SuanneSchaferAuthor.com is committed to full transparency, to the protection of user privacy, and to collecting only the bare minimum data necessary to perform the tasks required for an optimal user experience. We make sure to only use your information for the purposes to which you have given us express permission.

The terms “we,” “us,” and “our” refers to SuanneSchaferAuthor.com. The terms “user,” “you,” and “your” refer to site visitors, customers, and any other users of the site.

The term “personal information” is defined as information that you voluntarily provide to us that personally identifies you and/or your contact information, such as your name, phone number, shipping information, website/social media URLs, third-party chat (such as Skype) IDs and email address.

SuanneSchaferAuthor.com provides information about the author Suanne Schafer, her writing, her books, personal insights, news updates, event information, and author announcements (the “Site”).

Use of SuanneSchaferAuthor.com, including all materials presented herein and all online services/experiences provided by the Site, is subject to the following Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to all site visitors, customers, and all other users of the Site. By using the Site, you agree to this Privacy Policy, without modification, and acknowledge reading it.

CONTACT DETAILS

Full legal name: Suanne Schafer

Email address: suanneschafer.author@gmail.com

Full website URL: http://suanneschaferauthor.com/

COLLECTION OF INFORMATION & HOW WE USE IT

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

• Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up to comment on a post to provide a username and email address–and that’s it. You may provide us with more information–like your name–but we don’t require that information to create an account.
• Public Profile Information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, such as a photo, social media links/website URL, or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
• Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from us–a subscription or a product, for example–you will provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information.
• Communications With Us (Hello, There!): You may also provide us information when you participate in a giveaway, opt-in to a newsletter, fill out a questionnaire, fill out a contact form, or comment on a blog post.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

• Log Information: Like every website, our hosting service provider collects information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use the Site–for example, when you create or make changes to your user information.
• Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Site from certain geographic regions.
• Interactions with Other Users’ Sites: We collect some information about your interactions with other users’ sites while you are logged in to your account with us, such as your “Likes” and the fact that you commented on a particular post, so that we can, for example, recommend posts we think may interest you.

SITE ACTIVITY

We may record information relating to your use of the Site, such as the searches you undertake, the pages you view, your browser type, IP address, requested URL, referring URL, and timestamp information. We use this type of information to administer the Site and provide the highest possible level of user experience. We also use this information in the aggregate to perform statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the Site.

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience, to improve our website, to improve customer service, to process transactions, administer a contest/giveaway, promotion, survey or other Site feature and to send periodic emails.

Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested.

Third Parties

• This site is powered by WordPress. Please click here to view their Privacy Policy and Terms.
• We use MailChimp as our marketing automation platform. By using any of our newsletter opt-in forms, you acknowledge that the information you provide will be transferred to MailChimp for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms. If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.
• We use Rafflecopter for giveaways hosted directly from this site. If you enter our own giveaway, we use the data to successfully manage the giveaway, contact the winner(s) and fulfill the prize(s). Please see Rafflecopter’s terms of use and privacy policy before entering a giveaway on this Site. We do not use the information supplied by participants for other purposes or giveaways, nor do we retain participant information once the giveaway has ended, unless explicit consent has been given, per the terms and conditions of the giveaway.

• We are not responsible for how third party giveaway hosts use or process your data, and encourage you to view their privacy policies/terms whenever we share a third party promotion or giveaway on this Site.

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 with spam detection. This information may pass through Akismet to determine if your comment is spam and either block the comment, or allow it through. Please click here to view Akismet’s Privacy Policy.
• 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. If you are a Gravatar user, after approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

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.

Our Google Analytics retention settings expire in 14 months. Please click here for Google’s privacy policy.

ADS AND ANALYTICS SERVICES PROVIDED BY OTHERS

Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by this site and does not cover the collection of information by any third party plugins, advertisers or analytics providers.

MEDIA

If you upload images to this 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.

COOKIES

We may send cookies to your computer in order to uniquely identify your browser and improve the quality of our service. The term “cookies” refers to small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s hard drive while you are viewing the Site. We may use both session cookies (which expire once you close your browser) and persistent cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them). You have the ability to accept or decline cookies using your web browser settings. If you choose to disable cookies, some areas of the Site may not work properly or at all.

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 or comment, 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 SITES

Posts, pages and widgets on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, Tweets, etc. from Facebook, Twitter, 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.

THIRD PARTY LINKS

The Site may contain links to third party websites and affiliate links. Except as otherwise discussed in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you on our Site. Other sites accessible through our site via links or otherwise have their own policies in regard to privacy. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of third parties.

SECURITY

We maintain security measures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, misuse, or disclosure. However, no exchange of data over the Internet can be guaranteed as 100% secure. While we make every effort to protect your personal information shared with us through our Site, you acknowledge that the personal information you voluntarily share with us through this Site could be accessed or tampered with by a third party. You agree that we are not responsible for any intercepted information shared through our Site without our knowledge or permission. Additionally, you release us from any and all claims arising out of or related to the use of such intercepted information in any unauthorized manner.

CONSENT

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services–for example, Gravatar comments and PayPal shopping cart–may not be accessible.
• Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us at any time. Just follow the instructions in those email messages.
• Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, we do not respond to “do not track” signals on this Site. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using this website, with the drawback that certain features may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
• Close Your Account: You can delete your user information and account through the account dashboard/login at any time. We will not retain or use that information once deleted.

YOUR RIGHTS

If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;

• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;

• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;

• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and

• Request portability of your personal data.

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to do that, or you would like to contact us about one of the other rights, you may access and correct your personal information and privacy preferences by contacting our webmaster at jaye@cleverunicorn.com, or by using this secure form.

This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

EU individuals also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

CHILDREN

This children’s privacy statement explains our practices with respect to the online collection and use of personal information from children under the age of thirteen, and provides important information regarding their rights under federal law with respect to such information.

• This Site is not directed to children under the age of thirteen and we do NOT knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site. We screen users who wish to provide personal information in order to prevent users under the age of thirteen from providing such information. If we become aware that we have inadvertently received personally identifiable information from a user under the age of thirteen as part of the Site, we will delete such information from our records. If we change our practices in the future, we will obtain prior, verifiable parental consent before collecting any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site.
• Because we do not collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site, we also do NOT knowingly distribute such information to third parties.
• We do NOT knowingly allow children under the age of thirteen to publicly post or otherwise distribute personally identifiable contact information through the Site.
• Because we do not collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site, we do NOT condition the participation of a child under thirteen in the Site’s online activities on providing personally identifiable information.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

You acknowledge and agree that it is your responsibility to review this Site and this Policy periodically and to be aware of any modifications. We will notify you of any changes to this privacy policy by posting those changes on this page.

Updated: May 24, 2018
Shout-out to Automattic/WordPress and SiteGround for helping our legal team make this Site GDPR-friendly!