Who I Am

My name is Donna L. Long. I am a writer and teacher of ecology, garden ecology, and environmental issues. I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. I have written this blog in one form or another since 2005.

My website address is https://donnallong.com.

I can be contacted through this website by using the contact form.

What personal data this website collects and why it collects it

The only personal data this website collects is to provide the services you request such as cookies, names and email addresses for the newsletter or the sale of products, and user data to make your use of my blog easy for you. The following policy statement outlines the instances your data is collected and why.

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

The contact forms on this website only ask for the most basic information. Such as your first name and email address.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to save 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 tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

I do use Google Analytics to track how my website visitors use the site. I don’t share the analytic data with any entity or company other than Google who collects it.

Who we share your data with

I do not sell, rent, lease or otherwise share your data with anyone except the services described in this policy statement.

How long I 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.

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 I send your data

Your data is not sent anywhere except the necessary sharing with the companies that provide services on this website.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

How I protect your data

All data is stored on the secure servers at the companies listed in this policy statement. Links to their policy statements are included for your convenience.

What data breach procedures I have in place

Your data is stored on the secure servers of the companies listed in this policy statement. The data breach procedures are the ones used by companies. If there is a data breach the affected parties will be notified by email.

What third parties I receive data from

The MailPoet service lets me know if emails are viable, what links users click on, and other data related to providing email to the website users. Google Analytics provide user data. WooCommerce, Amazon, Stripe, and PayPal provide purchasing data.

What automated decision making and/or profiling I do with user data

We use email open, click, undeliverable, etc. data to identify non-viable emails.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

Emails

If you have subscribed to our newsletter or if you are a member of our website (you can log in) or if you have purchased on our website, there is a good chance you will receive emails from us.

We will only send you emails which you have signed up to receive, or which pertain to the services we provided to you.

To send you emails, we use the name and email address you provide us. Our site also logs the IP address you used when you signed up for the service to prevent abuse of the system.

This website can send emails through the MailPoet sending service. This service allows us to track opens and clicks on our emails. We use this information to improve the content of our newsletters.

No identifiable information is otherwise tracked outside this website except for the email address.

What information is collected about you during the checkout process on my store?

I use the WooCommerce payment gateways, PayPal and Stripe. PayPal and Stripe collect the data that is needed to process your order. I do not see any of your payment information including credit card numbers. I will see your address and email. I use Lulu.com to deliver print-on-demand books. If you use that service your information will be collected by Lulu.com. I will not see your payment information from Lulu.com.

Information shared with a payment provider to process payments includes:

• Name
• Email
• Address
• Phone
• City/State/Zip
• Unique payment identifier
• Payment provider identifier

Links to payment gateways policy statements.

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-prev

Stripe: https://stripe.com/gb/privacy

LuLu.com: http://www.lulu.com/about/privacy-policy

While you visit my site, I’ll track:

• Products you’ve viewed:  I’ll use this to, for example, show you products you’ve recently viewed
• Location, IP address, and browser type: I’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!
• I’ll also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you’re browsing our site.

When you purchase from my website, I’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. I’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.

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

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

Who in my employ has access

No one else has access except me, Donna L. Long. I 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.
• I have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

What I share with others

I share information with third parties who help us provide our orders and store services to you; for example:

Payments

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

Please see the payment gateways for their Privacy Policy for more details.

Links to payment gateways policy statements.

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-prev

Stripe: https://stripe.com/gb/privacy

LuLu.com: http://www.lulu.com/about/privacy-policy

By using this extension, you may be storing personal data or sharing data with an external service. Learn more about how this works, including what you may want to include in your privacy policy.

I share data with:

• WordPress.com
• Google Analytics
• Stripe
• PayPal
• Askimet

WordPress.com and Jetpack Services

These are the standard WordPress.com and Jetpack policy and procedures from their company website.

Activity
This feature only records activities of a site’s registered users, and the retention duration of activity data will depend on the site’s plan and activity type.

Data Used: To deliver this functionality and record activities around site management, the following information is captured: user email address, user role, user login, user display name, WordPress.com and local user IDs, the activity to be recorded, the WordPress.com-connected site ID of the site on which the activity takes place, the site’s Jetpack version, and the timestamp of the activity. Some activities may also include the actor’s IP address (login attempts, for example) and user agent.

Activity Tracked: Login attempts/actions, post and page update and publish actions, comment/pingback submission and management actions, plugin and theme management actions, widget updates, user management actions, and the modification of other various site settings and options. Retention duration of activity data depends on the site’s plan and activity type. See the complete list of currently-recorded activities (along with retention information).

Data Synced (?): Successful and failed login attempts, which will include the actor’s IP address and user agent.

Ads
Data Used: The following information (made available from the visitor’s browser) is collected and sent to Automattic’s Demand Partners: IP address, geographical data (derived from the IP address), user agent, operating system, device type, unique user ID (randomly generated identifier), current URL, and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) interest category. Log data (IP address, geographical data, user agent, operating system, device type) is stored for 30 days. The unique user ID is stored in cookies and is retained for 1 year.

Activity Tracked: Ad impressions, video-related events (i.e. pause, mute, 100% plays, etc.) or errors, and ad click events. Various cookies are used for the following purposes: delivering targeted advertisements to specific visitors, storing user identifiers, and collecting anonymous ad platform stats.

Carousel
Image views are only recorded if the site owner, has explicitly enabled image view stats tracking for this feature via the jetpack_enable_carousel_stats filter.

Data Used: If image view tracking is enabled, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Image views.

Comment Likes
This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: In order to process a comment like, the following information is used: WordPress.com user ID/username (you must be logged in to use this feature), the local site-specific user ID (if the user is signed in to the site on which the like occurred), and a true/false data point that tells us if the user liked a specific comment. If you perform a like action from one of our mobile apps, some additional information is used to track the activity: IP address, user agent, timestamp of event, blog ID, browser language, country code, and device info.

Activity Tracked: Comment likes.

Contact Form
Data Used: If Akismet is enabled on the site, the contact form submission data — IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (also owned by Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. The actual submission data is stored in the database of the site on which it was submitted and is emailed directly to the owner of the form (i.e. the site author who published the page on which the contact form resides). This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message.

Data Synced (?): Post and post meta data associated with a user’s contact form submission. If Akismet is enabled on the site, the IP address and user agent originally submitted with the comment are synced, as well, as they are stored in post meta.

Google Analytics
This feature is only available to sites on the Premium and Professional plans.

Data Used: Please refer to the appropriate Google Analytics documentation for the specific type of data it collects. For sites running WooCommerce (also owned by Automattic) and this feature simultaneously and having all purchase tracking explicitly enabled, purchase events will send Google Analytics the following information: order number, product id and name, product category, total cost, and quantity of items purchased. Google Analytics does offer IP anonymization, which can be enabled by the site owner.

Activity Tracked: This feature sends page view events (and potentially video play events) over to Google Analytics for consumption. For sites running WooCommerce-powered stores, some additional events are also sent to Google Analytics: shopping cart additions and removals, product listing views and clicks, product detail views, and purchases. Tracking for each specific WooCommerce event needs to be enabled by the site owner.

Gravatar Hovercards
Data Used: This feature will send a hash of the user’s email address (if logged in to the site or WordPress.com — or if they submitted a comment on the site using their email address that is attached to an active Gravatar profile) to the Gravatar service (also owned by Automattic) in order to retrieve their profile image.

Infinite Scroll
Data Used: In order to record page views via WordPress.com Stats (which must be enabled for page view tracking here to work) with additional loads, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Page views will be tracked with each additional load (i.e. when you scroll down to the bottom of the page and a new set of posts loads automatically). If the site owner has enabled Google Analytics to work with this feature, a page view event will also be sent to the appropriate Google Analytics account with each additional load.

Jetpack Comments
Data Used: Commenter’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided via the comment form), timestamp, and IP address. Additionally, a jetpack.wordpress.com IFrame receives the following data: WordPress.com blog ID attached to the site, ID of the post on which the comment is being submitted, commenter’s local user ID (if available), commenter’s local username (if available), commenter’s site URL (if available), MD5 hash of the commenter’s email address (if available), and the comment content. If Akismet (also owned by Automattic) is enabled on the site, the following information is sent to the service for the sole purpose of spam checking: commenter’s name, email address, site URL, IP address, and user agent.

Activity Tracked: The comment author’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided during the comment submission) are stored in cookies. Learn more about these cookies.

Data Synced (?): All data and metadata (see above) associated with comments. This includes the status of the comment and, if Akismet is enabled on the site, whether or not it was classified as spam by Akismet.

Likes
This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: In order to process a post like action, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID (on which the post was liked), post ID (of the post that was liked), user agent, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Post likes.

Mobile Theme
Data Used: A visitor’s preference on viewing the mobile version of a site.

Activity Tracked: A cookie (akm_mobile) is stored for 3.5 days to remember whether or not a visitor of the site wishes to view its mobile version. Learn more about this cookie.

Notifications
This feature is only accessible to registered users of the site who are logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. Some visitor-related information or activity may be sent to the site owner via this feature. This may include: email address, WordPress.com username, site URL, email address, comment content, follow actions, etc.

Activity Tracked: Sending notifications (i.e. when we send a notification to a particular user), opening notifications (i.e. when a user opens a notification that they receive), performing an action from within the notification panel (e.g. liking a comment or marking a comment as spam), and clicking on any link from within the notification panel/interface.

Protect
Data Used: In order to check login activity and potentially block fraudulent attempts, the following information is used: attempting user’s IP address, attempting user’s email address/username (i.e. according to the value they were attempting to use during the login process), and all IP-related HTTP headers attached to the attempting user.

Activity Tracked: Failed login attempts (these include IP address and user agent). We also set a cookie (jpp_math_pass) for 1 day to remember if/when a user has successfully completed a math captcha to prove that they’re a real human. Learn more about this cookie.

Data Synced (?): Failed login attempts, which contain the user’s IP address, attempted username or email address, and user agent information.

Search
This feature is only available to sites on the Professional plan.

Data Used: Any of the visitor-chosen search filters and query data in order to process a search request on the WordPress.com servers.

Sharing
Data Used: When sharing content via email (this option is only available if Akismet is active on the site), the following information is used: sharing party’s name and email address (if the user is logged in, this information will be pulled directly from their account), IP address (for spam checking), user agent (for spam checking), and email body/content. This content will be sent to Akismet (also owned by Automattic) so that a spam check can be performed. Additionally, if reCAPTCHA (by Google) is enabled by the site owner, the sharing party’s IP address will be shared with that service. You can find Google’s privacy policy here.

Data Used: Transaction amount, transaction currency code, product title, product price, product ID, order quantity, PayPal payer ID, and PayPal transaction ID.

Activity Tracked: The PayPal payer ID, transaction ID, and HTTP referrer are sent with a payment completion tracking event that is attached to the site owner.

Data Synced: PayPal transaction ID, PayPal transaction status, PayPal product ID, quantity, price, customer email address, currency, and payment button CTA text.

Because payments are processed by PayPal, we recommend reviewing its privacy policy. PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-prev

Video Hosting

Data Used: For video play tracking via WordPress.com Stats, the following information is used: viewer’s IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. If Google Analytics is enabled, video play events will be sent there, as well.

Activity Tracked: Video plays.

WooCommerce Services
Data Used: For payments with PayPal or Stripe: purchase total, currency, billing information. For taxes: the value of goods in the cart, value of shipping, destination address. For checkout rates: destination address, purchased product IDs, dimensions, weight, and quantities. For shipping labels: customer’s name, address as well as the dimensions, weight, and quantities of purchased products.

Data Synced: For payments, we send the purchase total, currency and customer’s billing information to the respective payment processor. Please see the respective third party’s privacy policy (Stripe’s Privacy Policy and PayPal’s Privacy Policy) for more details. For automated taxes we send the value of goods in the cart, the value of shipping, and the destination address to TaxJar. Please see TaxJar’s Privacy Policy for details about how they handle this information. For checkout rates we send the destination ZIP/postal code and purchased product dimensions, weight and quantities to USPS or Canada Post, depending on the service used. For shipping labels we send the customer’s name, address as well as the dimensions, weight, and quantities of purchased products to EasyPost. We also store the purchased shipping labels on our server to make it easy to reprint them and handle support requests.

Source: WooCommerce Services

By using this extension, you may be storing personal data or sharing data with external services. https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/privacy-payments/#woocommerce-gateway-stripe

Source: Akismet

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).