Privacy Policy

As promised in our post, Will your WordPress Website be GDPR Compliant by May 25th? , here is our updated Privacy Policy effective May 25, 2018.

Enjoy!

Who We Are

The Studio and Blogsite Studio provide WordPress web design and tutorial services, regular blog posts, and ebook sales via blogsitestudio.com and thestudiowebdesign.com. This privacy policy applies to all visitors and customers using or accessing any of the websites that we produce and maintain for the services that we provide.

This policy DOES NOT cover websites who syndicate content originating from Blogsite Studio or The Studio. For those sites, the site owner/customer is responsible for publishing its own privacy policy.

The Studio and Blogsite Studio is based in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Our mailing address is:
2625 Alberta St. Vancouver, BC, V5Y 3L3 Canada.

For any privacy-related questions, you can reach us at marikane@nullmarikane.com.

Who We Share Your Data With

We don’t share your data with anyone. Nobody, nowhere, nohow.

If we ever were to engage in any onward transfers of your data with third parties for a purpose other than which it was originally collected or subsequently authorized, we would provide you with an opt-out choice to limit the use and disclosure of your personal data far in advance.

Cookies

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. We use cookies across our sites to help identify and track visitors, their usage of our services, and their website access preferences. We describe the specific cookies used in the sections below. Visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using our websites, with the drawback that certain features may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Data We Collect

Registered Users

If you purchased an ebook, your Name, Email, Address, Country and Phone Number, and optionally your Company Name, which are stored in our website’s database. Once this account is created, you must contact us to have it deleted.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) is provided to the Gravatar service to see if a Profile picture of you is available for display. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here.
Your Name, Email, Address, Country and Phone Number, and optionally your Company Name are accessible by employees on the site.
If you have a User account and you log in to a site, we will set up several cookies to save your login information and some of your screen options. The logged-in cookies last for two days, and the screen options cookies last for a year.
If you select “Remember Me” these cookies will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. It is important that you log out if you are using a public computer.

Comments/Pages/Posts

Your Profile Picture (Gravatar), Display Name, Website (URL) (if any) and Biographical Info (if any) may be visible to visitors to the website (e.g. if you leave a comment, forum post, or contribute an article/post).
If you author an article/post, your Username, User ID, Profile Picture (Gravatar), Display Name, Website (URL) (if any) and Biographical Info (if any) are provided to any visitor using the website’s REST API interface.
If you upload media (e.g. images) to the website (in forums, posts, or comments), you should avoid uploading images with EXIF GPS location data included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data included in images on the website.
Visitors using the website’s REST API interface can correlate uploaded media to a particular user. This may allow such visitors to map a user to a particular time and location if EXIF GPS location data was included in the uploaded media.
If you edit or publish an article/post, 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.
When visitors leave comments on one of our sites 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.
Comments may require manual approval by one of our employees or site owners.
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies so we can recognise you as a commenter. These cookies will persist for one year.
Additional spam detection is provided by Automattic/Akismet. The Automattic privacy policy is available here.
Published content and comments are stored indefinitely unless deletion/removal is requested by the original author.

Email/Chat/Contact Forms

We use Mailchimp to process most email and communication with our customers. Mailchimp’s privacy policy is available here.
Customers that email us, or use any of the contact forms on our websites, will have their email address, IP address, and any data provided in the contact form or body of the email stored in the Mailchimp archives.
We keep all email and chat communication indefinitely to help us provide support and improve our services. Individuals can request copies of any previous correspondence with us at any time.

Embedded Content From Other Websites

Embeds are pieces from other websites that are shown from time to time on our websites. They behave in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website and may use cookies or capture information. Typically embedded content is from websites that share videos, images, or other content. These services may collect your IP Address, your User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including correlating your interaction with the content with your account with that service, if you are logged in to that service.

Links to the privacy policies of the most common services have been included below. Where a general privacy policy is not available, the applicable country is indicated.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics for tracking visitors and aggregating information about the traffic to our websites. The Google Analytics privacy policy can be found here: https://policies.google.com/privacy. You can learn more about how to opt-out of tracking in Google Analytics here.

Marketing Campaigns

We use email marketing to communicate with customers and potential customers from time to time. All email lists and campaigns are “opt-in” meaning we will not send you these sorts of emails unless you indicated that you wish to receive them during signup or other interactions on our website.
We may send you “system” emails, such as password reset requests or payment notifications/receipts even if you have not opted-in to email marketing lists.
All marketing emails sent by us will include an unsubscribe link in the footer of the email. Emails sent to you may also include standard tracking, including open and click activities.
We use MailChimp for email marketing. Mailchimp’s privacy policy is found here.
We may utilize social media and web advertising campaigns. These service providers use cookies on our sites and/or pixel tracking to serve ads across the different platforms.

- Google AdSense & DoubleClick (privacy policy | opt out)
- Twitter (privacy policy | opt out)
- Facebook (privacy policy | opt out)

Paying Customers

For payment transactions we use PayPal. PayPal’s privacy policy can be found here.
To comply with accounting and legal requirements, we keep data on financial transactions in the systems above for up to 10 years.

Hosting and API Services

All web servers and hosting are managed by Cloudways and Digital Ocean platforms located in different regions around the world. This includes website hosting, backups, web database, file storage, APIs, and log files.

Your Rights Over Your Data

If you are a registered user or have left comments on our site you can request to see or download the data we have about you.
Typically for visitors that have left comments, the data will be their email address, any IP addresses assigned to them at the time of leaving the comments and the user agent strings of the browsers they used. The rest of the data is public as published by the visitors.
For registered users or paying customers, this will also include profile information and download, payment, and support ticket histories.
You can also request “to be forgotten” and we will erase any personally identifiable data we have about you. Of course, this excludes data we need for administrative or security purposes or if we are required by law to retain some of the data.
An individual who seeks access, or who seeks to correct, amend, or delete inaccurate data, should direct his/her query to marikane@nullmarikane.com. We will respond within a reasonable timeframe, not to exceed one week.

How We Protect Your Data

See wordpress.org/about/security for details on the security of the WordPress core itself.
Prevention is best when it comes to security, and as a first step, we follow all WordPress Code Standards in the plugins we use.
All staff only have access to systems that are directly required to complete the functions of their job. We use dual factor authentication for all critical systems and communications services, and automatically log all staff activity using an internal logging tool.

Our Data Breach Procedures

Should any event occur where customer data has been lost, stolen, or potentially compromised, our policy is to alert our customers via email no later than 48 hours of our team becoming aware of the event. We will also report such incident to any required data protection authority. We will work closely with any customers affected to determine next steps such as any end-user notifications, needed patches, and how to avoid any similar event in the future.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, The Studio and Blogsite Studio may change their Privacy Policy from time to time and will notify clients by email when making changes.

Changelog
May 23, 2018 – Updated language of the policy to be more user-friendly, specifically outlining requirements in preparation for meeting the GDPR.