Privacy Policy

Introduction

In this privacy policy, when we refer to “TWB”, “us”, “we” or “our”, we mean Talking With Bees.

In this Privacy Policy, we explain what information we collect, why we collect it, how we protect it, and the controls you have to change it or delete it.

By sharing your personal information with us, and by continuing to use our website, you confirm that you have read and understood the terms of this privacy policy.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about any aspect of this privacy policy or how we handle your information, please email me at Contact Form.

Summary

The Talking With Bees blog is owned and written by Roger who is based in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. The website address is: https://project1-4iye0ivztp.live-website.com and he can be contacted via the Contact Form.
At TWB we’re committed to ensuring that your personal information is protected. We only collect information through the TWB website.
You will only be asked for personal information we need to provide and improve the service, products and experiences that you expect.
You have control over the personal information we hold about you to ensure it is accurate and reflects your preferences.
Your personal information will always be secure and protected
We are fair and transparent about how we use the personal information we hold.
Your personal information will never be sold and only shared as outlined in our privacy policy or when you ask us to.
We take responsibility for the personal information that we hold about you.

Examples of how we collect your personal information and how we use it

When you subscribe to emails, we will use this to send you blog posts. There are some paid sponsors of the blog who are highlighted on the homepage, and hence, some of the emails will contain product placements and links to external websites.
When you comment on a blog post or someone else’s comment you can then opt in to receive further comments on that same page
Cookies are used to enhance your experience on our website and help improve it

What is our justification for handling your personal information in this way?

Data protection and privacy laws in some countries require us to have what’s called a “legal basis” or “lawful ground” for handling personal information. Broadly, that means that we have to have a legal justification for handling your personal information. For the most part, we need to handle your personal information to be able to:

Send you updated blog posts and emails that you have asked for
For our website to be able to work properly and to do what you expect it to do

You can ask us to delete your information at any time by contacting us at Contact Form.

How can you change the way that we contact you about our products, services and support?

We will only send you email communications when you have told us that you are happy for us to do so.

You can change the way that we contact you in the following ways:

Opt-In/Start Contacting Me: If you hadn’t previously asked us to send you marketing communications, you can ask us to start contacting you (sometimes called an “opt-in”) by: Subscribing to website (click the link)
Opt-Out/Stop Contacting Me: If you want to stop receiving marketing or support communications from us (sometimes called “opting out”), you can do so at any time by: (A) clicking on the link provided in emails you receive that take you to an unsubscribe option on our website (this can be found here: UNSUBSCRIBE); or (B) reply to emails saying UNSUBSCRIBE; or (C) Using Contact Form to Unsubscribe.

Links to third party websites

We provide links to other websites which are not operated and controlled by TWB. We have no control over and are not responsible for the content of those sites or how the third parties responsible for them collect and use your personal information.

Third party websites usually have their own privacy policies explaining how they use and share your personal information. You should carefully review those privacy policies before you use these websites to make sure that you are happy with how your personal information is being collected and shared.

How long do we keep your personal information?

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

If you provide your email address to allow us to inform you of blog posts, this data is also retained indefinitely.

How do we protect your personal information?

We are committed to protecting your personal information. We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information and privacy, and review those regularly. We protect your personal information using a combination of physical and IT security controls, including access controls that restrict and manage the way in which your personal information and data is processed, managed and handled.

In the unlikely event that we do suffer a security breach which compromises our protection of your personal information and we need to let you know about it, we will do so.

Data Storage

The TWB website is hosted in the United Kingdom.

Children

The TWB website is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from children.

If you are a child, please do not attempt to become a registered user of our websites, apps or products or otherwise provide us with any personal information. If we learn that we have inadvertently obtained personal information from a child, we will delete that information as soon as possible.

If you are aware of a child who has provided their personal information to us, please Contact Us.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We will review and update this privacy policy at least once a year and will note the date it was last updated below.

If we change our privacy policy, we will post the details of the changes below. If we have your e-mail address, we may also e-mail you with information on those changes. If we need to, we will also ask you to confirm that you are happy with those changes.

This privacy policy was last reviewed and updated in May 2018.

Previous changes to this Privacy Policy

May 2018 – Privacy Policy page created in line with GDPR requirements.

DETAILS

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 anonymised 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

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.

Activity Log

This feature only records activities of a site’s registered users, and the retention duration of activity data will depend on the site’s plan and activity type.

Data Used: To deliver this functionality and record activities around site management, the following information is captured: user email address, user role, user login, user display name, WordPress.com and local user IDs, the activity to be recorded, the WordPress.com-connected site ID of the site on which the activity takes place, the site’s Jetpack version, and the timestamp of the activity. Some activities may also include the actor’s IP address (login attempts, for example) and user agent.

Activity Tracked: Login attempts/actions, post and page update and publish actions, comment/pingback submission and management actions, plugin and theme management actions, widget updates, user management actions, and the modification of other various site settings and options. Retention duration of activity data depends on the site’s plan and activity type. See the complete list of currently-recorded activities (along with retention information).

Data Synced (?): Successful and failed login attempts, which will include the actor’s IP address and user agent.

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: 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.

Google Analytics

Data Used: Please refer to the appropriate Google Analytics documentation for the specific type of data it collects.

Activity Tracked: This feature sends page view events (and potentially video play events) over to Google Analytics for consumption.

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.

Jetpack Comments

Data Used: Commenter’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided via the comment form), timestamp, and IP address. Additionally, a jetpack.wordpress.com IFrame receives the following data: WordPress.com blog ID attached to the site, ID of the post on which the comment is being submitted, commenter’s local user ID (if available), commenter’s local username (if available), commenter’s site URL (if available), MD5 hash of the commenter’s email address (if available), and the comment content. If Akismet (also owned by Automattic) is enabled on the site, the following information is sent to the service for the sole purpose of spam checking: commenter’s name, email address, site URL, IP address, and user agent.

Activity Tracked: The comment author’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided during the comment submission) are stored in cookies. Learn more about these cookies.

Data Synced (?): All data and metadata (see above) associated with comments. This includes the status of the comment and, if Akismet is enabled on the site, whether or not it was classified as spam by Akismet.

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.

Mobile Theme

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

Activity Tracked: 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.

Notifications

This feature is only accessible to registered users of the site who are logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. Some visitor-related information or activity may be sent to the site owner via this feature. This may include: email address, WordPress.com username, site URL, email address, comment content, follow actions, etc.

Activity Tracked: Sending notifications (i.e. when we send a notification to a particular user), opening notifications (i.e. when a user opens a notification that they receive), performing an action from within the notification panel (e.g. liking a comment or marking a comment as spam), and clicking on any link from within the notification panel/interface.

Protect

Data Used: In order to check login activity and potentially block fraudulent attempts, the following information is used: attempting user’s IP address, attempting user’s email address/username (i.e. according to the value they were attempting to use during the login process), and all IP-related HTTP headers attached to the attempting user.

Activity Tracked: Failed login attempts (these include IP address and user agent). We also set a cookie (jpp_math_pass) for 1 day to remember if/when a user has successfully completed a math captcha to prove that they’re a real human. Learn more about this cookie.

Data Synced (?): Failed login attempts, which contain the user’s IP address, attempted username or email address, and user agent information.

Search

Data Used: Any of the visitor-chosen search filters and query data in order to process a search request on the WordPress.com servers.

Data Used: When sharing content via email, 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

Data Used: 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.

Activity Tracked: 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.

Video Hosting

Data Used: For video play tracking via WordPress.com Stats, the following information is used: viewer’s 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. If Google Analytics is enabled, video play events will be sent there, as well.

Activity Tracked: Video plays.

WordPress.com Secure Sign On

Data Used: User ID (local site and WordPress.com), role (e.g. administrator), email address, username and display name. Additionally, for activity tracking (see below): IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: The following usage events are recorded: starting the login process, completing the login process, failing the login process, successfully being redirected after login, and failing to be redirected after login. Several functionality cookies are also set, and these are detailed explicitly in our Cookie documentation.

Data Synced (?): The user ID and role of any user who successfully signed in via this feature.

WordPress.com Stats

Data 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. Important: The site owner does not have access to any of this information via this feature. For example, a site owner can see that a specific post has 285 views, but he/she cannot see which specific users/accounts viewed that post. Stats logs — containing visitor IP addresses and WordPress.com usernames (if available) — are retained by Automattic for 28 days and are used for the sole purpose of powering this feature.

Activity Tracked: Post and page views, video plays (if videos are hosted by WordPress.com), outbound link clicks, referring URLs and search engine terms, and country. When this module is enabled, Jetpack also tracks performance on each page load that includes the Javascript file used for tracking stats. This is exclusively for aggregate performance tracking across Jetpack sites in order to make sure that our plugin and code is not causing performance issues. This includes the tracking of page load times and resource loading duration (image files, Javascript files, CSS files, etc.). The site owner has the ability to force this feature to honor DNT settings of visitors. By default, DNT is currently not honored.

Data Used: Gravatar image URL of the logged-in user in order to display it in the toolbar and the WordPress.com user ID of the logged-in user. Additionally, for activity tracking (detailed below): IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Click actions within the toolbar.

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.

Your contact information

Please contact me if you have any concerns.