I’m Jim Amos, I write the personal blog Go Retire Psychiatrist, I respect your privacy and I know it’s important to protect your data and privacy. This document outlines what data I collect and what WordPress, the host, collects, what is done with the data, and how the data is protected, and how you can contact me and WordPress.
I personally do not distribute, sell, rent or lease or otherwise share any visitor’s information to third parties but because my blog is hosted by WordPress, all visitors to my blog should review Automattic’s privacy notice. Not all what is in that policy is applicable to my web site; this policy will cover what is applicable.
Automattic is the company behind WordPress. You can contact them at the link above. You can contact me via my contact form. European Union visitors can find out who their Data Protection Authority (DPA) is at the European Data Protection Board web site. Although there is no single general national legislation applicable in the United States which is comparable to what covers the DPA in other countries, you can read more about what laws and practices there are this link.
Visitors to my blog can read my content and interact with the site through features such as comments, likes, and follows. WordPress collects data that visitors provide and automatically as well. WordPress does that on my behalf as the blog host. This facilitates running my blog as a vehicle for communicating with readers. The legal basis applicable is your freely given consent, which you can request be withdrawn by contacting me.
If you reside in the European Union (EU), your personal data may be transferred to a third country, which would be the United States in my case because that’s where my blog is hosted. The European Commission has a list of countries which it has decided has “adequate” data protection. The Privacy Shield Framework with the United States is recognized as adequate. That said, my remark above about what I personally do not do with your personal data applies.
Your rights as a visitor include:
-The right to be informed about how I use your personal data, which is done via this privacy policy.
-The right of access, which you can request by contacting me via my contact form.
-The right to rectification which assures that you can notify me if your data is incorrect and which I will address if you contact me.
-The right to erasure which requires me to delete your data if you request that through my contact form. I can easily delete comments through my site’s administration area (called the dashboard).
-The right to restrict processing which means you can contact me if you would like to change your communication preferences.
-The right to data portability.
-The right to object sharing your data with third parties or direct marketing although I do not personally share your personal data.
-The rights connected with automated decision making and profiling, which I do not do.
Visitors directly provide data to my site in the following ways:
-Follower and Subscriber Information: When you subscribe to my site, WordPress collects the sign-up information requested, which typically includes an email address.
-Site Comments: When you comment, WordPress collects the comment and other data you’ll need to provide, which typically includes your name and email address.
WordPress automatically collects other data from my site, which would include:
-IP address.
-Interactions with my site which includes “likes” and “ratings.”
-Cookies and Pixel Tags. A cookie is a string of information that would be stored on a visitor’s computer, which the browser provides to my site each time you return. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on sites like mine. These technologies help identify and track my visitors and site usage. They can be used to deliver targeted ads although I have removed ads from my site. For more information about the use of cookies, please see WordPress’s Cookie Policy.
Please see the Automattic Privacy Notice for details about how WordPress shares visitor information.
My site does not contain ads from third party ad networks and advertisers.
Jetpack is enabled on my site, which tracks comment likes and more (see details below). See Jetpack’s privacy policy for further details, link https://jetpack.com/support/for-your-privacy-policy/ .
JetPack is enabled on my site and the following information applies:
Comment Likes
This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.
Data Used: 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 one of our mobile apps, 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.
Activity Tracked: Comment likes.
Contact Form
Data Used: If Akismet is enabled on the site (Akismet is enabled, see below for details), 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.
Data Synced: Post and post meta data associated with a user’s contact form submission. If Akismet is enabled on the site, the IP address and user agent originally submitted with the comment are synced, as well, as they are stored in post meta.
Gravatar Hovercards
Data Used: 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.
Infinite Scroll
Data Used: In order to record page views via WordPress.com Stats (which must be enabled for page view tracking here to work) with additional loads, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.
Activity Tracked: Page views will be tracked with each additional load (i.e. when you scroll down to the bottom of the page and a new set of posts loads automatically). If the site owner has enabled Google Analytics to work with this feature, a page view event will also be sent to the appropriate Google Analytics account with each additional load.
Likes
This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.
Data Used: 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.
Activity Tracked: Post likes.
Akismet is enabled on my site and it provides spam protection. Below each comment field is a link, “Learn how your data is processed,” which will provide you with important privacy information.
I have chosen to disable the Cookies and Consent Widget on my site (see revision update below) because WordPress considers it optional on paid plans, I already have a link to WordPress cookie policy above, I don’t collect any cookies on my own or through third parties, and the cookie banner interferes with infinite scrolling (see above for details). See the WordPress support page for details about how WordPress cookie policy works for visitors including those from the EU.
My blog is directed to adults. I do not knowingly collect or use personally identifiable information from children.
The system logs at Automattic’s websites record visitor information and are kept for 30 days.
Your information is used to assist WordPress is providing services to my site, such as creating and managing it.
You can request I delete your data by contacting me via the contact form on my site. Further, it’s simple to unsubscribe. Simply use the unsubscribe links in the email subscription message you get from WordPress.
If you don’t agree with my Privacy Policy as posted here, please do not consent to the setting of cookies and the collection and storage of your personally identifiable information.
I may change my Privacy Policy from time to time if there are major changes and will provide an update notice to it with the date below.
Update 3/27/2019: Removed section on Google Analytics because it’s inapplicable and added sections on JetPack and Akismet.
Update 5/16/2019: I have chosen to disable the Cookies and Consent Widget on my site because WordPress considers it optional on paid plans, I already have a link to WordPress cookie policy above, I don’t collect any cookies on my own or through third parties, and the cookie banner interferes with infinite scrolling (see above for details).
Go Retire Psychiatrist 