Who I am

Mary Small, who writes under the name of Mary Mofit Small, runs this website. You can reach me through the contact form on this website. The address for the website is https://mwritingsmall.com . The address for the contact form is https://mwritingsmall.com/marymofitsmall/ .

Whom I share your data with

I do not sell your data, but I do collect it so that the website functions smoothly, so I can improve its content, so I can contact you if you request me to do so, and so I can alert you to new blog posts if you subscribe. I describe in later sections what data I collect and why, but first let me introduce the companies whose products run this site because they are doing the actual data collection. This is a WordPress website, hosted by Bluehost on a domain that I purchased from Google. Jetpack provides analytics, the contact form, and security; VaultPress (which is part of Jetpack) backs up the site. Akismet (also associated with Jetpack) protects the website from spam. Bluehost also provides analytics. Much of the information in this privacy policy is taken from their and their parent companies’ privacy policies, which can be viewed in their entirety at the following sites:

• https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/
• https://akismet.com/privacy/
• https://my.bluehost.com/hosting/help/gdpr
• https://www.endurance.com/privacy/privacy
• https://policies.google.com/privacy
• https://jetpack.com/support/for-your-privacy-policy/
• https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/?utm_source=akismet&utm_medium=automattic_referred&utm_campaign=privacy_page

What personal data I collect, why I collect it, and how long I keep it

Contact form

When you leave a comment on the contact form, Jetpack collects your IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message; stores it in the website’s database; and sends your name, email address, and comment to my (Mary Mofit’s) business email address so I can reply. I will delete the email from my files and from the website within 30 days of my response. 

In addition, Akismet collects the following information for the sole purpose of spam checking: name, user agent, email address, URL, IP address, external user ID, website, and message. This information is synced to WordPress.com servers. How long this information is kept is described in the Spam section.

Subscribing to blog posts

When you subscribe to receive emails alerting you to new blog posts on this website, Jetpack collects the following information: your email address and some basic server data, including all of your HTTP request headers, the IP address from which you are viewing the page, and the URI which was given in order to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI). This server data is used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam (see the section about spam).

Jetpack sends an email to me, Mary Mofit, to notify me about each new subscriber. I delete this email within 30 days of receipt, but your information is stored on the website until you unsubscribe.

Functionality cookies, which store user preferences, are set for a duration of 347 days to remember a visitor’s blog and post subscription choices if, in fact, they have an active subscription.

Cookies

This site uses cookies to analyze traffic on the site, as described under Analytics, and to remember your subscription choices, as described under Subscribing to Blog Posts.

Jetpack also stores a cookie (akm_mobile) for 3.5 days to remember whether a visitor to the site wishes to view its mobile version.

Jetpack gives a good description of Cookies at their website (https://jetpack.com/support/cookies/#comments)

Spam

Akismet collects the personal data needed to protect the site against spam. They keep most data for between two weeks and ninety days before it is automatically deleted from their databases. A small subset of data is kept longer. Akismet’s policy states, “Anyone can opt-out of all long-term tracking for the very small subset of data we do keep longer by using our contact form. For more information, please visit our Privacy Notice.”

Analytics

WordPress and Jetpack use cookies to tally the unique numbers of visitors, as well as the number from specific geographic locations. A visitor is counted when they are observed using or browsing the site for the first time in a given period.

Both WordPress and Bluehost generate information about visitors to the site so I (Mary Mofit) can improve the website’s content.

• To power the WordPress Statistical analysis, Jetpack records the following information each time the user scrolls to the bottom of a webpage: 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, and country code. The following activities are also tracked: post and page views, video plays, outbound link clicks, referring URLs and search engine terms, and country. In addition, Jetpack tracks performance on each page load to make sure that the company’s plugin and code are not causing performance issues. This includes the tracking of page load times and resource loading duration (image files, JavaScript files, CSS files, etc.). I (Mary Mofit) do not have access to this raw data; I can only see the finished information, such as the total number of views per day.

Stats logs containing visitor IP addresses and WordPress.com usernames (if available), are retained by Automattic, Jetpack’s parent company, for 28 days and are used for the sole purpose of providing analytics for this website.

• Bluehost also provides analytics for this site. To do so, they record visitor IP, URL, time and duration of visit, number of visits, pages viewed per visit, hits per visit, band width, location of visitor, operating system used, brower used, information downloaded, and search engine, key phrases, and keywords used in the search. Bluehost has been compliant with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), one of the world’s strictest laws on data use, since May 25, 2018; for specific information on how long they keep data and their use of it, please contact privacy@endurance.com.

This website honors DNT settings of visitors.

Sharing

The buttons for sharing content to social media, along with information and tools, were loaded directly from the listed social media sites. As a result, each social media site can in turn collect information about you when you use their sharing buttons. In addition, when you share content via email, my website collects the following information about you: your name and email address, IP address (for spam checking), user agent (for spam checking), and email body/content. This content will be sent to Akismet so that a spam check can be performed.

What rights you have over your data

If you have subscribed to the blog posts or sent in comments via the contact form, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data I hold about you, including any data you have provided to me. You can also request that I erase any personal data I hold about you. Similar requests can be made to WordPress (https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/ ), Jetpack (https://jetpack.com/support/for-your-privacy-policy/ ), Akismet (https://akismet.com/privacy/ ),  and Bluehost (privacy@endurance.com) for data they collect for statistical analysis.

Where we send your data

As noted above, Akismet collects data for spam detection; and Bluehost, Jetpack, and WordPress collect data for analytics. Google may also have access to data in the course of normal website operation. In addition, I use a Google account and Microsoft Outlook to respond to comments made on the Contact Form.

How we protect your data

This site has an SSL certificate, ensuring secure connections between your device and the website. Bluehost and Jetpack both provide safety features to protect the site.

My contact information

Use the contact form on the website to ask me privacy-related questions.