Privacy Policy

Privacy-Policy-10-17-18

Our website address is: https://beneaththecoversblog.com.

It is Beneath The Covers Blog’s policy to respect your privacy. It is very important to us. This Privacy Policy is developed to explain how we collect, use, share, and safeguard the personal information you provide to us when you access our website. Please read this Privacy Policy thoroughly and in its entirety to understand how it applies to you.

By using and/or engaging with our site, you are expressly accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

1. What Personal Data We Collect and Why We Collect It

We collect information about you (ie. name, email address, location, type of browser, IP address) in different ways, including when you provide it to us directly. Certain third parties may also collect information about you, either directly or from your interaction with our website. We collect information through our site to communicate with readers about authors and books we believe may interest them, and for our legitimate business needs.

a) Comments
When visitors leave comments on our 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.

Visitor comments on our website are checked through Akismet Anti-Spam, an automated spam detection service.

b) Media
If you upload images to the website through actions such as comments or contact forms, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

c) Contact Forms
Personal data, such as name and email address, is captured when someone submits a contact form through our site. Contact form submissions are kept indefinitely for customer service purposes, and information submitted through them are not used for marketing purposes.

d) 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.

If you have an account and you log in to our site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, 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.

We use cookies for the following purposes:

  • Required Functions: certain cookies are required for the basic functionality of our website;
  • Analytics: we use cookies to track and collect data across our website, which we review in order to provide a better experience;
  • Marketing: we use cookies to provide you with relevant marketing materials for this website.

e) Embedded content from other websites
Articles on our site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

f) Information from Third Party Social Media Networks
Our site contains links to third party social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Twitter). If you choose to “like”, comment, or “share” content though our site or otherwise post information from or via our site to a third-party websites, features or applications, that information may be publicly displayed and the third-party website may have access to information about you and your use of our site. We may also receive information about you if you choose to participate in social media applications through which you allow us to collect (or the third party to share) information about you, including personal information.

Third party social media sites have different privacy policies than our own. We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of any such other sites. We encourage you to be aware that when you leave our site you should read the privacy policy of the other site you go to understand what that other site collects, and how it uses information about you with others.

g) How We Use Your Information
We use information we collect about you in various ways:

  • To enable us to provide and maintain our site, including site administration and internal operations such as troubleshooting and testing;
  • To improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device of choice;
  • To tailor content, recommendations and offers we display to you, both on our site and elsewhere online;
  • To send you information or special offers from us or on behalf of third parties;
  • To determine your eligibility to win and/or to send you a prize or award in connection with a contest or sweepstakes;
  • To respond to your questions or contact you about our site and services;
  • To enable targeted advertising for books across unaffiliated web properties;
  • To notify you about changes to our site;
  • To keep our site safe and secure; and
  • To comply with legal and regulatory requirements.

2. Who We Share Your Data With

Beneath The Covers Blog does not share personal information with third parties nor do we store any information about your visit to this blog other than to analyze and optimize your content and reading experience through the use of cookies.

We may share your information:

  • When required by law
  • Where we have your consent
  • With third party service providers and other companies that work on our behalf
  • With business partners and their affiliates
  • With the licensor of this website, and their affiliates

a) Legal and Law Enforcement Purposes
We may disclose personal information in response to legal processes, such as in response to a court order or a subpoena, or in response to a law enforcement agency’s request. We may also disclose such information to third parties in connection with fraud-scoring, detection, and prevention activities or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities or potential threats to the physical safety of any person, to protect our rights and the rights of others, and as otherwise required by law.

b) Licensors and Other Third Parties
We may disclose your personal and non-personal information to our website Licensors and their affiliates, and business partners to improve our services.

c) Linked Sites
Our website contains links to other sites whose information practices and policies may be different from ours. Visitors should consult the other sites’ privacy policies before submitting any information, as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.

d) Sponsors and Co-Promotions
We sometimes may offer contests, giveaways, promotions, games, or social media integrations that are sponsored by or branded with identified third parties. These third parties may obtain personal information that you voluntarily provided to participate in such activities. We have no control over these third parties’ use of this information.

3. 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.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

4. What Rights You Have Over Your Data

If you have an account on this site, have left comments, or signed up as a subscriber (newsletter) to our site, 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.

To make such a request, please see our contact information located at the bottom of the Privacy  Policy.

You may choose to opt-out of email communications by Beneath The Covers Blog by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any communication or by contacting us at beneaththecovers4@gmail.com. (Please allow us time to delete information about you from such communications and remember that we can only delete such information if you provide us with all email addresses you have used with us; otherwise, we will delete the email address for the communication for which you are opting out.)

If you believe that any of your information is incorrect or needs updating, please let us know by communicating at beneaththecovers4@gmail.com. We will use reasonable efforts to correct your information and our records upon verification of the requested change.

5. Security of Your Information

Your security is very important to us and we have taken appropriate technical and organizational steps designed to safeguard the information we collect through our website. Unfortunately, no security system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot guarantee security of the information you provide to us, or against interception or misuse.

6. California Residents Privacy Rights

The State of California has established its own regulations that apply to its residents. If you are a resident of California, you may request information about our practices related to disclosing your personal information to certain third parties and/or opt-out of our sharing of your information with unaffiliated third parties for their marketing purposes. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please send your request (along with your full name, email address, mailing address, and subject line labeled “Your California Privacy Rights”) to: privacy@araca.com.

If you are a resident of California and under the age of 18, you have the right to request that we remove any data that you provided to us on our website. To request the removal of such data, please use the contact information listed at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. Please be advised that while we will remove your data that was provided to us, we may not be able to completely remove that data from our systems.

7. Children

You must be at least 18 years of age to use our website. Use of this website is at your own risk. We host our site on a reputable platform and take reasonable efforts to maintain and host the site. However, we make no explicit representations or warranties as to the safety or your individual use of the website.

Please do not access or use this website, products, or services if you are under the age of 18. If you become aware that we have collected data of anyone under the age of 18, please contact us so that we may delete that data.

8. International Data

We operate internationally, yet our computer systems are currently based in the United States. Your personal information will be processed by us in the U.S. where data protection and privacy regulations may be different from those of your country of residence.

If you reside in the European Union (EU), some of your data will be transferred internationally to those servers. Transfers will be protected by appropriate safeguards, namely the EU-US Privacy Shield. More information on the Privacy Shield can be found at: https://www.privacyshield.gov/welcome.

9. Changes to our Privacy Policy

Beneath The Covers Blog reserves the right to make changes to any terms of this Privacy Policy at any time without notice. We may also notify you by email, in our discretion, or by posting a prominent notification on our site. Your access and/or use of our site after the effective date of such changes will be deemed an acceptance of and consent to be bound by the terms as changed.

We encourage you to periodically check back and review this policy so that you will always know our current privacy practices.

10. Contact Information

Questions, comments, and requests regarding this Privacy Policy are welcomed and should be addressed to: beneaththecovers4@gmail.com.

Last Updated on May 25, 2018.