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, along with the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help detect spam.

An anonymized string (also called a hash) may be created from your email address and provided to the Gravatar service to check if you are using it. You can find the Gravatar service’s privacy policy here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After your comment is approved, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you are a registered user and upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors to the website can download and extract location data from such images.

Contact Forms

If you contact us via a contact form, we collect your name, email address, and message content. These submissions are retained for customer service purposes but are not used for marketing without your consent.

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 don’t 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 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 display preferences. Login cookies last for two days, and display preference cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. When you log out, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be stored in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and only indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after one 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 had 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 if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How long we retain your data

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

For users that register on our website, 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 for 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 an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where your data is sent

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