User privacy is quite complicated. Whenever a site has a feature, there usually is some privacy implication. I do believe that initiatives like GDRP are generally good for users and for the internet. But I must also say that it is hard to figure out. This is a personal blog, and I don’t have a staff of legal or technical experts to help.
Below is my attempt to describe the tools and privacy implications on Romeo Squared. The important thing to know is that I try to protect your privacy as much as possible. I do not want to track your behavior on the internet, I do not sell your data to anyone, and I am careful about what scripts I allow to run on the site.
One thing that I do want to track are usage statistics on my own site. I need to have a general idea about how many readers I have, and how they use the site. This allows me to improve things like navigation menus and to write more articles that people enjoy. I cannot identify visitors personally, but I can see stuff like “a user from Lithuania viewed this page using a Samsung phone”.
Who we are
Our website address is: https://romeosquared.eu. See more information on the About page.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
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.
Media
If you upload images to the website, 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.
Newsletter
We use MailChimp to handle the email service. For more information, please see MailChimp’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
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 this 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.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this 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.
On Romeo Squared this would typically be YouTube videos that are embedded so they can be watched directly on the page.
Analytics
Analytics are performed on the site itself, and this information is not shared with third parties.
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, 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.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or 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.
Our contact information
You can contact us by sending an email to info@romeosquared.eu.