Privacy Policy

Who I am

My website address is: https://syzygy.blue. This is a personal blog, you can read a little bit more about me and my purpose for writing the blog here.

This is a self-hosted WordPress site. I try to collect as little data on visitors as possible, and use the minimum number of plugins I can to still have core functionalities. If you have any concerns about your privacy or data, you can contact me here.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site, I collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

Comments left prior to March 24, 2024 used Gravatar. According to WordPress, this means an anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) was provided to the Gravatar service to see if you were using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture was visible to the public in the context of your comment. On March 24, 2024, I turned this setting off, and to the best of my understanding, Gravatar/Automattic no longer receive any information about new comments from my site.

Form responses

If you press submit on any of the forms on this site, the data you enter is sent in an email to my personal email inbox.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on my 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.

I have tried to disable all other cookies, or remove plugins that use them. If you notice any other cookies, please let me know, so I can track down which plugin is doing it.

Embedded content from other websites

I usually try to use screenshots and links over embedding content from other websites, but please be aware that I may sometimes use embedded content, which 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. Your browser may have tools to block embedded content like this.

Who I share your data with

Any visitor to the website can see the content of a publicly posted comment. Comment data is filtered for spam using the Akismet WordPress Plugin. Akismet’s privacy policy is here – they say data is only stored for a short time and then automatically deleted.

If you submit a form response, my website uses the Contact Form 7 plugin, the WP Mail SMTP Plugin, and SendGrid to send that data as an email to my personal email address. To the best of my understanding, none of these services will store the data that passes through them long term. Once your form response has reached my inbox, it’s governed by Gmail’s privacy policy.

Some form responses may be quoted in a future public blog post, which I usually draft in Google Docs (their terms of service). While writing the post, I may discuss content from your message, or share an excerpt of the message, with friends for feedback on my writing. If you include an email address in your form response, or provide details in your message that you specifically request not be publicly shared, then I will not show that data to anyone else or include it in any blog post.

How long I retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so I can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

If you submit a form response, the email that is sent to me will also be retained indefinitely because I don’t usually delete emails. If I choose to use your message in a public post, the draft and the final blog post will also be retained indefinitely.

What rights you have over your data

If you have left comments on this website or sent me a message through a form on this website, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data I have about you, including any data you have provided. You can also request that I erase any personal data I hold about you, and I will delete it unless there is either a legal reason or a security need to keep it. If I have written a blog post based on a message you sent me, I will remove your message and any personal information from the post, but if there is enough content in my response to be interesting on its own, I may keep an edited version of the post up.

To make any sort of data request, you can contact me here. Be sure to include the same email address you used when commenting, or some other identifying information, so that I have reason to believe the request is actually coming from the same person. If I have any reason to believe that a request for exported data or deletion of data is coming from someone else, I will not act on the request.