Who we are
Author Buzz UK is a project started by Matthew D. Brown and supported by Thanet Creative (a charitable organisation for writers). We all reside in Kent, England. The aim of the site is to help other writers, like ourselves, who are serious about establishing themselves as authors and writers.
- Our website address is: http://authorbuzz.co.uk.
Matthew takes care of most of the day to day running of the site and does his best to keep your data safe. Matthew really hates spam and finds abuses of personal data to be highly objectionable. Therefore, he does his best to provide every reasonable protection to site users. That said, we recommend that you only share data that you are willing to make public.
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 anonymised 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.
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
If you fill out a contact form on authorbuzz.co.uk, what you type may be seen by our administrators who will respond or pass your comments along to the most appropriate person to deal with your input. The comment form should indicate who that is.
Contact forms on blogs that include .authorbuzz.co.uk in the domain name, such as thanetcreative.authorbuzz.co.uk will primarily be viewed by the blog owner. If in doubt, you should view that blog’s privacy policy for more details.
Directory
The information added by you to our directory is held in our database for the purpose of displaying that data. By default, directory entries are set to expire after one year. You should only provide information in a directory listing that you intend to be publicly viewable.
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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use Automattic (the company behind WordPress) to generate anonymised, aggregate usage data. This is just so we know what is popular with our visitors so we can continue to provide content that is of interest. The Automattic privacy policy is here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.
Who we share your data with
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (which we recommend as this grants a greater range of features), 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). Our 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.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Your contact information
Your contact information will be used in the following ways:
- To send you updates if you subscribe to any.
- To help you should you need to recover your account (password reset, etc.).
We do not send unsolicited communications.
Additional information
How we protect your data
Your data is kept on a secure server hosted in the UK. We do not grant third-party access to this data under any circumstances.
What data breach procedures we have in place
Your data is protected by industry standard and up-to-date Linux stack. The stack is protected by an adaptive firewall which closes suspicious or abusive connections. Additionally, our servers are protected by a leading UK based server hosting company.
In the event of some unforeseeable breach, we will inform the public immediately. This has never happened and we do our best to make sure it never does.
What third parties we receive data from
We do not collect third-party data. We do, however, receive anonymised, aggregate usage data provided by Automattic. This is so we can know what is popular and provide more content of a similar nature. The Automattic privacy policy is here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
We utilise the Akismet anti-spam service. The Akismet privacy policy is here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.
From time to time, our most trusted administrators review user accounts to ensure that no spam accounts have been allowed to slip through and spoil the community experience we are trying to build.