GDPR PRIVACY POLICY

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Forkward Thinking Foodinista, we have a few fundamental principles:

• We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through our site.
• We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
• We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your website is shared publicly or permanently deleted.
• We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

Hey there, I am Melanie Williams the founder of Forkward Thinking Foodinista, a food, travel and lifestyle blog, my website is https://forkwardthinkingfoodinista.wordpress.com/

I have both a care and commitment to all who visit my site and I will never sell your information.  Below I explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect:

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services or to communicate with you.

We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to us:

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information.

We’ll start with information that visitors provide directly to our Site, which primarily happens when visitors type into a text field on our Site, like a comment field.

Here are the most common ways in which a visitor directly provides information to our Site:

• Follower Information: When a visitor signs up to our Site using Jetpack or WordPress.com, we collect the sign-up information requested by the Site, which typically includes an email address.
• Site Comments: When a visitor leaves a comment on our Site, we collect that comment, and other information that the visitor provides along with the comment, such as the visitor’s name and email address.
• Other Information Entered on the Site: We may also collect other information that a visitor enters on the Site–such as a search query, or direct communications with us.

Information We Automatically Collect from the Site:

We also automatically collect some information about visitors to our Site. We aim to collect the minimal amount of data necessary to provide our site visitors with our service. The information we automatically collect includes:

• Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of a visitor’s device from the IP address.
• Akismet Commenter Information: We collect information about visitors who comment on our site using the Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but 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…oh, and the comment itself, of course).
• Information from Cookies and Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a Site stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the Site each time the visitor returns. For example when a visitor leaves a comment on our website, you may opt-in automatically to save your name, website and email address.  These cookies are retained for 365 days.  Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on Sites. The site uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track visitors and Site usage, and to deliver targeted ads when ads are enabled for free WordPress.com sites.

How And Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information:

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

• Our site saves information about a person who follows or when they like or comment on a post in order to provide this service to them and email them updates.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information:

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

(1) You have given us your consent–for example before we place certain cookies on your device as described earlier in our Cookie Policy.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information:

We do not sell our users’ private personal information.

We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

• Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
• Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
• Other Site Owners: If you have a WordPress.com account and leave a comment on our site your IP address and the email address associated with your WordPress.com account may be shared with the administrator(s) of the site where you left the comment.

Information Shared Publicly:

Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly.

That means, of course, that information like your public profile and your “Likes” and comments on our website, are all available to others.

For example, the photo that you upload to your public profile, or a default image if you haven’t uploaded one, is your Globally Recognized Avatar, or Gravatar–get it? :). Your Gravatar, along with other public profile information, will display with the comments and “Likes” that you make on our website while logged in to your WordPress.com account.

Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

How Long We Keep Information

When you leave a comment on our site, the comments and its metadata are retained indefinitely.  This in order for us to approve follow-up comments.

If we decide to delete a post you may have commented or “liked” this may remain in our trash folder for thirty days in case we decide to change our mind and would like to restore that content.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

To enhance the security of our account, we have enabled an advanced Two Step Authentication, security setting.  Also we use the Akismet anti-spam service.

If the data of our visitors is leaked in any way for example a hacked website, stolen computers, devices or accidental password sharing, then our visitors or readers, will be informed of the leak within 72 hours.

Your Data Rights

If you have left a comment on our site and if you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Data Rights section above, please contact us as follows:

Melanie Williams at forkwardthinkingfoodinista@gmail.com

Finally, we love our readers, so after all that reading, take a deep breath and more importantly enjoy the site.