May 2018: Under the requirements of the EU data protection law, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Outside My Window is publishing this privacy policy. Some of the policy’s boilerplate does not apply to Outside My Window but I am keeping it in place, with notes, so that the entire scope is mentioned herein.
Note that the boilerplate says “we.” I’ve left that language in place but the “we” is only me, Kate St. John.
Who we are
Outside My Window’s website at https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org is a blog about birds and nature from an avid observer’s point of view, written by Kate St. John.
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.
Outside My Window does not display the commenter’s avatar.
However, if we did display avatars, an anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) could 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 would be visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
Outside My Window does not allow readers to upload images to the website. This category does not apply.
However, if you were allowed to upload images to the website this caution would apply: 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
Outside My Window does not use 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.
Since only Kate St. John can login to the site, the remainder of this notice (indented in light gray) applies only to me.
THE FOLLOWING ONLY APPLIES TO THE AUTHOR, KATE ST. JOHN: 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.
Who we share your data with
The only data Outside My Window collects is your comment data, which we do not actively share with anyone. Your comments are publicly displayed on the web as described above.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely.
Users cannot register on the Outside My Window website so no user data is retained.
What rights you have over your data
If you have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the comment data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase the comment and all data related to it. 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.
Contact information
To contact us, please leave a comment. Since all comments are moderated we will see your message before it posts. It will not post automatically.