Privacy Policy

I have an affiliate relationship with Bookshop.org and Malaprop's Bookstore in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site. Read more on my affiliate page.

Last updated April 20, 2023

Who I Am

Introverted Reader is a personal book review blog (with the exception of clearly labeled guest posts or attributed excerpts). Any opinions expressed are solely my own. My website address is: https://www.introvertedreader.com. My goal is to share my love of reading but I do include clearly-labeled affiliate links to purchase books I review. If you purchase goods through these links, I will earn a small commission at no cost to you. My intention is not so much to earn money (I’ve honestly never earned a dime from this blog as of April 2023), but to promote independent bookstores.

I am not a legal expert, so below is my good-faith effort to be as transparent to my visitors as possible.

What Personal Data I Collect and Why I Collect It

My intention is to afford my visitors as much privacy as possible. This being a digital format, some information will inevitably be collected, both for providing visitors the best experience possible and for website analytics.

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.

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

I use Contact Form 7 for my “Contact Me” form. I collect your name (screen name, pseudonym, etc), email address, and, optionally, your website address for communication purposes. I will not share your information with any third parties. Gmail is my email service provider. I will delete your message after I deem our interaction complete. You may view Contact Form 7’s Privacy Policy and Gmail’s Privacy Policy as well.

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.

I use Mailchimp to email periodic newsletters to users who choose to subscribe through my website. I will collect your name (pseudonym, screen name, etc.), email address, and website (optional) during the signup. Please view Mailchimp’s Privacy Policy.

Contests

I may occasionally host contests on Introverted Reader. Entry forms will be designed and stored using Google Forms. Children under the age of 13 are forbidden to enter contests. Information gathered on the form may include name (pseudonym, screen name, etc.), email address, and, optionally, website address. Depending on the nature of the prize, winners may need to provide their mailing address. Entrants will be assigned a number when they enter and that number will be entered in random.org to choose the winner(s). No personal information will be used to determine the winner. Upon successfully contacting the winner(s) and delivery of the prize(s), all entries, including personal information, and the Google form will be deleted. Rules will be clearly explained in the contest announcement. View Google’s Privacy Policy.

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.

Analytics

I use Google Analytics and MonsterInsights to analyze my website traffic. I am very new to both products, but as I understand it, they collect data such as the type of device visitors use to view the page (mobile vs. desktop), the country and possibly city visitors live in, which pages are visited, how much time is spent on each page, and how visitors arrived at the site (search, social media, direct link, etc.). I have chosen to anonymize IP addresses obtained through Google Analytics. I have also chosen to disable the Google Analytics options for Google Products and Services, Technical Support, and Account Specialists to afford my visitors more privacy. I have left the Benchmarking option enabled. As I understand this option, the data collected is anonymized and aggregated and therefore private. You may view Google’s Privacy Policy and MonsterInsight’s Privacy Policy.

Who we share your data with

I do not and will not intentionally share your data with third parties.

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe and Bookshop.org. I had an affiliate relationship with Better World Books prior to 2020. I support BWB’s business model but decided in 2020 to focus my efforts on independent bookstores. You may find affiliate links to BWB in posts written prior to 2020. You may view their respective privacy policies by following the links.

WordPress is the platform I use for my blog. Please view WordPress.org’s Privacy Policy.

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.

As mentioned previously, I will most likely delete a message sent through my contact form after I deem our interaction complete, but there is a chance your message will remain in my inbox indefinitely.

Data collected by plugins I use will be retained per their individual privacy policies.

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.