Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Who we are

This is the website for Susan Bellows & Associates. Our website address is: https://susanbellows.com.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

We are dedicated to preserving visitors privacy and only collecting personal data that is necessary for the functionality of our website and services. We collect information provided by visitors when they use our contact form(s) (Name, email address, message, and anything else provided by the visitor in said form). This information is used solely for the purpose of communicating with the visitor and is only collected when provided through the submission of said form. We also collect information when a comment is submitted on this website. This data is collected in order to display visitor comments on our website. Furthermore, we also collect names and email addresses when a visitor signs up to our mailing list. This information is used for marketing communications with our visitors and is completely optional. Subscribers may opt out of our emails at any time. More information about the information we collect can be found below.

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.

Contact forms

Our website uses contact forms to collect visitor-submitted contact information and messages.We keep contact form submissions indefinitely for customer service purposes, but we do not use the information submitted through these forms for marketing purposes. You may get in touch with us at any time to request that your information be deleted from our email archive and address book, or to inquire what information we currently have,

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.

We also use cookies to analyze user activity via Google Analytics in order to improve website experience. For example, we use cookies to look at viewership patterns to see what content is most important to our visitors.

Our site uses a security and firewall plugin, Wordfence, which collects technical cookies which are used to identify users in order to prevent attacks and data loss. You can read Wordfence’s privacy policy 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 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

We use Google Analytics to track how our visitors browse this website in order to make changes to improve visitor experience. Here is a link to Google’s terms and privacy policy for Analytics. Here is a link that explains how Google uses data when visitors use our website.

Who we share your data with

We do not share any user data by default. If you choose to opt into our mailing list, we share your name and email address with our mailing list provider (Mailchimp) and use this data, with your permission, for marketing purposes.

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.

We keep contact form submissions, mailing list submissions, and comment data indefinitely. Visitors may request to know what information is stored and have it deleted at any time. Get in touch to make that request.

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. Get in touch to request this.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Mailing list submission forms are sent to Mailchimp. Donation/payment information is sent to and processed through PayPal, if applicable.

Our contact information

Susan Bellows & Associates
sbellows@susanbellows.com
(413) 566-3934

Additional information

How we protect your data

Our website is protected through an encrypted SSL certificate and we take all precautions to never release or share data other than the aforementioned instances which are required for our website to function properly. We also are dedicated to staying informed about any potential risks to security and data loss.

What data breach procedures we have in place

We have website security set up through the plugin Wordfence to notify us of any breach and in most cases, stop it before it happens. If we ever have a breach in data, we will disclose it immediately and take all possible steps to remedy it.

What third parties we receive data from

We do not receive data from third parties at this time.

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

We do not perform automated decision making and/or profiling at this time.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

N/A

Updated: May 24, 2018