The European Union has a new data privacy law that became effective today.

It’s called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and anyone with a website that permits comments (or any other activity that collects data) from European citizens must comply with its requirements.

The GDPR consists of 11 chapters containing 99 articles full of legalese. (Here they are in all their glory!) Making sure that I complied with every last detail of these would have been impossible, if I’d tried to do it solo. Luckily WordPress has done the heavy lifting!

The latest software update for my WordPress site contained a GDPR-compliant template, keyed to my site, that I could read through, customize, and then publish. So I’m legal! Even in the EU!

Of course, I’ve never collected much in the way of data on my site. This is the place where I talk with you all, and where you can talk with me. I’m interested in communication, and not interested at all in the hard sell.

But there is now a page on my site describing my Privacy Policy. Woo hoo! You can click on the Privacy tab in the navigation bar. Or simply read on. I’ve copied my privacy policy into this post.

Here it is: 😉

Who we are

The URL for this website is: http://jmney-grimm.com. And I—the fantasy author J.M. Ney-Grimm—am the person creating and managing the content on the site.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

My website uses WordPress as its platform. By default, WordPress does not collect any personal data about visitors, and only collects the data shown on the User Profile screen from registered users.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site, I 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. 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

If you use the contact form to email me, or if you email me directly, your email will remain in my inbox indefinitely. My memory is very poor, so I keep all correspondence in order to better recall what I’ve talked with you about in the past, in case you email me again in the future. Your stored email will contain your email address, the subject of your email, and the contents of your email.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on my 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, my site’s software 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, the software for my site 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.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on my 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

I use WordPress Stats to see which posts and pages on my site are the most popular. The software shows me if a link somewhere else on the web led a visitor to my site, and if the visitor clicks on one of the links on my site, but no information about the visitor is collected.

WordPress Stats is a lower tier of the Jetpack plug-in (which gives more sophisticated analytics). Jetpack’s privacy policy is located here.

Who we share your data with

If you subscribe or leave a comment on my site your data is shared with A Small Orange, the web host for my site. A Small Orange is “a refreshingly different web hosting company which prides itself on providing fast, reliable hosting with exceptional customer service,” and their privacy policy is here.

If you sign up for my newsletter, your data is stored for me by MailChimp. MailChimp’s privacy policy is here. If you sign up, I will send you emails when I have a new book out, a piece of important news, a discount to let you know about, or when I want to share a cool bit of lore from one of my stories. Signing up for my newsletter means you consent to receive such emails from me.

How long we retain your data

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

For users that register on my website (if any), I 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 (that’s me, and only me, for now) 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 to receive an exported file of the personal data I hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that I erase any personal data I hold about you. This does not include any data I am obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. If you sign up for my newsletter, your data is stored for me by MailChimp. MailChimp’s privacy policy is here.

Contact information

Please email me (J.M. Ney-Grimm) at j -dot- neygrimm -at- yahoo -dot- com, if you have any privacy concerns or questions about the privacy of data stored by my website.