Privacy

Who is She Wordsmiths 

This policy sets out our position on the privacy of personal data to comply with the GDPR 2018 and relates to the entirety “She Wordsmiths..” (on all platforms and formats).

She Wordsmiths is owned and managed by Marie T Smith. I am committed to ensuring that your information is secure with us and with third parties who act on our behalf. I do all I can to respect your right to privacy and the protection of your personal information.

My request for your data is limited. A subscription to a newsletter at best.

I also analyse and optimise my website content in order to strive to give the best reading experience. This is my statement on the data which is gathered behind the scenes when you choose to interact with my blog.

What data I collect, how and why

Direct communications with me

From time to time I take commissions to undertake work for you as a client.  I recognise that you might choose to contact  me by e-mail or by social media messaging services for the purposes of understanding the service I offer and to obtain quotes. In doing so you are opening up dialogue about my services which is a legitimate reason to stay in touch. In the course of such communication I may take details such as name, e-mail address, postal address, telephone number, social media handles.  I will retain your contact details for as long as that dialogue is relevant.  You should also understand that once I have undertaken work for you, I am required to hold evidence of any contracts/clients for a total of seven years for tax purposes. I will not use your contact details for further marketing unless you have given permission for me to do so.

Information you provide directly to our site

Blog Comments

By choosing to comment on a blog you should understand that you have opted to submit said comments along with your name, e-mail address and an IP (Internet Protocol) address. This data is disclosed to, and remains visible to, the administrators of the blog, as part of the comment which was left. You will input that when you log in to comment – so you have full control over whether you are happy to submit that data at the time of entry.

Should you decide at a future date you no longer want that data held against your comment, then you have a legal right to contact us to ask for that data to be deleted – in the full understanding that in order to do so your comment will also need to be removed.

Newsletter Subscription

The website invites you to sign up to receive updates when my blogs are updated and any other news which is pertinent. You are only required to supply an e-mail address and a name. This will only be retained and used for the purposes as described. And your newsletter provides for you to have full control to unsubscribe at any time. This will remove your contact details entirely.

Information collected automatically

Site Stats and Optimisation

My host automatically collects a whole range of information about visitors to my website to enable me to understand my readers, and so provide a better experience and better content. However, the good news is, as site administrator, I only receive this data in its very generic form. So I can see how often our content was viewed, how my blog was found, which country the visitor was from, which were my most popular blogs (I love that data) and which were re-shared back out to social media (and I love that data even more). But it doesn’t tell me anything which allows me to identify you personally.

This is all done behind the scenes using cookies or similar technologies.

Cookies, Pixels and Other Technologies: A cookie is a piece of information that our website stores on a visitor’s (that’s your) computer, and that the visitor’s browser sends back to the website each time the you come back to us. Pixel tags are small blocks of code placed on sites. Automattic.com uses cookies, pixel tags and similar to help identify and track visitors to our site. They are also used to deliver targeted ads when ads are enabled for free WordPress.com sites (which this site is). Visitors may wish to restrict the use of cookies, control how long they are stored for or completely prevent them from being set. You can do this within your own browser. It’s important to note that restricting or disabling the use of cookies can limit the functionality of websites.

Information you share publicly

It sounds obvious but information that visitors choose to make public is PUBLIC. That means, of course, that information such as visitor comments and “likes” are all available for anyone viewing our site to see. That might include information about the visitor that is displayed in connection with a comment or “like” (e.g. a visitor’s WordPress.com username, a Gravatar). So choose your comments wisely – I cannot be held responsible for you choosing to share sensitive information about yourself in a comment.

While copyright expressly forbids reuse of my own content without permission (you can read the copyright statement on the She Chats.... page) public information can be indexed by search engines or seen by third parties.

Your rights

You have a number of legal rights to control what I do with your information.

1. you can ask me to indicate what information I have about you and get a copy of it
2. request I correct or update information that is wrong
3. ask me to stop using your information in certain circumstances
4. request to stop sending you marketing material (which I don’t do except through the newsletter you have specifically signed up for)
5. request or send some of your data to someone else for them to use

If you wish to exercise any of these rights please contact me directly by e-mail here

There is no fee to access your personal data. However, if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive then I may refuse to comply with your request, or request a payment, in such circumstances.

In order to confirm your identity, you may be required to supply more specific information to me. I am sure you will appreciate this is a sensible security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to anyone who has no right to receive it.

I will aim to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. However if your request is particularly complex, you have made multiple requests, or it requires me to contact my host provider then this could take longer.

Our Legal Right to Disclose

I may disclose information about you in response to a legal request, court order, or other governmental request.

I may also disclose information about you when I believe in good faith that it is reasonably necessary in order to protect our property, ourselves, third parties, or the public in general.

Third Party Services

I am not responsible for the practices employed by other websites or content linked to from this website. So when you use a link to go from my website to another website, you have now passed into another “room” – a room which should have its own secure privacy policy in place. In a nutshell, this privacy policy no longer applies. I would always advise reading over the policy of any third part website before proceeding to browse or interact there. Generally I will have explored the validity of the link and provided it in good faith as being of value to the article being written and to our readers.

The same applies to your use of my social media icons to share a story. Of course, I actively encourage a like or a share on social media. However once you have exited this website you are then operating within their terms and privacy policy.

And, I are not responsible for republished content from this blog on other blogs or websites without my permission.

Transferring information overseas

I do not actively transfer any personal data overseas.

Readers are reminded that this blog is designed and hosted with Automattic.com who are a US based company. These are the folks behind WordPress.com and Jetpack.

I am satisfied that the policy Automattic has in place to protect data collected through the activities detailed in “What Data, How and Why” are satisfactory. You can read their own full privacy policy here:

There are no additional third party plugins or services used for this website which process personal data.

Marketing

I do not collect data for the purposes of direct sales marketing except via your newsletter subscription. Neither do I share, sell or lease any such data to third parties. Not even my general visitor stats.

How long I keep your information

Data collected at the time a comment is submitted, or to analyse my site’s performance, or to subscribe to a newsletter remains on the server until such time as comments are removed, the subscriber is removed, or the website closed and deleted entirely.

Privacy Policy Updates

This privacy policy is subject to change without notice. If you have any questions feel free to contact me directly here: marie@gallowhillcottage.co.uk

Last updated: 13th November 2019