Welcome to Third Girl Publishing’s official privacy policy.
And by Third Girl Publishing I mean me. Susan Sey. I wear all the hats up in here. I do the writing, the editing, the proofing, the marketing, the web-mistressing, all of it. And now I am doing my best to uphold all national & international standards of privacy so bear with me. It’s a journey.
My home base on the interwebs is https://susansey.com. Which you totally know because you’re here. If you have any questions about how I’m going to use any info you’re kind enough to share with me, you can always reach me at susan[at]susansey.com. But I hope to answer most of your questions here, so read on!
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
At the moment, only an email address is required to sign up for my newsletter. I also ask for your first & last name, so we can be friendly, but those aren’t required. My newsletter is powered by MailChimp, & those people seem like they’re totally on top of this privacy gig. If you want to know more about the nuts & bolts of how they operate in that arena, though, here’s their privacy policy & their terms.
I plan to use whatever info you provide for two purposes:
- Informational: “Guess what? I wrote a new book! Yay!”
- Marketing purposes: “Want to buy it? It’s really good…”
I will not sell or share your info with anybody else. But be aware that signing up for my newsletter means that you agree to this. You’re like, “Okay, send me the newsletter. I might not buy your book but I’ll think about it. Thanks for letting me know.”
If you ever decide you don’t want to hear from me, there’s an unsubscribe button at the bottom of every email. Just click it & you’ll never hear from me again. Or reach out to me at susan[at]susansey.com & I’ll remove you personally. Like I said, this is a one-woman show.
Comments
Okay, here’s where it gets a little less obvious.
When you leave a comment on this site, it collects the data shown in the comments form, and also your IP address and browser user agent string. This helps us figure out what’s spam & what’s a legit book lover trying to connect.
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. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. So that’s happening in the background when you comment on a blog, just fyi.
Media
If you ever decide to upload an image to this site for whatever reason (like LOOK AT MY ADORABLE CAT) you should be aware of this:
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Other people who visit this website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
So be aware of that & upload with caution. But I’ll bet your cat’s adorable.
Contact forms
My contact form does not automatically collect or store any personal information, & WordPress by default doesn’t do this. But I don’t delete the email addresses of people who contact me, so be aware that if you do contact me, you’re giving me permission to have your email address & possibly even to write you back. If you want me to delete it & forget we ever emailed, you’ll need to tell me so specifically.
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 if it bugs you to have to start from scratch & fill in your details again whenever you want to 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.). Like sometimes I might show you a hilarious cat video, or my favorite compilation of .gifs. You should be aware that embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way here as it would if you went to that other website directly.
And those 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.
So user beware.
Analytics
I am 100% too tired to use any plug-ins that deal with analytics. If I decide to try one out, I’ll let you know here what it asks for & how I use it.
Who we share your data with
I don’t share your data with anybody, but I do provide you with handy links to my books at the web retailers listed below. Click the links to see their privacy policies, because if you click my buy links, you’re going to those websites & you might want to know how things are handled over there.
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.
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. I use Akismet. Here’s their privacy policy.
Your contact information
If you have any concerns about your data, feel free to get in touch with me at susan[at]susansey.com.
How we protect your data
As you can see, I’ve done my best to keep things right & tight here at susansey.com but remember, this is the internet. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure. But be assured that I take security seriously & am making an effort to keep your information private.