via the contact form or any of my social medias.
What It Means To Sign Up:
- I won’t spam you. You’ll get at most one e-mail from me per month except around a book launch when I might email you more frequently.
- Your information will be kept secure by MailerLite (my mailing list provider) and not shared with any third parties.
- You can leave anytime using the Unsubscribe link in the bottom of the newsletter.
If you can’t see the form or have trouble, use this page to subscribe.
This Privacy Policy is designed to inform you about what personally identifiable information (PII) this website collects and what may be done with that PII.
User Tracking
You are not required to submit any PII to use this website. However, the server for this website may collect data about your visit, your computer’s IP address, browser type, operating system, geographic location, referral source, pages visited, and other “analytics” data. I may review that data from time to time to understand how the website is used and to improve the website for users. I do not currently provide that data to any third parties, but may in the future release it to publishers or agents interested in my work.
I do not track users after they visit my site.
Mailing Lists
At your election, you may provide your email address (and optionally, your name) to subscribe to my blog and/or receive my newsletters. Your IP address will be recorded by MailerLite, my mailing list provider, as proof of consent. Your information will be stored securely by MailerLite.
Your Right to Be Forgotten
You may unsubscribe from my mailing list by clicking on the unsubscribe link on any newsletter.
Disclosure and Consent
Please do not disclose to me the PII of any other person without that person’s consent.
This site is directed to adults and not directed to children under the age of 13. I ask that minors not submit any PII. This site complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and does not permit registration by, and will not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from, anyone under 13 years of age.
I will take reasonable technical precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your PII. I will not provide your email address or any other PII to any other person, other than (i) to MailerLite or another provider which assists me in sending newsletters and emails, or (ii) if required to be disclosed by law or in connection with any actual or threatened legal proceeding.
Comment Policy
All comments on this blog are moderated. I reserve the right to remove any comments from the blog if I find them offensive, defamatory, obscene, abusive, vulgar, or in any way inappropriate.
Link Policy
My website and blog include hyperlinks to other websites. I have no control over and am not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites and blogs.
Copyright and Fair Use
My website and its contents — including blog entries — are copyrighted, with all rights reserved by me. You may, however, quote from my website and blog under rules of Fair Use, so long as you provide attribution to me and a link back to my site.
I may update this Privacy Policy from time to time by posting an undated version on my website.
What personal information do we collect from the people that visit our blog, website or app?
When ordering or registering on my site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your email address or other details to help you with your experience.
When do we collect information?
We collect information from you when you subscribe to a newsletter, fill out a form or enter information on our site.
How do we use your information?
We may use the information we collect from you when you register, make a purchase, sign up for our newsletter, respond to a survey or marketing communication, surf the website, or use certain other site features in the following ways:
- To improve our website in order to better serve you.
- To allow us to better service you in responding to your customer service requests.
- To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature.
How do we protect visitor information?
Our website is scanned on a regular basis for security holes and known vulnerabilities in order to make your visit to our site as safe as possible. We use regular Malware Scanning. We do not use an SSL certificate.
Do we use ‘cookies’?
Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. For instance, we use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart. They are also used to help us understand your preferences based on previous or current site activity, which enables us to provide you with improved services. We also use cookies to help us compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.
We use cookies to:
Understand and save user’s preferences for future visits.
Keep track of advertisements.You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser (like Internet Explorer) settings. Each browser is a little different, so look at your browser’s Help menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies.If you disable cookies off, some features will be disabled It won’t affect the users experience that make your site experience more efficient and some of our services will not function properly. However, you can still place orders .
Third Party Disclosure
We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information unless we provide you with advance notice. This does not include website hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.
Third party links
Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third party products or services on our website. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.
We have implemented the following:
We, along with third-party vendors, such as Google, use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookies) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) or other third-party identifiers together to compile data regarding user interactions with ad impressions, and other ad service functions as they relate to our website.
Opting out: Users can set preferences for how Google advertises to you using the Google Ad Settings page. Alternatively, you can opt out by visiting the Network Advertising initiative opt out page or permanently using the Google Analytics Opt Out Browser add on.
California Online Privacy Protection Act
CalOPPA is the first state law in the nation to require commercial websites and online services to post a privacy policy. The law’s reach stretches well beyond California to require a person or company in the United States (and conceivably the world) that operates websites collecting personally identifiable information from California consumers to post a conspicuous privacy policy on its website stating exactly the information being collected and those individuals with whom it is being shared, and to comply with this policy. – See more at: http://consumercal.org/california-online-privacy-protection-act-caloppa/#sthash.0FdRbT51.dpuf
According to CalOPPA we agree to the following:
Users can visit our site anonymously
Once this privacy policy is created, we will add a link to it on our home page, or as a minimum on the first significant page after entering our website.Our Privacy Policy link includes the word ‘Privacy’, and can be easily be found on the page specified above.Users will be notified of any privacy policy changes:
On our Privacy Policy Page, users are able to change their personal information: By emailing us.
COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)
When it comes to the collection of personal information from children under 13, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) puts parents in control. The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, enforces the COPPA Rule, which spells out what operators of websites and online services must do to protect children’s privacy and safety online.We do not specifically market to children under 13.
Fair Information Practices
The Fair Information Practices Principles form the backbone of privacy law in the United States and the concepts they include have played a significant role in the development of data protection laws around the globe. Understanding the Fair Information Practice Principles and how they should be implemented is critical to comply with the various privacy laws that protect personal information.
In order to be in line with Fair Information Practices we will take the following responsive action, should a data breach occur:
We will notify the users via in site notification within 1 business day. We also agree to the individual redress principle, which requires that individuals have a right to pursue legally enforceable rights against data collectors and processors who fail to adhere to the law. This principle requires not only that individuals have enforceable rights against data users, but also that individuals have recourse to courts or a government agency to investigate and/or prosecute non-compliance by data processors.
CAN SPAM Act
The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have emails stopped from being sent to them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.
We collect your email address in order to:• Send information, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.
Market to our mailing list or continue to send emails to our clients after the original transaction has occurred
To be in accordance with CANSPAM we agree to the following:
- NOT use false, or misleading subjects or email addresses
- Identify the message as an advertisement in some reasonable way
- Include the physical address of our business or site headquarters
- Monitor third party email marketing services for compliance, if one is used.•
- Honor opt-out/unsubscribe requests quickly
- Allow users to unsubscribe by using the link at the bottom of each email
- If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, you can Follow the instructions at the bottom of each email and we will promptly remove you from ALL correspondence.
Additional information about the Sassy Social Share plugin that this site uses.
Our plugins and add-ons are compatible with GDPR. Below are the common questions related to GDPR.
Do your plugins track any data?
We do not track any user data via our plugins. But if our plugin depends on any third party service, they might track user data. This can happen in following two ways:
1. Embedded Widgets
Some of our plugins have features to integrate embedded widgets as is, from third party services (like Facebook Like, Facebook Recommend, Twitter Tweet official buttons). You can include relevant text in the privacy policy of your website as mentioned below.
2. Third-party APIs/Connections
Our plugins send request to third party APIs via website-visitor’s web browser to fetch information (like social shares, social comment count). This request made by web browser may include IP address, which can then be seen by the third-party that it’s being requested from. This API request doesn’t include any personal data of the website user other than the IP address. To make your users aware of this, you can include relevant snippets in your website’s privacy policy.
Where is the data collected by your plugins stored?
We do not store any data fetched by our plugins on our servers, neither we share that data with any third party. Our plugins run absolutely on your website and store the data in the database of your website.
Do your plugins load any external scripts?
As mentioned before, our plugins run absolutely from your website and hence load the scripts too from your website with exception of third-party embedded widgets (like Facebook Like/Recommend official button, Twitter tweet official button, Facebook Comments) which require our plugin to load scripts from the servers of relevant service. You can include relevant snippets in the Privacy Policy of your website stating how these services handle privacy of your users.
GDPR Privacy Policy Snippets
Below are a collection of snippets that you can include in your website’s privacy policy, depending on which plugin and features you are using.
Disqus Comments
If you are using Disqus Comments feature of any of our plugin, you can add following in the privacy policy of your website:
We use Disqus Comments widget at our website for you to be able to comment at our webpages using Disqus commenting system. Disqus may collect information about you when you register for and use the Service. Such information may include “Personally Identifiable Information” which means information that identifies you as an individual, such information may include, but is not limited to, your name, email address, telephone number, username or account ID, and “Non-Personally Identifiable Information” which means information that does not identify you as an individual. Non-Personally Identifiable Information may include, but is not limited to, information about your browser, your IP address, device ID, what pages you visit on our Partner Sites, which website you came from, what advertisements you clicked on, whether on our Partner Websites, the Service or other third party websites, and other information about your online activity that does not identify you as an individual, in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://help.disqus.com/terms-and-policies/disqus-privacy-policy
Facebook Like, Facebook Recommend, Facebook Share official buttons
If you are using social sharing feature of our plugins and you have enabled any of these official buttons, you can add following in the privacy policy of your website:
We embed a Facebook widget to allow you to see number of likes/shares/recommends and “like/share/recommend” our webpages. This widget may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the widget, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the widget (such as “liking/sharing/recommending” our webpage), if you are logged in to Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update
Twitter Tweet official button
If you are using social sharing feature of our plugins and you have enabled Twitter Tweet official button, you can add following in the privacy policy of your website:
We use a Twitter Tweet widget at our website. As a result, our website makes requests to Twitter’s servers for you to be able to tweet our webpages using your Twitter account. These requests make your IP address visible to Twitter, who may use it in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://twitter.com/en/privacy#update