Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://hackandhear.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.

Comment Spam

Comments are inspected for spam by the Akismet plugin. The implementation of Akismet does support the infrastructure of this blog regarding the GDPR. More information can be found here: https://akismet.com/gdpr/

With the help of this plugin, this website distinguishes comments from humans and those of spam systems. For this, all comment data is sent to a server located in the US, where they are analyzed and kept for 4 days for comparison purposes. If a comment gets classified as spam, it is stored beyond this time frame. Comment data includes the name you have input, the email address, the IP address, the content of the comment, the referrer, data about the browser that you used and the operating system that you used at the time of writing the comment. You are free to use pseudonyms or leave out the name and the email address. You can avoid your data being transmitted by not using the comment feature. This would make us sad, but as of now we don’t see any equally effective alternative.

As an alternative to commenting on the side, you can send your feedback via email to the owner of the website. For this, see Contact.

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.

Contact forms

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

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.

Website Analytics

We use with Google Analytics to allow tracking technologies and remarketing services on the Site through the use of first party cookies and third-party cookies, to, among other things, analyze and track users’ use of the Site, determine the popularity of certain content and better understand online activity. By accessing the Site, you consent to the collection and use of your information by these third-party vendors. You are encouraged to review their privacy policy and contact them directly for responses to your questions. We do not transfer personal information to these third-party vendors.

Newsletter

The newsletter is powered by MailChimp. If you sign up for the newsletter here, your data will be transmitted to and hosted at MailChimp. You can avoid this by not subscribing to the newsletter. If you already signed up for the newsletter, you can always unsubscribe by clicking on the respective link in the newsletter emails.

Who we share your data with

We currently share your data with the following parties:

  • Akismet (see Comment Spam)
  • Google Analytics (see Website Analytics)
  • MailChimp (see Newsletter).

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.

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 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.