Privacy Policy

by The Wine Girl

Hi there!

We at The Wine Girl are responsible for publishing a privacy policy that explains to visitors (that’s you) how your data is collected via this site and how that information is used and disclosed.

Since we are still just a small (but growing!!) business, we rely on a Content Management System called, I bet you’ve heard of them, WordPress.com, to help us manage and operate our site. We’ll do our best to keep it as simple as possible though, because we understand that you may have already had a glass of wine 😉

In the Policy below we often reference a company called Automattic. So, who are they?! Automattic are the folks behind a variety of products and services designed to allow anyone–from bloggers, to small business owners, and enterprises–to create, publish, build and manage their own websites. They are the folks behind WordPress.com.

Ya follow?

Recap: We at The Wine Girl are using the services of WordPress.com. WordPress.com belongs to the distributed company, © Automattic Inc. Therefore, your information is not only being gathered by us, in-fact, we hardly use it at all. It is mostly gathered by Automattic Inc. and this Privacy Notice explains what information that is and how they process it in connection with the services provided through WordPress.com, Jetpack (including WooCommerce Services), IntenseDebate, Polldaddy.com, and Akismet.

Read on!

 

Information We Collect About Visitors

We collect information about our visitors in a couple different ways–we collect certain information that you provide to the Site, and we collect some information automatically.

Information a Visitor Provides to this Site

We’ll start with information that you provide directly to our Site, which primarily happens when you type into a text field, like a comment field or use a sign-up form.

Here are the most common ways in which you, the visitor, directly provide information to us:

  • Follower and Subscriber Information: When you sign up to follow or subscribe to our Site (using Jetpack or WordPress.com), we collect the sign-up information requested, which typically includes an email address.
  • Site Comments: When you leave a comment on one of this Site pages or posts, we collect that comment, and other information provided along with the comment, such as the name and email address that you provide.
  • Order and Shipment Information: If you order something (hooray!) from our Site (coming soon!) using our store and ecommerce features available through WordPress.com or Jetpack (including WooCommerce Services), we may collect information to process that order, such as credit card and billing information, and an address for shipping the package along to the recipient and calculating applicable taxes. We may also use this information for other purposes–for example, to send out marketing and other communications to our customers, and to provide analytics information about our ecommerce site (e.g., the number of orders from particular geographic areas).
  • Other Information Entered on the Site: We may also collect other information that you enter on the Site–such as a contact form submission or a search query.

Information We Automatically Collect from the Site

We also automatically collect some information about visitors. We’ve listed examples below:

  • Technical Data from a Visitor’s Computer and Etcetera: We collect the information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available about you, such as the IP address, browser type, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information.
  • Visitor Interactions: We collect information about your interactions with our Site, including the “likes” and “ratings”.
  • Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from the IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, tally how many people visit our Site from certain geographic regions. If you’d like, you can read more about our Site Stats feature for WordPress.com sites.
  • Akismet Commenter Information: We collect information about visitors who comment on our Site, which uses the Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect may include the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter/visitor such as their name, username, email address
oh, and the comment itself, of course).
  • Intense Debate Commenter Information: We collect information about visitors who comment on our Site, which uses the Intense Debate service. This information  may include the IP address and account information on the Site, along with the comment.
  • Information from Cookies and Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a Site stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the Site each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on Sites. Automattic uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track visitors and Site usage. For more information about the use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you, the visitor, can control the use of cookies, please see Automattic’s Cookie Policy.

Information we Provide to our Content Management System (WordPress.com)

We may provide your information to our Content Management System, WordPress.com. For example, we may upload a directory or other information about our visitors and customers to the “backend” administrative platform for managing our Site.

How We Use Visitor Information

Automattic may use information about our visitors in order to provide Services to us, their User and our Site. We may use Automattic and the services provided through WordPress.com to, for example, create and manage our Site, sell products and services, flag and fight comments from spammers, and collect information through polls, quizzes and other surveys.

In addition to the above, Automattic may use some information about our visitors who are also their Users as described in their Privacy Policy.

Automattic may also use and share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify any individual. For instance, by publishing aggregate statistics about the use of their services via our Site.

 

How We Share Visitor Information

We may share information collected about visitors in the limited circumstances spelled out below:

  • Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: Automattic may disclose your information to their subsidiaries, employees, and individuals who are independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help them  provide their services to us as their Users, or to process the information on our behalf. All mentioned subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors are required to follow this Privacy Notice for information about visitors that is shared with them.
  • Third Party Vendors: Automattic may share your information with third party vendors who need to know this information in order to provide their services to us. This group includes vendors that help Automattic or WordPress.com provide services to us, their Users and our Site. Vendors  are required to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
  • Legal Requests: We may disclose visitor information in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
  • To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose visitor information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, WordPress.com, ourselves, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
  • Information Shared Publicly: Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like comments and “likes” are all available to others, including information about you that is displayed in connection with a comment or “like” (such as your WordPress.com username and Gravatar). Automattic provides a “firehose” stream of public data (including comments) from the Sites of their Users to provide that data to firehose subscribers, who may view and analyze the content, but do not have rights to re-publish it publicly. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.

Other Tools

Our site may contain ads from third party ad networks and advertisers, and we may integrate other tools and services (such as Google Analytics and third party plugins). Please note that this Privacy Notice only covers the collection of information by Automattic, and does not cover the collection by any third party.

Ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of a Site and across other websites and online services, such as your IP address, web browser, mobile network information, pages viewed, time spent on pages, links clicked, and conversion information. This information may be used by those companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to visitor interests. For more information about how to manage and delete cookies, visit aboutcookies.org, and for more information on interest-based ads, including information about how visitors may be able to opt out of having their web browsing information used for behavioral advertising purposes, please visit aboutads.info/choices (US based) and youronlinechoices.eu (EU based).

Other Resources

For more information about the privacy and transparency at Automattic follow them on  privacy.blog.

Source

https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/

https://en.support.wordpress.com/your-site-and-the-gdpr/