Who’s Who and What This Privacy Notice Covers

Let’s talk first about who I am at Emma Baird dot com, what we do, and what this Privacy Notice covers. I’m a writer and blogger. I provide freelance copywriting to businesses, and I write books. The blog complements my work and showcases what I can do. I don’t sell directly from this site.

Visitors to the site can read published content and interact with the site through features such as comments, “likes,” poll/survey responses, and follows.

I put together this Privacy Notice to help our visitors understand the information we collect about them, and how that happens on our site and how that information is used and disclosed.

Information We Collect About Visitors to Our Site

Information a Visitor Provides to a Site

We’ll start with information that visitors provide directly to a site, which primarily happens when visitors type into a text field on a site, like a comment field or a sign-up form.

Here are the most common ways in which a visitor directly provides information to a site:

• Follower and Subscriber Information: When a visitor signs up to follow or subscribe to a site using Jetpack or WordPress.com, we collect the sign-up information requested by the site, which typically includes an email address.
• Site Comments: When a visitor leaves a comment on a site, we collect that comment, and other information that the visitor provides along with the comment, such as the visitor’s name and email address.
• PollDaddy Survey Responses: When a visitor completes a poll, quiz, or other type of survey prepared by a User via Polldaddy.com, we collect the visitor’s responses to those surveys, and other information that the survey owner requires for a poll/quiz/survey response, like an e-mail address.
• Other Information Entered on the Site: We may also collect other information that a visitor enters on the site–such as a contact form submission, a search query, or site registration.

Information We Automatically Collect from the Site

We also automatically collect some information about visitors to a site. The information we automatically collect depends on which of our services the site uses. We’ve listed examples below:

• Technical Data from a Visitor’s Computer and Etcetera: We collect the information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available about visitors to a site, such as the IP address, browser type, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information.
• Visitor Interactions: We collect information about a visitor’s interactions with a Site, including the “likes” and “ratings” left by visitors to a site using WordPress.com or Jetpack.
• Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of a visitor’s device from the IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, tally for our Users how many people visit their sites from certain geographic regions. If you’d like, you can read more about the Site Stats feature for WordPress.com sites and Jetpack sites.
• Akismet Commenter Information: We collect information about visitors who comment on our site that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address…oh, and the comment itself, of course).
• Polldaddy Response Information: We collect information about visitors who respond to a Polldaddy survey. The information that we collect typically includes IP address, browser type, operating system, user agent, and the web page last visited.
• Information from Cookies and Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a site stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the site each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on Sites. Automattic uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track visitors and site usage, and to deliver targeted ads when ads are enabled for free WordPress.com sites or when ads are enabled on a Site through WordAds or Jetpack Ads (see the “Other Tools” section below for more details). For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how visitors can control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

Other Information Provided by Our Users

WordPress also collects any other information that its users provide to us about visitors to their sites. For example, we may upload a directory or other information about site visitors and customers to the “backend” administrative platform for managing the site.

How WordPress Uses Visitor Information

WordPress uses information about site visitors in order to provide its services to their users (bloggers like us) and their sites. We may use its services to, for example, create and manage our site, sell products and services on their site, flag and fight comments from spammers, and collect information through polls, quizzes and other surveys.

In addition to the above, WordPress uses some information about site visitors who are also its users as described in our Privacy Policy.

WordPress may also use and share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify any individual. For instance, it may publish aggregate statistics about the use of its services.

How WordPress Shares Visitor Information

WordPress may share information collected about site visitors in the limited circumstances spelled out below:

• “Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose Site visitor information to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our services to our Users and their Sites, or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Notice for information about visitors that we share with them.
• “Third Party Vendors: We may share Site visitor information with third party vendors who need to know this information in order to provide their services to us. This group includes vendors that help us provide our services to our Users and their Sites. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
• “Legal Requests: We may disclose Site visitor information in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. For more information on how we respond to requests for information, please see our Legal Guidelines.
• “To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose Site visitor information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, our Users, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
• “Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Automattic goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, Site visitor information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Notice would continue to apply to Site visitor information and the party receiving this information may continue to use this information, but only consistent with this Privacy Notice.
• “Information Shared Publicly: Information that visitors choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like visitor comments and “likes” are all available to others, including information about the visitor that is displayed in connection with a comment or “like” (such as a visitor’s WordPress.com username and Gravatar). We provide a “firehose” stream of public data (including comments) from Sites to provide that data to firehose subscribers, who may view and analyze the content, but do not have rights to re-publish it publicly. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.