Skip to content

 

TeachNovels.com and Your Privacy

TeachNovels.com uses WordPress.com, Woo Commerce, Google Analytics and other programs/entities that may track user behavior or even record user information (e.g., to process a sale). Even if you do not provide any information directly, your browser may receive “cookies” that track your behavior.

What is an internet cookie?

An internet cookie is a small file or line of characters that a website places in your browser records.  When you move from page to page, the cookie informs the website that it is the same user (or, at least, the same installed browser application.)

Internet cookies can be important to the user.  For example, it makes it possible to save a password or put something in your cart when you need to buy it.  On the other hand, cookies may track you in ways that you do not want.  For example, a cookie may give your behavior data to a third party.  You might shop for something confidential and suddenly all the ads you see are about this private topic. 

Keep in mind that you have the power to block and delete cookies from your browser.

 

WordPress.com

TeachNovels.com is hosted by WordPress.com.  Here is some information from WordPress.com regarding privacy.

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 / 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.

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

WordPress uses Jetpack and other applications to record user behavior (cookies) for the owners of the website.  The analytics data provided to the owners enable them to see what is working and what isn’t.

WordPress does not share user data.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet Anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but 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, and the comment itself).

How long does WordPress 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.

 

Woo Commerce

The TeachNovels.com online store uses Woo Commerce as a storefront and point of sale.  Woo Commerce collects information to facilitate shopping and process orders.  Here is some information for Woo Commerce regarding privacy.

What we collect and store

While you visit our site, we’ll track:

    • Products you’ve viewed: we’ll use this to, for example, show you products you’ve recently viewed
    • Location, IP address and browser type: we’ll use this for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping
    • Shipping address: we’ll ask you to enter this so we can, for instance, estimate shipping before you place an order, and send you the order!

We’ll also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you’re browsing our site.

When you purchase from us, we’ll ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number, credit card/payment details and optional account information like username and password. We’ll use this information for purposes, such as, to:

    • Send you information about your account and order
    • Respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints
    • Process payments and prevent fraud
    • Set up your account for our store
    • Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes
    • Improve our store offerings
    • Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them

If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.

We generally store information about you for as long as we need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it, and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we will store order information for 5 years for tax and accounting purposes. This includes your name, email address and billing and shipping addresses.

We will also store comments or reviews, if you choose to leave them.

Who on our team has access?

Members of our team have access to the information you provide us. For example, both Administrators and Shop Managers can access:

    • Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and
    • Customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information.

Our team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

What we share

We share information with third parties who help us provide our orders and store services to you; for example PayPal, Venmo, and Stripe card services. 

Note: TeachNovels.com does not see confidential payment numbers, only the billing address.

Payments

We accept payments through Venmo, Stripe (credit and debit), and PayPal. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to these entities, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information.

Please see the PayPal Privacy Policy for more details.

Please see the Stripe Privacy Policy for more details.

Please see the Venmo Privacy Policy for more details.

 

WP Mail Logging

When you use this site, several actions (e.g. placing an order) trigger the dispatch of emails. They contain information about you associated with your email address. Which data are part of these emails depends on the action performed. These emails are stored and accessible to the site management as log.

NOTE: TeachNovels.com does not send emails for correspondence following the completion of an order.  You will receive no blog updates or marketing information unless you have requested it.

 

Google Analytics / Listings

TeachNovels.com use Google Analytics to track user behavior and improve service. You may also have found our website using Google Shopping. Here is some information from Google about how they use cookies and user data for analytics and commerce.

Analytics

Cookies and other technologies used for analytics help collect data that allows services to understand how you interact with a particular service. These insights allow services to both improve content and build better features that enhance your experience.

Some cookies and other technologies help sites and apps understand how their visitors engage with their services. For example, Google Analytics uses a set of cookies to collect information and report site usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. ‘_ga’, the main cookie used by Google Analytics, enables a service to distinguish one visitor from another and lasts for 2 years. Any site that implements Google Analytics, including Google services, uses the ‘_ga’ cookie. Each ‘_ga’ cookie is unique to the specific property, so it cannot be used to track a given user or browser across unrelated websites.

Advertising

Google uses cookies for advertising, including serving and rendering ads, personalizing ads (depending on your settings at myadcenter.google.com and adssettings.google.com/partnerads), limiting the number of times an ad is shown to a user, muting ads you have chosen to stop seeing, and measuring the effectiveness of ads.

The ‘NID’ cookie is used to show Google ads in Google services for signed-out users, while the ‘ANID’ and ‘IDE’ cookies are used to show Google ads on non-Google sites. If you have personalized ads enabled, the ‘ANID’ cookie is used to remember this setting and lasts for 13 months in the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, and the United Kingdom (UK), and 24 months everywhere else. If you have turned off personalized ads, the ‘ANID’ cookie is used to store that setting until 2030. The ‘NID’ cookie expires 6 months after a user’s last use. The ‘IDE’ cookie lasts for 13 months in the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, and the United Kingdom (UK), and 24 months everywhere else.

Depending on your ad settings, other Google services like YouTube may also use these and other cookies and technologies, like the ‘VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE’ cookie, for advertising.

Some cookies and other technologies used for advertising are for users who sign in to use Google services. For example, the ‘DSID’ cookie is used to identify a signed-in user on non-Google sites and to remember whether the user has agreed to ad personalization. It lasts for 2 weeks.

Through Google’s advertising platform, businesses can advertise in Google services as well as on non-Google sites. Some cookies support Google showing ads on third-party sites and are set in the domain of the website you visit. For example, the ‘_gads’ cookie enables sites to show Google ads. Cookies that start with ‘_gac_’ come from Google Analytics and are used by advertisers to measure user activity and the performance of their ad campaigns. The ‘_gads’ cookies last for 13 months and the ‘_gac_’ cookies last for 90 days.

Some cookies and other technologies are used to measure ad and campaign performance and conversion rates for Google ads on a site you visit. For example, cookies that start with ‘_gcl_’ are primarily used to help advertisers determine how many times users who click on their ads end up taking an action on their site, such as making a purchase. Cookies used for measuring conversion rates are not used to personalize ads. ‘_gcl_’ cookies last for 90 days.

See more information about cookies used for advertising here.