Privacy Policy

Who we are

Shane Trusz and Darryl Frayne are independent, self-published authors based in British Columbia, Canada. Our website address is: https://maidstonechronicles.com.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

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

When you use our Contact form we collect your first name and last name and your email address so that we can correspond with you. We will only use this information to respond to your specific request.

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.

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

In addition to Google Analytics and Facebook (see below), your IP address may be tracked for analytics purposes through our web hosting company, Siteground, whose servers are based in Chicago, IL, USA. Siteground takes security seriously. See this article and this GDPR blog post.

Security Logs

The IP address of visitors, user ID of logged in users, and username of login attempts are conditionally logged to check for malicious activity and to protect the site from specific kinds of attacks. Examples of conditions when logging occurs include login attempts, log out requests, requests for suspicious URLs, changes to site content, and password updates. This information is retained for 14 days.

Who we share your data with

When you use our Contact form we collect your first name and last name and your email address so that we can correspond with you.
When you subscribe to our newsletter we collect your name and your email address so that we can correspond with you. Your personal data will not only be stored in the website’s database but also in Mailchimp, the application we use to send our newsletters.

You can view, update, download or delete your personal data at any time from this page: Request personal data.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to track visitors on this site.
Google Analytics uses cookies to collect this data. For visitors from EU countries, you may opt out of cookies by clicking “No” in the top banner notice.
User-level and event-level data stored by Google Analytics is automatically deleted after 26 months.
In order to be compliant with the new regulation Google included a data processing amendment.
The data we collect will be processed anonymously and “Data sharing” is disabled.
We don’t use other Google services in combination with Google Analytics cookies.
Google Analytics TOS | You may also opt out of Google Analytics

Youtube

Embedded videos may track your usage when you play a video. Privacy Policy.

Facebook

We use Facebook’s tracking pixel to help us measure traffic from our Facebook page to our website. Visitors from EU countries have the option to reject the Facebook pixel tracking code by clicking the “No” button in our header notice. Facebook Privacy Policy | Facebook and GDPR

Mailchimp

We use Mailchimp for our newsletter campaigns.
Mailchimp is a popular marketing automation platform and is GDPR compliant.
In our Mailchimp account we only store your email address and your name.

Security

A QR code image is generated for users that set up two-factor authentication for this site. This image is generated using Google Chart’s API. As part of generating this image, your username is sent to the API. For details about Google Chart’s privacy policy, please see Security and Privacy in Charts.

When using the Remember Device for Two-Factor, a cookie (itsec_remember_2fa) will be set with a secure token that expires in 30 days.

This site is scanned for potential malware and vulnerabilities by Sucuri’s SiteCheck. We do not send personal information to Sucuri; however, Sucuri could find personal information posted publicly (such as in comments) during their scan. For more details, please see Sucuri’s privacy policy.

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 also store the information users provide to us through our contact form, when creating an account with our website, requesting information, or subscribing to our newsletter. We delete the information when it has served its purpose. Users are free to request their personal information or request that we delete their information at any time by emailing us: darryl{at}maidstonechronicles{dot}com. Website administrators will then edit that information as per request.

Security logs are retained for 14 days.

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.

Where we send your data

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

Google Analytics tracks visitor statistics only. They (and we) do not track personally identifiable information. Privacy Policy. We have customized our Google Analytics reporting to make your IP address anonymous. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here.

Facebook – We use the Facebook retargeting pixel as a part of our marketing efforts. Facebook Privacy Policy | Facebook and GDPR

We use DropBox to store website backups, which include database archives. Backup files are saved for a maximum of five years.

This site is part of a network of sites that protect against distributed brute force attacks. To enable this protection, the IP address of visitors attempting to log into the site is shared with a service provided by ithemes.com. For privacy policy details, please see the iThemes Privacy Policy.

Your contact information

If you have privacy concerns or questions, please contact darryl{at}maidstonechronicles{dot}com

Additional information

How we protect your data

All personal data entered on our website contact form or in blog Comments are stored in a secure database. You may request deletion any time.

What data breach procedures we have in place

We monitor the security of our servers and will act immediately, if any irregularities are observed.

If our website gets hacked and we believe your data is compromised, we will inform you via email as soon as possible.

What third parties we receive data from

We may receive data from websites that track your online activity such as Google Analytics and social media sites. See above for details of various services like Google and Facebook.

Links to Other Web Sites

This privacy notice does not cover the links within this site linking to other websites. Those sites are not governed by this Privacy Policy, and if you have questions about how a site uses your information, you will need to check that site’s privacy statement.

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