Who we are
Hi, I’m Derek and this is a WordPress website. My website address is: https://dereknelsen.com.
This is a writer’s website. The point of this site and my reason for asking for your email address is to allow me to better introduce myself and my writing; connect with readers, share my stories, and build a community so I can reach out to fans of my work.
Here we go:
It is the author’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect from you or which you may provide to us, in the circumstances set out below. Accordingly, we have developed this privacy policy in order for you to understand how we collect, use, communicate, disclose, safeguard and otherwise make use of your personally identifiable information (“Personal Data”).
We will only collect and use your Personal Data where:
– we have lawful grounds to do so, including to comply with our legal obligations;
– we are performing a contract with you for our services; and
– we have legitimate interests in using your Personal Data and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (“GDPR”), we, dereknelsen.com, are the “data controller”. If you have any questions about this policy or about how we use your Personal Data, please contact us via our contact details at the end of this policy.
This policy is effective as of 11 May 2018. We review our privacy practices on an ongoing basis, and as such we may change this privacy policy from time to time. Please check this page frequently to ensure you are familiar with its current content.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
We will only use your Personal Data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we use your Personal Data to:
– process and manage your use of our website;
– respond to your questions, comments and requests;
– where you have opted-in to receive marketing from us, deliver communications that are relevant to your preferences / may be of interest to you;
– improve our services and Website through analysis of information.
Here are some specifics:
- Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site 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.
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: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
- Contact forms
Signup forms are used throughout the site to establish an email marketing subscriber list so I can connect with readers, share my stories, and build a community so I can reach out to fans of my work while writing or releasing a new book.
- Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
- Analytics
We use BlueHost and MailerLite analytics tools that tracks numbers of visits to each page and related metadata.
Who we share your data with
We take your privacy seriously and will not share your Personal Data with others, except as permitted by applicable law or as set out below:
We share Personal Data as necessary with third parties who provide services or functions on our behalf and who require the information to provide those specific services to us. These third parties may include social media advertising platforms such as Facebook and Google Adwords for the purpose of custom audience generation and the development of targeting criteria for other audiences. Please note that we have appropriate data privacy safeguards in place with third parties with whom we share Personal Data as described above and who are providing services or functions on our behalf.
The following are third party service providers we use to operate this site that may, for the purposes described previously, collect or process data or metadata of subscribers on our behalf are as follows:
- Web-Hosting Service: BlueHost privacy policy
- Subscriber forms and email list management service: MailerLite Privacy Policy.
We use MailerLite to manage our email marketing subscriber list and to send emails to our subscribers. MailerLite is a third-party provider, which may process your data using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our newsletter and email outreach.
You can unsubscribe from our emails by clicking on the unsubscribe link provided at the end of each newsletter / email you receive.
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.
What rights you have over your data
If you 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 and then reviewed by the site administrator.
How we protect your data:
We have implemented security policies and technical measures to safeguard the Personal Data we collect. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with applicable law, including the GDPR, to safeguard Personal Data from accidental loss, destruction or damage and unauthorized access, use and disclosure.
What data breach procedures we have in place:
If our site administrator, hosting or email management services identify a data breach we will contact all affected using any information and means we have available leveraging the systems we have in place.
What third parties we receive data from:
None
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data:
Mailing List Segmentation: This is common and supported directly through our Email Management Service Provider. Using this function allows us to segment out mailing lists into groups based on the promotions and communications they responded to in order to focus marketing efforts and promotions to better serve the interests of our subscribers.
Change of Purpose
We will only use your Personal Data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to have an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your Personal Data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.