Privacy Policy

Who we are

This Privacy Policy describes how your personal information is collected, used, and shared when you visit https://www.stevewhitespeaks.com (the “Site”).

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

When you visit the Site, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device. Additionally, as you browse the Site, we collect information about the individual web pages or products that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to the Site, and information about how you interact with the Site. We refer to this automatically-collected information as “Device Information.”

We may collect Device Information using the following technologies:

    – “Cookies” are data files that are placed on your device or computer and often include an anonymous unique identifier. For more information about cookies, and how to disable cookies, visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org. (see “Cookies” below for more further information).

    – “Log files” track actions occurring on the Site, and collect data including your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, and date/time stamps.

    – “Web beacons,” “tags,” and “pixels” are electronic files used to record information about how you browse the Site.

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.

Newsletter Subscription & Contact Forms

Additionally when you subscribe to the newsletter, or other marketing or contact list to receive communications from us or download content, we collect certain information from you, including your name, email address, and business / organization name. We refer to this information as “Subscriber Information.”

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 applicable, when 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.

If applicable, 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 applicable, when 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.

When we talk about “Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy, we are talking about Device Information and Subscriber Information.

How do we use your personal information?

We use the Device Information that we generally collect to help us screen for potential risk and fraud (in particular, your IP address), and more generally to improve and optimize our Site (for example, by generating analytics about how our customers browse and interact with the Site, and to assess the success of our marketing and advertising campaigns).

When in line with the preferences you have shared with us when collecting Subscriber Information, we provide you with information or advertising relating to our content.

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.

Sharing Your Personal Information

We share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information, as described above. For example, we use Mailchimp to power our email marketing– you can read more about how these services use your Personal Information here:

Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/

We also use Google Analytics to help us understand how our customers use the Site–you can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Finally, we may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.

As described above, we use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) educational page at http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work.

You can opt out of targeted advertising by:

Additionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at: http://optout.aboutads.info/.

Do Not Track

Please note that we do not alter our Site’s data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser. To determine whether any of the third-party services it uses honor the “Do Not Track” requests, please read their privacy policies.

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.

If you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise this right, please contact us through the contact information below.

Additionally, if you are a European resident we note that we are processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example if you make an order through the Site), or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above.  Additionally, please note that your information will be transferred outside of Europe, including to Canada and the United States.

Information for Californian consumers

This part of the document integrates with and supplements the information contained in the rest of the privacy policy and is provided by the business running this Site. The provisions contained in this section apply to all users who are consumers residing in the state of California, United States of America, according to “The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018” (Users are referred to below, simply as “you”, “your”, “yours”), and, for such consumers, these provisions supersede any other possibly divergent or conflicting provisions contained in the privacy policy.

Categories of personal information collected, disclosed or sold, and how we collect that information:
Detailed information on the categories of personal information we collection can be found in the section above under “Personal Information We Collect.”

How we use the information we collect: sharing and disclosing of your personal information with third parties for a business purpose
We may disclose the personal information we collect about you to a third party for business purposes. In this case, we enter a written agreement with such third party that requires the recipient to both keep the personal information confidential and not use it for any purpose(s) other than those necessary for the performance of the agreement.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties when you explicitly ask or authorize us to do so, in order to provide you with requested Service and/or products.

To find out more about the purposes of processing, please refer to the relevant section of this document titled “How Do We Use Your Personal Information?”

Sale of your personal information
For our purposes, the word “sale” means any “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to another business or a third party, for monetary or other valuable consideration”.

This means that, for example, a sale can happen whenever an application runs ads, or makes statistical analyses on the traffic or views, or simply because it uses tools such as social network plugins and the like. You can review this information in greater detail in the section titled, “Sharing Your Personal Information.”

Your right to opt out of the sale of personal information
You have the right to opt out of the sale of your personal information. This means that whenever you request us to stop selling your data, we will abide by your request. Such requests can be made freely, at any time, without submitting any verifiable request, simply by following the instructions below.

Instructions to opt out of the sale of personal information
If you’d like to know more, or exercise your right to opt out in regard to all the sales carried out by this Site, both online and offline, you can contact us for further information using the contact details provided in this document.

What are the purposes for which we use your personal information?
We may use your personal information to allow the operational functioning of this Site and features thereof (“business purposes”). In such cases, your personal information will be processed in a fashion necessary and proportionate to the business purpose for which it was collected, and strictly within the limits of compatible operational purposes.

We may also use your personal information for other reasons such as for commercial purposes (as indicated within the section “How Do We Use Your Personal Information?” within this document), as well as for complying with the law and defending our rights before the competent authorities where our rights and interests are threatened or we suffer an actual damage.

We will not use your personal information for different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without notifying you.

Your California privacy rights and how to exercise them

The right to know and to portability
You have the right to request that we disclose to you:

  • the categories and sources of the personal information that we collect about you, the purposes for which we use your information and with whom such information is shared;
  • in case of sale of personal information or disclosure for a business purpose, two separate lists where we disclose:
    • for sales, the personal information categories purchased by each category of recipient; and
    • for disclosures for a business purpose, the personal information categories obtained by each category of recipient.

The disclosure described above will be limited to the personal information collected or used over the past 12 months.

If we deliver our response electronically, the information enclosed will be “portable”, i.e. delivered in an easily usable format to enable you to transmit the information to another entity without hindrance – provided that this is technically feasible.

The right to request the deletion of your personal information
You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information, subject to exceptions set forth by the law (such as, including but not limited to, where the information is used to identify and repair errors on this Site, to detect security incidents and protect against fraudulent or illegal activities, to exercise certain rights etc.).

If no legal exception applies, as a result of exercising your right, we will delete your personal information and direct any of our service providers to do so.

How to exercise your rights
To exercise the rights described above, you need to submit your verifiable request to us by contacting us via the details provided in this document.

For us to respond to your request, it’s necessary that we know who you are. Therefore, you can only exercise the above rights by making a verifiable request which must:

  • provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative;
  • describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We will not respond to any request if we are unable to verify your identity and therefore confirm the personal information in our possession actually relates to you.

If you cannot personally submit a verifiable request, you can authorize a person registered with the California Secretary of State to act on your behalf.

If you are an adult, you can make a verifiable request on behalf of a minor under your parental authority. You can submit a maximum number of 2 requests over a period of 12 months.

How and when we are expected to handle your request
We will confirm receipt of your verifiable request within 10 days and provide information about how we will process your request.

We will respond to your request within 45 days of its receipt. Should we need more time, we will explain to you the reasons why, and how much more time we need. In this regard, please note that we may take up to 90 days to fulfill your request.

Our disclosure(s) will cover the preceding 12 month period.

Should we deny your request, we will explain you the reasons behind our denial.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable request unless such request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. In such cases, we may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse to act on the request. In either case, we will communicate our choices and explain the reasons behind it.

Non-discrimination policy
We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights under the CCPA.

Where we send your data

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

Changes

We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.

Contact Us

For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail at steve@stevewhitespeaks.com.