Privacy

Information I collect

I only collect information about you if I have a reason to do so–for example, to provide my content, to communicate with you, or to make my content better.

I collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to me, automatically through operating WordPress Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that WordPress and I collect. For the complete WordPress Privacy Policy, click here.

Information You Provide to WordPress

It’s probably no surprise that WordPress collects information that you provide. Here are some examples:

Basic Account Information: Wordpress asks for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, WordPress requires individuals who sign up for a WordPress.com account to provide a username and email address–and that’s it. You may provide more information–like your name–but that’s not required information to create a WordPress.com account.
Public Profile Information: If you have an account with WordPress, they collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a WordPress.com account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, such as a photo or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
Content Information: Depending on the WordPress Services you use, you may also provide WordPress with information about you in a draft and published content (such as for your website or your Polldaddy survey). For example, if you write a blog post that includes biographic information about you, WordPress will have that information, and so will anyone with access to the Internet if you choose to publish the post publicly. This might be obvious to you…but it’s not to everyone!
Communications With WordPress: You may also provide WordPress information when you respond to surveys, communicate with their Happiness Engineers about a support question, or post a question about your site in their public forums.

Information WordPress Collects Automatically

WordPress also collects some information automatically:

Log Information: Like most online service providers, WordPress collects information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. WordPress collects log information when you use their Services.
Usage Information: Wordpress collects information about your usage of their Services. For example, they collect information about the actions that site administrators, like me, and users perform on a site using WordPress.com or Jetpack services–in other words, who did what, when and to what thing on a site (e.g., [WordPress.com username] deleted “[title of post]” at [time/date]). WordPress uses this information to, for example, provide their Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use their Services, so they can make their Services better.
Location Information: Wordpress may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. They collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit their Services from certain geographic regions. They may also collect information about your precise location via the mobile apps (when, for example, you post a photograph with location information) if you allow them to do so through your mobile device operating system’s permissions.
Stored Information: Wordpress may access information stored on your mobile device via their mobile app. They access this stored information through your device operating system’s permissions. For example, if you give them permission to access the photographs on your mobile device’s camera roll, their Services may access the photos stored on your device when you upload a really amazing photograph of the sunrise to your website.
Interactions with the Styld by Grace Site and Other Users’ Sites: Wordpress collects some information about your interactions with my site and other users’ sites while you are logged in to your account with them, such as your “Likes” and the fact that you commented on a particular post, so that they can, for example, recommend posts they think may interest you. As another example, for Intense Debate users, they collect information about the comments they make while logged in to their account, and use that information to, for example, tally up statistics about your comments (check them out in your dashboard!) and provide the information about your comments in your Intense Debate public profile.
Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Automattic uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help WordPress identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for their Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads. For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see WordPress Cookie Policy.

Information WordPress and I Collect from Other Sources

WordPress may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log into your WordPress.com account through another service (like Google) or if you connect your website or account to a social media service (like Twitter) through the Publicize feature, they will receive information from that service (such as your username, basic profile information, and friends list) via the authorization procedures used by that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available.

How And Why WordPress and I Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with WordPress Services, which helps them improve their Services and make them easier to use;
To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition;
To monitor and prevent any problems with WordPress Services, protect the security of their Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of Automattic and others, which may result in us declining a transaction or the use of WordPress Services;
To communicate with you, for example through an email notification, about new blog posts, to keep you up to date on WordPress products, Styld by Grace content and Styld by Grace products; and
To personalize your experience using WordPress Services, provide content recommendations, target marketing messages to groups of WordPress users (for example, those who have a particular plan with WordPress or have been a WordPress user for a certain length of time), and serve relevant advertisements.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

(1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under our Terms of Service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account–for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or

(2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or

(3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or

(4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information–for example, to provide and update WordPress Services, to provide Styld by Grace content, to improve WordPress Services so that they can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard WordPress Services and Styld by Grace content, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with WordPress Services, and to personalize your experience; or

(5) You have given us your consent–for example before WordPress places certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in our Cookie Policy.

Sharing Information

How I Share Information

I do not sell my sites’ readers private personal information.

I share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

Legal Requests: I may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. For more information on how WordPress responds to requests for information about WordPress.com users, please see our Legal Guidelines.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: I may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, third parties, or the public at large.
With Your Consent: I may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, I may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly.

That means, of course, that information like your public profile, posts, other content that you make public on your website, and your “Likes” and comments on other websites, are all available to others.

For example, the photo that you upload to your public profile, or a default image if you haven’t uploaded one, is your Globally Recognized Avatar, or Gravatar. Your Gravatar, along with other public profile information, will display with the comments and “Likes” that you make on other users’ websites and mine while logged in to your WordPress.com account. Your Gravatar + public profile information may also display with your comments, “Likes,” and other interactions on websites that use our Gravatar service, if the email address associated with your account with us is the same as the email address that you use on the other website.

WordPress also provides a “Firehose” stream of public data (like posts and comments) from sites that use their Services to provide that data to Firehose subscribers, who may view and analyze the content (all subject to our Terms of Service), but do not have rights to re-publish it, publicly.

Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

How Long Does WordPress Keep Information

WordPress generally discards information about you when they longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it–which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information–and we are not legally required to continue to keep it.

For example, WordPress keeps the web server logs that record information about a visitor to one of Automattic’s websites, such as the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. They retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to Automattic’s websites and investigate issues if something goes wrong on the Styld by Grace website or any other website.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, WordPress works very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring their Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with WordPress, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of WordPress Services may not be accessible.
Limit Access to Information On Your Mobile Device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the ability to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you do so, you may not be able to use certain features.
Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from WordPress or Styld by Grace. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, Automattic does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of their Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Automattic’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Automattic’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Close Your Account: While WordPress and I would be very sad to see you go, you can close your WordPress.com account. Please keep in mind that WordPress and I may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

Request access to your personal data;
Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
Request portability of your personal data.

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that WordPress offers, but if you aren’t able to do that, or you would like to contact WordPress about one of the other rights, scroll down to How to Reach Us.

EU individuals also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy please contact me, or if you would like to contact WordPress about their specific policies, some which are mentioned in this policy, please contact them.

Other Things You Should Know

Transferring Information

Because Automattic’s Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that WordPress processed when you use their Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for them, other members of their group of companies, or third party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above. When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, they will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include:

In the case of US based entities, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them, or ensuring they have signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield; or
In the case of entities based in other countries outside the EEA, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them.

You can ask WordPress for more information about the steps they take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

Ads appearing on any of WordPress Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via their Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of their Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows them and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to your interests.

Creative Commons Sharealike License

Automattic decided to make their Privacy Policy available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. The Styld by Grace Privacy Policy was crafted using this license. You can view the license notice and privacy policy via this link.