The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to bring transparency to the practices of my site (The Traveling Inkwell) and its host, WordPress.com, so that you have a clear understanding of what data is being collected, how it is being used, and how you can exercise your rights with regards to your data.
The Traveling Inkwell is hosted by WordPress.com, which is a blogging service offered by Automattic. Thus, all interactions that occur on The Traveling Inkwell are subject to Automattic’s Privacy Notice for Visitors to Our Users’ Sites (that’s you!). If you are an Automattic user visiting The Traveling Inkwell, you are furthermore subject to Automattic’s Privacy Policy.
The Traveling Inkwell does not collect your information outside of what is covered by Automattic’s Privacy Notice for Visitors to Our Users’ Sites.
The Traveling Inkwell saves minimal information about visitors who follow or comment on the site in order to provide blog services to visitors and email updates about the site.
This policy has been modified from the Automattic Privacy Policy and Privacy Notice for Visitors to Our Users’ Sites, both linked above, which are available under the Creative Commons Sharealike license.
What is The Traveling Inkwell?
The Traveling Inkwell is a book blog dedicated to sharing reviews, recommendations, and a general love for all things bookish. You can learn more about The Traveling Inkwell and me on my About Me page.
What This Policy Covers
As a Visitor to The Traveling Inkwell (henceforth, the Site), you have the ability to interact with the Site in a variety of ways, such as through comments, “likes,” poll/survey responses, and follows.
This Policy has been compiled to make transparent how information about Visitors is collected, used, and disclosed, both by the Site and its host service Automattic.
Visitors are encouraged to also read Automattic’s Privacy Notice for Visitors to Our Users’ Sites (henceforth, the Automattic Privacy Notice) to understand what’s going on behind the scenes from Automattic’s perspective.
The Site does not use/collect/disclose data in any manner beyond what is present in the Automattic Privacy Notice.
If you are an Automattic user yourself (e.g. a contributor, website administrator, author, or editor using Automattic’s services), you are also subject to Automattic’s Privacy Policy, which is not detailed here.
Information Collected about Visitors to the Site
Information about Visitors to the Site is collected in a few different ways: some information is provided by Visitors to the Site, and some information is collected automatically.
Automattic’s system logs, which record information about visitors to Automattic’s websites, are kept for 30 days after which they are deleted.
Information Provided by Visitors to the Site
Visitors provide information to a Site typically by typing information into a text field, like a comment. Here are the most common ways in which a Visitor directly provides information to the Site:
- Follower and Subscriber Information: When a Visitor signs up to follow or subscribe to a Site using Jetpack or WordPress.com, the Site collects the sign-up information, which typically includes an email address. This information is also collected by Automattic.
- Site Comments: When a Visitor leaves a comment on the Site, the Site collects that comment and other information provided along with the comment, such as the Visitor’s name, email address, and profile photo. This information is also collected by Automattic.
- Other Information Entered on the Site: The Site may also collect other information that a Visitor enters, such as a contact form submission or a search query. This information is also collected by Automattic.
See the Automatic Privacy Notice for detailing of how information entered on the Site is collected by Automattic.
Information Collected Automatically
Some information about Visitors to the Site is collected automatically by Automattic. Only some of this information is accessible by the Site. Relevant examples are included below:
- Technical Data from a Visitor’s Computer and Etcetera: Automattic collects the information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available about Visitors to the Site, 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. The Site has access to a limited amount of this information, which is provided in tallies by Autotmattic’s Site Stats feature for WordPress.com sites and Jetpack sites.
- Visitor Interactions: Automattic collects information about a Visitor’s interactions with the Site, including the “likes” and “ratings” left by Visitors to the Site using WordPress.com or Jetpack. The Site also has access to this information.
- Location Information: Automattic may determine the approximate location of a Visitor’s device from the IP address. Automattic collects and uses this information to, for example, tally for the Site how many people visit the Site from certain geographic regions. If you’d like, you can read more about Automattic’s Site Stats feature for WordPress.com sites and Jetpack sites.
- Akismet Commenter Information: Automattic collects information about Visitors who comment on the Site, which uses Automattic’s Akismet anti-spam service. The information Automattic collects typically 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). The Site has access to information directly provided by the commenter.
- Information from Cookies and Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that Automattic sites store on a Visitor’s computer, and that the Visitor’s browser provides to the Automattic site each time the Visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on Automattic sites. Automattic uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track visitors and Site usage, and to deliver targeted ads when ads are enabled for free WordPress.com sites or when ads are enabled on a Site through WordAds or Jetpack Ads (see the “Other Tools” section below for more details). For more information about Automattic’s use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how visitors can control the use of cookies, please see Automattic’s Cookie Policy.
Other Information Provided by Visitors
The Site does not upload any other information to Automattic or collect/store Visitor data anywhere outside of Automattic’s control.
How Visitor Information is Used
The Site uses information about Site Visitors in order to provide the Site’s blog content to Visitors and to respond to any comments or questions that the Visitors might have. The Site may also use aggregated and reasonably de-identified information to share aggregate statistics about usage of the Site.
Automattic uses information about Site Visitors in order to provide services to the Site and its Visitors, including but not limited to site management, comment moderation, and email subscriptions.
In addition to the above, Automattic uses some information about Site Visitors who are also Automattic users as described in Automattic’s 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, Automattic may publish aggregate statistics about the use of their services.
How Visitor Information is Shared
Only aggregated and reasonably de-identified information may be shared by the Site outside of with Automattic.
Automattic will only share information collected about the Site Visitors in the limited circumstances spelled out in the Automattic Privacy Notice.
How Visitors Can Control Their Information
You can use the Site’s Contact Form to request that all of your comments be deleted from the Site. Additionally, if you are a subscriber to the Site blog, you are able to unfollow it at any time, and the link for that is included in the footer of the follow emails.
If you have more complex requests or questions regarding your data, including to access to the information saved about you, the Site will work with Automattic to fulfill your request. You may also contact Automattic directly if you have questions about their policies, using this form.
Other Tools
Jetpack
The only plugins that the Site utilizes are those managed by Automattic, including Jetpack, whose Privacy Policy can be found here. Relevant Jetpack services and the information they use is detailed below:
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.
Contact Form
Data Used: If Akismet is enabled on the site, the contact form submission data — IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (also owned by Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. The actual submission data is stored in the database of the site on which it was submitted and is emailed directly to the owner of the form (i.e. the site author who published the page on which the contact form resides). This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message.
Data Synced (?): Post and post meta data associated with a user’s contact form submission. If Akismet is enabled on the site, the IP address and user agent originally submitted with the comment are synced, as well, as they are stored in post meta.
Gravatar Hovercards
Data Used: This feature will send a hash of the user’s email address (if logged in to the site or WordPress.com — or if they submitted a comment on the site using their email address that is attached to an active Gravatar profile) to the Gravatar service (also owned by Automattic) in order to retrieve their profile image.
Infinite Scroll
Data Used: In order to record page views via WordPress.com Stats (which must be enabled for page view tracking here to work) with additional loads, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.
Activity Tracked: Page views will be tracked with each additional load (i.e. when you scroll down to the bottom of the page and a new set of posts loads automatically). If the site owner has enabled Google Analytics to work with this feature, a page view event will also be sent to the appropriate Google Analytics account with each additional load.
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.
Mobile Theme
Data Used: A visitor’s preference on viewing the mobile version of a site.
Activity Tracked: A cookie (akm_mobile) is stored for 3.5 days to remember whether or not a visitor of the site wishes to view its mobile version. Learn more about this cookie.
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.
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.
WordPress.com Stats
Data Used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. Important: The site owner does not have access to any of this information via this feature. For example, a site owner can see that a specific post has 285 views, but he/she cannot see which specific users/accounts viewed that post. Stats logs — containing visitor IP addresses and WordPress.com usernames (if available) — are retained by Automattic for 28 days and are used for the sole purpose of powering this feature.
Activity Tracked: Post and page views, video plays (if videos are hosted by WordPress.com), outbound link clicks, referring URLs and search engine terms, and country. When this module is enabled, Jetpack also tracks performance on each page load that includes the Javascript file used for tracking stats. This is exclusively for aggregate performance tracking across Jetpack sites in order to make sure that our plugin and code is not causing performance issues. This includes the tracking of page load times and resource loading duration (image files, Javascript files, CSS files, etc.). The site owner has the ability to force this feature to honor DNT settings of visitors. By default, DNT is currently not honored.
WordPress.com Toolbar
This feature is only accessible to registered users of the site who are also logged in to WordPress.com.
Data Used: Gravatar image URL of the logged-in user in order to display it in the toolbar and the WordPress.com user ID of the logged-in user. Additionally, for activity tracking (detailed below): 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.
Activity Tracked: Click actions within the toolbar.
Third Party Plug-ins and Advertisers
The Site does not currently make use of third-party plugins, nor does it contain ads from third party ad networks and advertisers that would typically make use of tracking technologies like cookies.
Nevertheless, 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).
Privacy Policy Changes
The most up-to-date version of Automattic’s Privacy Notice for Visitors to Our Users’ Sites can be found here.
For Automattic users, the most up-to-date version of their Privacy Policy, as well as a change log, can be found here.
I will also notify my visitors by revising the change log below when there are any changes to my Privacy Policy. Your further use of The Traveling Inkwell after a change to my Privacy Policy or Automattic’s Privacy Notice will be subject to the updated policies.
Change Log
- May 21, 2018: Initial policy posting.
The Traveling Inkwell 