Who I Am

Hello, my name is Carolyn A Pappas and I am the owner of this website (https://carolynapappas.com). This is my privacy policy which explains when and why I collect your personal information, how I use it, the limited conditions under which I may disclose it to others, and how I keep it secure.

I have the utmost respect for your privacy and I make every effort to safeguard your information. I would never buy, sell, rent, or trade your personal information. Please note that this privacy policy only applies to my website and how I store and process your data. I have included the privacy policies of third-party websites where applicable. If you visit an external link, I have no control over how that website handles your personal information.

What personal data I collect and why I collect it
Email List

I use the third-party service MailerLite to maintain two email lists. These lists are a subscription to my blog’s RSS feed (to get new blog posts by email) and my monthly newsletter Delicate Paperwork. MailerLite provides statistics, such as which subscribers open emails and what links are clicked on. This helps me to provide more interesting content in the future. You can read MailerLite’s Privacy Policy here and Terms of Service here.

You can unsubscribe to emails at any time by clicking on the link at the bottom of the email or by contacting me directly.

Other Third-Party Services

This is a list of the third party services I use for my business with a link to their respective privacy policies:

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: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Visitor comments are checked through Akismet, an automated spam detection service. Akismet collects information about visitors who comment on Sites that use the Akismet anti-spam service. The information collected includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).

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

I use the plugin Contact Form 7 to allow you to send an email to me through a web form. This plugin does not store any of your personal information or save any information to my website database. More information about this plugin can be found at https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/. In addition to using the Akismet anti-spam service for comments, I use it to check contact form submissions for spam (see information under Comments section above).

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, 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.

More information about cookies and how you can control them can be found at https://www.aboutcookies.org/.

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

I use the service StatCounter to analyze information about traffic to this site. Your IP address is anonymized to help protect your privacy. Information that I have access to includes your location, web browser, screen resolution, referring website, visit length, and what pages you click on within my site. Logs are only available for a maximum of six months and I have no way to match your identity with the information provided by Statcounter. Click here to view StatCounter’s Privacy Policy.

Who I share your data with

I will not share or sell your information with anyone, except if I am legally required to do so (such as the police requesting information to investigate a crime).

How long I retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so follow-up comments can be recognized and approved 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). I can also see and edit that information as the website administrator.

If you purchase artwork from me, I will retain your information such as name, address, and payment details for tax purposes. With your consent, I will also retain your contact information such as name, mailing address, and email address so that I can maintain records of the whereabouts of my sold artwork to valued collectors.

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 me. 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.

How I protect your data

I take every effort to protect your data and the security of my site. I use the WordPress Plugin Wordfence to monitor my site for malicious attacks. In case of a data breach, I will notify all affected individuals by email as soon as possible.

Advertising

I have never sold advertising on this website and am committed to keeping this site an ad-free space. I currently do not advertise on Facebook or Instagram but I may use sponsored posts in the future.

My contact information

If you have any concerns about this privacy policy, I can be reached by email at contact@carolynapappas.com or you can use the web form on my Contact Page.

This policy may be updated in the future as my activities change. This version of my privacy policy was updated on June 12, 2018.