Privacy & Cookie Policy » I learned to write

Who operates this website

This website is owned and operated by Simon Carne. From time to time, I may change this Notice. The policy was last updated on 27 July 2019. Your continued use of this website indicates your consent to the current version of the Notice. This website’s address is: https://ilearnedtowrite.com.

In this policy statement, I use the term “Personal Information” (or “Personal Data”) to mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.

Privacy

By using this website and/or providing me with any personal information, you are consenting to the use of your personal information as set out in this Notice. Please do not send me any personal information if you do not want that information to be used in this way.

Comments submitted to this website

If you leave a comment on the site, I will collect the data shown in the Comment form. I may also collect your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection, which is carried out through an automated spam detection service. Your comment and its metadata will be retained indefinitely. This is so I can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue and, in the case of approved comments, so that they can remain visible on the site (as you would expect).

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are subscribed to it. If you are subscribed to Gravatar, and if your comment is approved, your Gravatar profile picture will appear on this site alongside your comment. Gravatar’s Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.

In addition to the aforementioned information collected via this website and/or from emails that you send me, I may collect, and retain in my (cloud-based) contact database, contact details for the purposes of future communication on legitimate grounds unless you make a request in accordance with Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation for me to remove your contact details.

Subscribing to this site

If you subscribe to any pages of this site (ie request notification of future comments), your email address will be stored in this website’s database and used to send you emails about subsequent comments (as you would expect). In addition to the information you knowingly provide, I may collect the IP address of subscribers. You can unsubscribe at any time. If you unsubscribe, your email address and any other information will be removed from the website database.

Contacting me

If you send me an email or use the form on the Contact page to get in touch with me, your name, email address and message will be sent to me (as you would expect). This information is kept private and may be stored within the website database and/or my own (cloud-based) email system so that I am able to read your message and, if applicable, respond to you.

reCAPTCHA

I use Google’s reCAPTCHA v3 service to check that messages sent to me via the Contact page are being sent by a human and not by an automated program. The characteristics of the site visitor and their behaviour on the site, eg a truncated form of their IP address and their mouse movements on the site, are analysed by Google in the background. For more information about Google’s own privacy policy, see https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Payments

If you make a donation to support the website, your email address and card details will be passed on to Stripe, the company through which I collect payments. The card details are not retained and I have no access to them.

Site analytics

I use Google Analytics which may collect data from you in the manner described in the “Cookies” section below.

Cookies

The website was built using WordPress software and various associated plugins. This entails using some cookies when you browse the site. A cookie is a tiny text file stored on your computer. Cookies store information that is used to help make sites work. Only I can access the cookies created by my website. You can control your cookies at the browser level. Choosing to disable cookies may hinder your use of certain functions.

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
Sharing buttons	Persistent	Various	Most pages on this website have sharing buttons, ie buttons which enable you to send a notification of this site to users on social networks. If you decide to click on one of those buttons, it will take you to the relevant site (eg Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit etc), which may result in cookies being added to your computer.
Privacy Header	Persistent	1 Year	In the footer of each page on this website, there is a message alerting you to my privacy and cookie policy (as set out on this page). If you've seen this message once, you probably won't want to see it again, so you are given the oportunity to suppress the notice. This website uses a cookie to remember that setting. You can delete the cookie using the link beneath this table. All user data is anonymous.
Google Analytics	Persistent	2 Years	To understand how people use this site, and to discover areas on the site with issues, I use Google Analytics (and Microsoft Clarity - see below). Most websites use some sort of analytics program like this. The data it collects helps me see things like how many people visit this site, which country they are from, how many pages they visited, how fast the site loaded, and so on. Google has their own Privacy Policy which you can review here. If you'd like to opt out of tracking by Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics opt-out page.
wpDiscuz	Persistent	1 Year	I use wpDiscuz software to manage the comment forms available on most pages of this website. wpDiscuz uses cookies to provide functionality and to recognize website commenters across different devices. This is purely a convenience, so that the visitor won’t need to re-type all their information again when they want to leave another comment.
Stripe	Session		I use Stripe to take payments. (This website is currently provided free of charge, but there is an opportunity to make voluntary donations to support the site's maintenance.) If you make a donation, your card details will be requested (as you would expect) along with your email address. The card details are not retained and I have no access to them. If you decide to make a further donation, the information will have to be re-input.
reCAPTCHA	Session		As noted above, I use Google’s reCAPTCHA v3 service to check that messages sent to me via the Contact page are being sent by a human and not by an automated program.
Microsoft Clarity	Persistent	1 Year	To understand how people use this site, I use Microsoft Clarity (and also Google Analytics - see above). Most websites use some sort of analytics programs like these. The data Clarity collects helps me see things like which pages users visited, in which order, what they downloaded so on. You can view Microsoft's Privacy Statement here.

To delete the cookie used to remember that you have seen the “Privacy and Cookie Policy” header click here.

Rights you have over your data

If you have left a comment on this site, subscribed to other commenters, contacted me or made a payment, 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 (except for any data that I am obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes).