Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://frenchcountrysideguide.com.

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.

Contact Forms

Users of the form in the “Contact” page of this Site consent to having this website store their submitted information so that we can respond to inquiries. Information is not shared with any outside parties.

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.

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.

Facebook Share
We embed a Facebook widget to allow you to see number of likes/shares/recommends and “like/share/recommend” our webpages. This widget may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the widget, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the widget (such as “liking/sharing/recommending” our webpage), if you are logged in to Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update

Pinterest Share
We use Pinterest Save widget at our website to allow you to pin images to Pinterest from our webpages. These requests may track your IP address in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://policy.pinterest.com/en/privacy-policy

Reddit Badge
We use Reddit Badge widget at our website which may log information when you interact with the widget. This may include your IP address, user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information (e.g., device IDs), pages visited, links clicked, user interactions (e.g., voting data), the requested URL and hardware settings, in accordance with their privacy policy: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/privacy-policy

Twitter Sharing
We use a Twitter Tweet widget at our website. As a result, our website makes requests to Twitter’s servers for you to be able to tweet our webpages using your Twitter account. These requests make your IP address visible to Twitter, who may use it in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://twitter.com/en/privacy#update

Google AdSense

Google and its partners place and read advertising cookies on a web browser to serve ads based on a user’s prior visit to our Site or other websites. Google AdSense sets, reads, collects and stores first-party cookies, in combination with using web beacons to collect information as a result of ad serving, on this Site.

Google stores a record of the ads we serve in their logs. These server logs typically include visitors’ web requests, IP address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of their request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify their browser. This data is stored for a number of reasons, the most important of which are to improve their services and to maintain the security of their systems. This log data is anonymized by removing part of the IP address (after 9 months) and cookie information (after 18 months).

Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Ads Settings.

Visit Google’s Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising, and how long Google stores this information. Or to learn more, please see How Google uses information.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics collects first-party cookies as well as data relating to the IP address, device or browser, and activities carried out on this Site in order to measure user interactions and to generate reports on these statistics. 

Google Analytics also collects Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to ensure the security of the service and to tell us which region (country, state or city) our visitors are from (this is called “geolocation by IP”). 
IP address anonymization is being used on this Site. IP anonymization or IP masking occurs as soon as the data is received by the Analytics collection network, before any data storage or processing. Google anonymizes the IP as soon as it is technically feasible, at the earliest possible stage in the collection network. Analytics’ anonymization feature replaces the last octet of IP addresses for IPv4 addresses and the last 80 bits of IPv6 addresses with zeros in memory, shortly after they are sent to the Analytics collection network. In this case, the full IP address is never written to disk. Google Analytics will not have access to the full IP address of visitors; however, the

Google Analytics is compatible with a browser add-on that the user can optionally install in order to deactivate Google Analytics measurement for any site they access. Note that this add-on only disables Google Analytics measurement.

For more information, see Google’s Privacy & Terms.

Who we share your data with

Data Processing

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Lawful basis of processing personal data

We may process personal data relating to users if one of the following applies:

  • users have given their consent for one or more specific purposes;
  • provision of data is necessary for the performance of an agreement with the user and/or for any pre-contractual obligations thereof;
  • processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject;
  • processing is related to a task that is carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us;
  • processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party.

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 (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.

We process and store your personal data for 14 months or as long as required by the purpose they have been collected for.

Therefore:

  • personal data collected for purposes related to the performance of a contract between us and the user will be retained until such contract has been fully performed;
  • personal data collected for the purposes of our legitimate interests will be retained as long as needed to fulfill such purposes;
  • we may be allowed to retain personal data for a longer period whenever the user has given consent to such processing, as long as such consent is not withdrawn;
  • we may be obliged to retain personal data for a longer period whenever required to do so for the performance of a legal obligation or upon order of an authority.

Once the retention period expires, personal data will be deleted and some of your rights (i.e. the right to access, the right to erasure, the right to rectification and the right to data portability) cannot be enforced after expiration of the retention period. You may find specific information regarding your rights within the relevant section of this Privacy Policy or by contacting us at rose@frenchcountrysideguide.com.

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 correct or 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.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at rose@frenchcountrysideguide.com.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to update or change our Privacy Policy at any time and you should check this Privacy Policy periodically. Your continued use of our Site after we post any modifications to the Privacy Policy on this page will constitute your acknowledgment of the modifications and your consent to abide and be bound by the modified Privacy Policy.

Your acceptance of these terms

By using this Site, you signify your acceptance of this policy and terms of service. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our Site. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes to this policy will be deemed your acceptance of those changes.

Last updated November 13, 2020