Privacy Policy

Who I am

My website address is: https://www.allancole.com.

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.

Cookies

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.

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

Who we share your data with

Google Analytics and WordPress.com Stats (via Jetpack).

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.

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.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

Data Used: The following information (made available from the visitor’s browser) is collected and sent to Automattic’s Demand Partners: IP address, geographical data (derived from the IP address), user agent, operating system, device type, unique user ID (randomly generated identifier), current URL, and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) interest category. Log data (IP address, geographical data, user agent, operating system, device type) is stored for 30 days. The unique user ID is stored in cookies and is retained for 1 year.

Activity Tracked: Ad impressions, video-related events (i.e. pause, mute, 100% plays, etc.) or errors, and ad click events. Various cookies are used for the following purposes: delivering targeted advertisements to specific visitors, storing user identifiers, and collecting anonymous ad platform stats.

Carousel

Image views are only recorded if the site owner, has explicitly enabled image view stats tracking for this feature via the jetpack_enable_carousel_stats filter.

Data Used: If image view tracking is enabled, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Image views.

Comment Likes

This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: In order to process a comment like, the following information is used: WordPress.com user ID/username (you must be logged in to use this feature), the local site-specific user ID (if the user is signed in to the site on which the like occurred), and a true/false data point that tells us if the user liked a specific comment. If you perform a like action from one of our mobile apps, some additional information is used to track the activity: IP address, user agent, timestamp of event, blog ID, browser language, country code, and device info.

Activity Tracked: Comment likes.

Mobile Theme

Data Used: A visitor’s preference on viewing the mobile version of a site.

Activity Tracked: A cookie (akm_mobile) is stored for 3.5 days to remember whether or not a visitor of the site wishes to view its mobile version. Learn more about this cookie.

Notifications

This feature is only accessible to registered users of the site who are logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. Some visitor-related information or activity may be sent to the site owner via this feature. This may include: email address, WordPress.com username, site URL, email address, comment content, follow actions, etc.

Activity Tracked: Sending notifications (i.e. when we send a notification to a particular user), opening notifications (i.e. when a user opens a notification that they receive), performing an action from within the notification panel (e.g. liking a comment or marking a comment as spam), and clicking on any link from within the notification panel/interface.

Video Hosting

This feature is only available to sites on the Premium and Professional plans.

Data Used: For video play tracking via WordPress.com Stats, the following information is used: viewer’s IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. If Google Analytics is enabled, video play events will be sent there, as well.

Activity Tracked: Video plays.

WooCommerce Services

Data Used: For payments with PayPal or Stripe: purchase total, currency, billing information. For taxes: the value of goods in the cart, value of shipping, destination address. For checkout rates: destination address, purchased product IDs, dimensions, weight, and quantities. For shipping labels: customer’s name, address as well as the dimensions, weight, and quantities of purchased products.

Data Synced (?): For payments, we send the purchase total, currency and customer’s billing information to the respective payment processor. Please see the respective third party’s privacy policy (Stripe’s Privacy Policy and PayPal’s Privacy Policy) for more details. For automated taxes we send the value of goods in the cart, the value of shipping, and the destination address to TaxJar. Please see TaxJar’s Privacy Policy for details about how they handle this information. For checkout rates we send the destination ZIP/postal code and purchased product dimensions, weight and quantities to USPS or Canada Post, depending on the service used. For shipping labels we send the customer’s name, address as well as the dimensions, weight, and quantities of purchased products to EasyPost. We also store the purchased shipping labels on our server to make it easy to reprint them and handle support requests.