Privacy Policy

Who we are

We are the official blog of Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (you can learn more about us here). Our website address is: https://writerbeware.blog.

The categories below describe what data we collect, why we collect it, and how we protect 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.

We collect information about visitors who comment using the Akismet anti-spam plugin, for the sole purpose of spam checking. The information we collect 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 Akismet privacy policy can be seen here: https://akismet.com/privacy/.

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.

Our Comments Policy can be seen here.

Contact Form

We use a Contact Form plugin to allow site users to send us email. The information, which includes the user’s IP address, is sent as email messages that only Writer Beware staff are allowed to access, and is stored for reference purposes.

We are committed to protecting the privacy of this information: all data, messages, information, and documentation sent to Writer Beware are held in strict confidence, and are not re-sent or shared.

MailPoet newsletter & emails

If you have subscribed to our newsletter, there is a good chance you will receive emails from us. We will only send you emails that you have signed up to receive.

To send you emails, we use the name and email address you provide us. Our site also logs the IP address you used when you signed up for the service to prevent abuse of the system.

This website can send emails through the MailPoet sending service. This service allows us to track opens and clicks on our emails. We use this information to improve the content of our newsletters.

No identifiable information is otherwise tracked outside this website except for the email address.

Analytics

This site uses Jetpack by Automattic, which collects visitors’ 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.

Writer Beware does not have access to this information: for example, we can see that a specific post has 285 views, but we 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 includes post and page views, video plays (if videos are hosted by WordPress.com), outbound link clicks, referring URLs and search engine terms, and country.

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.

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.

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 tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

We do not share data with third parties, although we do use some WordPress plugins on this website that may pass data, including personal information, to external servers to process, such as Akismet Anti-Spam or Jetpack by WordPress.com.

Messages sent to Writer Beware via our Contact Form are held in strict confidence. They are available only to Writer Beware staff, and are not re-sent, publicly posted, or otherwise shared.

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.

If you contact us via our Contact Form, the data and message content are retained indefinitely as part of Writer Beware’s database of questions and complaints. We are committed to protecting data and message content, which are held in strict confidence and are only available to Writer Beware staff.

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.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, or have contacted us via our Contact Form, 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.