Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Updated June 17, 2019

Thank you for visiting sandraardoin.com (“site”).

Please read the following carefully. If you do not agree with the terms of use and conditions stated, please do not use this site.

Accessing this site is an acknowledgement by you that sandraardoin.com is not liable for damages that might result from your visit, including, but not limited to, damage to your computer.

When you visit, you are not required to disclose any personal information, such as name and email address. Disclosure of your personal information is voluntary and is not stored, except for the purpose for which you provide it. Such information and purposes are:

  • Your name, website, and/or email address on comment forms – Comments, name, website address, and gravatar are public and may be seen by anyone on the Internet.
  • Your name, website, and/or email address when using the contact form
  • Your name and email address when signing up to follow the blog by email—use the “Unsubscribe” button to unsubscribe from these emails
  • Your name and email address when subscribing to Sandra Ardoin’s newsletter – This information will be provided to Mailchimp, the email marketing service for the Love and Faith in Fiction newsletter. (See their privacy policy.) Should you decide you no longer wish to receive the emails, you may click the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of an email you receive from me
  • Information collected to allow users to “follow” the blog on this site
  • Information requested and collected in the event of a contest or promotion held on this site (see conditions for “Giveaways” on the Disclaimer page)

From time to time, we will review and use the statistical data provided by Jetpack.com (Automatic) to improve the user’s visit or, when necessary, release statistics of follower numbers only (no personal information) to those in the publishing industry who request it. For additional information on cookies and user information, please visit the privacy policy of WordPress.com, as well as their cookie policy.

While links to other Internet sites are often provided, insertion of links does not indicate endorsement by or affiliation with third party sites. We do not control and are not responsible for your use of those sites, nor are we responsible for or control any information collected by third parties, including (but not limited to) social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

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.

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

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 choose not to allow the use of cookies, please change the settings in your browser to refuse them. However, doing so might affect your ability to use some of the features on this site.

Comment Likes

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 a mobile app, 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.

Contact Form

Akismet is enabled on the site. The contact form submission data — IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (also owned by Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. The actual submission data is stored in the database of the site on which it was submitted and is emailed directly to the owner of the form (i.e. the site author who published the page on which the contact form resides). This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message.

Post and post meta data associated with a user’s contact form submission. Akismet is enabled on the site and the IP address and user agent originally submitted with the comment are synced, as well, as they are stored in post meta.

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.

Gravatar Hovercards

This feature will send a hash of the user’s email address (if logged in to the site or WordPress.com — or if they submitted a comment on the site using their email address that is attached to an active Gravatar profile) to the Gravatar service (also owned by Automattic) in order to retrieve their profile image.

Likes

In order to process a post like action, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID (on which the post was liked), post ID (of the post that was liked), user agent, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

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.

Minors

This site is for the use of persons 18 years and older. Minors are not allowed to provide any personal information, and this site will not knowingly collect personal information from those under 18.

Mobile Theme

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

Sharing

When sharing content via email (this option is only available if Akismet is active on the site), the following information is used: sharing party’s name and email address (if the user is logged in, this information will be pulled directly from their account), IP address (for spam checking), user agent (for spam checking), and email body/content. This content will be sent to Akismet (also owned by Automattic) so that a spam check can be performed. Additionally, if reCAPTCHA (by Google) is enabled by the site owner, the sharing party’s IP address will be shared with that service. You can find Google’s privacy policy here.

Subscriptions

To initiate and process subscriptions, the following information is used: subscriber’s email address and the ID of the post or comment (depending on the specific subscription being processed). In the event of a new subscription being initiated, we also collect some basic server data, including all of the subscribing user’s HTTP request headers, the IP address from which the subscribing user is viewing the page, and the URI which was given in order to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI). This server data used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam.

Functionality cookies are set for a duration of 347 days to remember a visitor’s blog and post subscription choices if, in fact, they have an active subscription.

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.

How we protect your data

Your private information is important. We take reasonable precautions to secure and protect that privacy from loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information when you visit. However, no security is perfect, so ACCESS AND USE OF THIS SITE IS AT YOUR DISCRETION AND RISK.

Additional information

Please do not disclose personal information about third parties without receiving that person’s permission.

We reserve the right to remove comments that, in my discretion, I find offensive and/or inappropriate, that contain links and/or are determined to be spam.

We are not responsible if content found on this blog is republished on other websites or media without permission. You must obtain permission to copy, share, or reproduce quotes or images found on sandraardoin.com. Links to information posted on this website are allowed without obtaining prior permission. Email me at sandraardoin@gmail.com.

This site does not use tracking technology to collect information once you leave the site.

Information obtained during your visit to this site may be released if requested by legal entities such as law enforcement or courts.

Any changes to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy will be updated here and made without notice so check this page often.

The above applies only to sandraardoin.com. For questions or concerns, contact me at sandraardoin@gmail.com.