Who we are
This is a personal blog and portfolio site run by Petro Vivier and it is based in South Africa. Our website address is: https://petrovivier.co.za.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
If you subscribe to our blog via email or make use of the contact form, we collect your email address, along with any other information you supply us with (for example, your name). We use this information to send you an email every time a new blog post comes out. We do not use it for anything else. You may unsubscribe from the blog at any time, using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. After you have unsubscribed, you will no longer receive emails from us.
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.
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 Google Analytics and WordPress.com stats to track the activity of visitors on our site. These activities make use of cookies. Tracking our visitors helps us to understand where our traffic comes from and how visitors behave on our site. (Google’s privacy policy can be found here.)
The information we collect includes IP addresses and interests/demographics about our audience. We do not collect any personally identifiable information.
You may opt out of Google Analytics tracking by downloading this browser extension.
Who we share your data with
We use Mailchimp to send out blog updates to our subscribers. Our subscribers’ email addresses (along with any other information they provide us with during the sign up process) are stored in a secure database according to Mailchimp’s privacy policy.
We will not share your data with any other third-party, unless the law requires us to do so.
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 (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.
If you have subscribed to this blog via email, we retain your email address until you decide to unsubscribe.
If you contact us via the contact form, we retain your message as well as any other information you supplied us with (such as your name and email address).
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.
Additional information
How we protect your data
This website is protected by an SSL (secure socket layer) certificate, which means that any information you enter on this site is private. We also regularly scan our site for malware and other security issues. We also use a spam detection service to check and filter through visitor comments.
What data breach procedures we have in place
If for any reason, a data breach should occur, we will immediately notify the users who may have been affected. We will also investigate as to what caused the breach and which data was affected by it.
What third parties we receive data from
As stated above in the Analytics section of this document, we receive data from Google Analytics in accordance with their privacy policy.
Contact information
If you need to get in touch with us, you can reach us by sending an email to hello@petrovivier.co.za or calling Petro Vivier (the site administrator) at +27837172907.
This page was last updated on 20 January 2023.