Privacy Policy

Looking for the details on data collection and storage around here? Well, you've found them.

Rambler's Journal is a platform located at https://elisabethcarolharveymccumber.com where I, Elisabeth Carol Harvey McCumber (EM), publish articles on a variety of topics. Periodically I send a digest of all recent articles to subscribers, unless no new articles exist, in which case there's no digest.

What Data Gets Collected?

On digest subscriptions

If you subscribe to the digest, you'll need to submit your email so that I know where to send your monthly reading.

On comments

If you leave a comment on an article, you'll be required to enter your name and email address first; this reduces spam and helps everyone in the conversation get to know each other.

Of course, the content of your comment will also be saved indefinitely, so that the comment can remain published per your wishes. Note, when leaving a comment, please don't upload any images that have embedded location data (EXIF GPS) in them, because other users could theoretically download the image and extract the location data from it, which could compromise your privacy.

Comment Metadata

Within the deep, dark brain of this website, your IP address and browser user agent string will be remembered in order to help detect spam, and so that any future follow-up comments you want to make can be recognized and approved automatically, instead of placed in the moderation queue for me to sort through later.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may also be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you're using it. You can read the Gravatar service privacy policy if you want to. After your comment is approved, your profile picture may be visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Comment Cookies

Cookies refer to data that you ask this website to remember. When leaving a comment, you have the option to ask this website to remember your name, email address and website for later, so you won't have to reenter it every single time you want to say something. If you're fine with that, give it your permission and it will store this information for a year. If not, say no and it won't.

On data that other websites may collect via embedded content

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc) from other websites. This content behaves here exactly as it would if you were visiting the other website. Be aware that the source websites have their own policies and procedures for data privacy, and those policies and procedures are in effect when you consume embedded content here just as they would be if you were consuming the content at its source.

For example, if you view an embedded YouTube video on this website, YouTube may use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, monitor your interaction with the video (including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website), and collect data about you.

Any such website is a third party whose actions and policies are completely outside of my control.

On analytics

I'm running Google Analytics and Jetpack on this website, which collect aggregated data about user behavior. In other words, these services don't tell me anything about you personally, but they do let me know, generally speaking, which of my articles are most popular, what search terms people use to get here, and so on, and so forth. If you have any questions, please research these services directly to better understand the kind of data they track and how to opt out of tracking, if that's important to you.

On profile data for registered users

For users that are registered as authors, editors or adminstrators at Ramblers Journal, this website stores the personal information they provide in their user profiles. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information (except their username) at any time. Website administrators can also see and edit this type of information.

What Data Do You Share?

I never share any of your personal information with anyone, and I never will, unless for some crazy reason I'm required to do so by a court of law. (Chances of that are slim indeed.)

What Are My Rights?

If you've left comments on this website, you can ask me to remove them. You can remove yourself from the mailing list or ask me to remove you, as well. You can also request that I erase any personal data I happen to have on file, excluding anything I'm obligated to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. If you ask me to do any of these things, I will do my best to honor that request in a timely manner.