On May 25, 2018, the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect. These stringent new regulations have been adopted by the European Union to protect the rights to privacy of its citizens — important rights that are valued by people across the globe. Photocritic International respects the privacy of its subscribers and visiting readers by complying with international regulations, including the GDPR.
This blog, Photocritic International, collects the bare minimum of identifiable information required to fulfill online subscriptions. The only type of personal information acquired for that purpose is the subscriber’s email address, voluntarily submitted and necessary in order to make possible delivery to the subscriber’s email inbox of notice that a new post has appeared at the blog.
Comments added to PI blog posts by subscribers and other visitors require, for approval of publication, the inclusion of the commenter’s real name (which any other visitor can see when reading the comment), as well as a valid email address (invisible to all except myself as editor/ publisher). This requirement, standard in regard to most print publications’ “Letters” submissions, protects the content of the blog, myself as its editor and publisher, and its readers from intrusion by anonymous or pseudonymous trolls, bots, and other malicious actors. (See the editorial policy here.) Optionally, commenters can add a link to a website of their own, which is visible to readers as well.
Aside from these items of information, all of them provided voluntarily by its readers, this blog neither collects nor records nor disseminates to anyone any data on its individual visitors. Since subscription is free and no sales of goods and services or other financial transactions take place through this blog, it gathers no personal financial information about visitors that could be exploited by hackers and/or scammers. (Donations get made separately, and securely, through PayPal; they get acknowledged at the website, unless the donor requests otherwise.)
I do not and will not ever share this blog’s email list of its subscribers with any third parties or advertisers. Though its webhosting service this blog is HTTP Secure (HTTPS), which means that the communication protocol is encrypted. WordPress, the blogware used to publish PI, offers a number of additional robust cybersecurity options that I have installed and update regularly. To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of the minimal information noted above, therefore, I believe that as publisher I have put in place appropriate electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information this blog collects online.
Photocritic International uses Google Analytics to measure how users interact with website content. PI uses this information to understand site traffic and usage. As a user navigates between web pages, Google Analytics provides website owners information about the page a user has seen (for example, the specific URL of the page). Google Analytics uses “cookies” to “remember” what a user has done on previous pages and their interactions with the website. Cookies are an industry standard, and most websites use them.
Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate any user’s IP addresses with any other data held by Google, and Photocritic International cannot access that information in any case. Users may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on their individual web browsers, and can also choose to use browsers (or browser options) that enable anonymous browsing of this site.
Subscribers can at any time unsubscribe to this blog, which will automatically remove their email addresses from the mailing list. An Unsubscribe option appears at the end of every notification of a new post.
— A. D. Coleman
