Purpose

The purpose of this privacy policy is to let you know what information may be collected via the website Phil Cobb, Author at  https://philcobbauthor.com and how it may be used.

What personal information is collected, and why

Comments

Visitor comments may be checked through Akismet, an automated spam detection service. The information collected typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself). To learn how your comment data is processed, click here.

Also, 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.  After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here.

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 subscribe to receive notices of information from Phil Cobb, Author, both personal and non-personal data may be collected. Such data may include name, email address, IP addresses, usage data, cookies data, online navigation data, location data, and browser data.

Contact form submissions will be retained as necessary for customer service purposes, but your information is not sold or used for spam.

The notices that you subscribed to receive can include emails that tell you about new posts, books, and other matters relevant to this website as well as information about the writer, Phil Cobb.

The service that provides the contact forms and collects the information is MailerLite. To learn how they process information, click here.

How to unsubscribe

If you later decide that you do not want to receive any more emails, you may click on the unsubscribe link found at the bottom of an email.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer or other device, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. This helps provide a better and more efficient browsing experience for returning visitors.

Cookies can help identify and track visitors and their usage of the website.

WordPress is the web publishing platform used by this website. WordPress generates cookies as follows:

  • If you leave a comment on this website, you can 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.
  • If you have an account and you log in to this site, a temporary cookie will be set 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, several cookies also will be set up 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.

Some of this website’s service providers also use cookies as explained in their privacy policies. Links to those policies are provided in the section farther below called “Who we share your data with.”

If you want to set your web browser to delete or refuse cookies, visit your browser’s help pages. If you do not accept cookies, some of the features of this website and some pages may not function or display as they should.

For more information about cookies as well as information on “Controlling Cookies,” click here.

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 widgets, 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.

Analytics

This website uses the Google Analytics Dashboard for WP plugin to provide statistics about visitor usage of the site’s posts and pages. The plugin supports user IP address anonymization. The plugin is provided by ExactMetrics. Their privacy policy is here.

Google Analytics provides a browser extension that will allow users to opt-out  of analytics tracking across websites. You may find that option here.

Who your data is shared with

Information gathered at this website is shared with its service providers. Information may be collected by the service providers via log files that include data such as your IP address, internet service provider, browser, the date and time of your visit, and the pages you visited.

In addition, information may be collected via sign-up forms, links that you click, and cookies. Web beacons may be used for reports about email campaigns and actions taken by users of the website. Your personal information will not be disclosed to third parties other than the website’s service providers unless compelled by law or to defend this website’s legal position. To support its services for this website, a service provider may share collected personal information with its service providers.

Please visit these third-party services to view their privacy policies for the information they may collect or track:

How long your data is retained

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is to help recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on this website (if any), the personal information they provide in their user profile is stored. WordPress collects the data shown on the user profile screen. To see the WordPress privacy policy, click here. 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.

You can request to export or erase 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 that is held about you, including any data that you have provided. You can also request to have any personal data erased. This does not include any data that must be kept for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act

This website is directed toward adults; it is not directed toward children under the age of 13. In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, this website will not knowingly collect or use personal information from anyone under 13 years of age.

California Do Not Track disclosures

This website does not respond to a visitor’s Do Not Track signal. As to whether third-party services honor or do not honor Do Not Track requests, please read their privacy policies.

Policy changes

This Privacy Policy may be changed at any time. Any changes in the policy will be made on this page. The date of the last changes will be shown on this page.

If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not use this website or any services that it offers. Your use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of that change.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on January 20, 2019.

Contact information

If you have questions, please send an email to  phil (at) philcobbauthor (dot) com