Privacy Policy
About Me
Welcome to my page, www.amandasiegrist.com. I’m Amanda Siegrist and I write contemporary and romantic suspense. If you ever need to contact me, just send me an email at amanda.siegrist@yahoo.com!
Keeping your personal information and privacy is important to me. Understanding how I use your information and store it is also very important. If you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at amanda.siegrist@yahoo.com.
What Personal Data We Collect And Why We Collect It
Email Subscriptions
When you sign up to my mailing list, you are providing information that I collect (using MailerLite) and store for me to send out monthly newsletters. When you sign up, you are asked to provide your name and email, although, I only need your email, so it is up to you what you wish to share. All information you provide is stored on MailerLite, and I adhere to their privacy policy. Your information is never shared or dispersed to anyone else in any way by me. You are welcome to unsubscribe from my mailing list at anytime by either emailing me personally at amanda.siegrist@yahoo.com or by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of my newsletter.
Blog Subscriptions
When you sign up to receive an email for a new blog post notification, you are providing me with an email address. This information is stored on WordPress and used only when I have a new blog post. Your information is never shared or dispersed to anyone else in any way by me. You are welcome to unsubscribe from receiving my blog notifications at anytime by either emailing me personally at amanda.siegrist@yahoo.com or by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of my newsletter.
Cookies
If, or when, you comment or use any social media button (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) cookies may be used and collect your information for future uses. (Per Wikipedia a cookie is: An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user’s computer by the user’s web browser while the user is browsing.) You can configure your cookies using your web browser settings and find out what cookies are being used and how to control them.
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.
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.
Jetpack
I use Jetpack for a lot of features. Here is some information pertaining to those things:
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.
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.
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
This feature is only available to sites on the Professional plan.
Data Used: Any of the visitor-chosen search filters and query data in order to process a search request on the WordPress.com servers.
Sharing
Data Used: When sharing content via email (this option is only available if Akismet is active on the site), 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.
Social Media Icons
I use Jetpack for all my social media icons. To see their privacy policy about how they handle your data and security, check it out here.
Embedded Contact 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.
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.
Unless you unsubscribe from my newsletter and/or blog subscription, your information is stored indefinitely.
What Rights We 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
Your data, when you subscribe to my newsletter, is sent to MailerLite, and I adhere to all of their privacy policies.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
How We Protect Your Data
When you subscribe to my newsletter, I use MailerLite. All security is provided through them. I also use Jetpack on my website to ensure my site is as secure as possible.
Contact information
Please, if you ever have any questions, contact me! Amanda.siegrist@yahoo.com
♥ Amanda Siegrist (Updated: 2023)