Privacy Policy

Who we are

This website is owned by author Shannon Selin. The website address is: https://shannonselin.com. This website is hosted by Bookswarm within a UK data centre.

About this policy

This policy explains how we use and protect any personal data that you provide when you visit this website. Personal data is any data that can be used to identify an individual person, including an e-mail address.

We are committed to respecting your privacy and protecting any personal data you share with us. We will never sell, rent, or otherwise distribute your personal data. By using this website, you are agreeing to be bound by this policy.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

This website collects and uses personal data for the following reasons.

Commenting on the blog

Should you choose to add a comment to any article(s) published on this website’s blog, the name and e-mail address you enter with your comment will be saved to this website’s database, along with your device’s IP address and browser user agent string. This information is used to identify you as a contributor to the comment section of the respective blog article. It is also shared with Akismet, the service this website uses to filter out spam comments. We consider Akismet to be a third party data processor (see below).

If you leave a comment on this website, you may opt-in to saving your name and e-mail address in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. Should you choose this option, these cookies will last for one year.

Your name or pseudonym, as entered by you when you leave a comment, will be shown to the public on this website, along with the text of the comment. Your e-mail address will not be shown. If you are under 16 years of age you MUST obtain parental consent before posting a comment on the blog.

Your comment and its associated personal data will remain on this website until we see fit to either remove the comment or remove the blog article. Should you wish to have the comment and its associated personal data deleted, please request removal using the e-mail address that you commented with.

Submitting a message through the contact form

Should you choose to contact us using the contact form on the Contact page, the name and e-mail address you enter with your message will be saved to this website’s database, along with your device’s IP address. Your name, e-mail address and message will also be collated into an e-mail and sent to Shannon’s e-mail account at Zoho Mail, so that she can respond to your message via e-mail. We consider Zoho to be a third party data processor (see below). None of the information that you enter into the contact form is shown to the public on this website.

Your message and its associated personal data will be deleted from this website’s database and from Shannon’s Zoho Mail account no later than one year (365 days) after your last communication with Shannon, unless you have specifically requested that Shannon contact you at some future date (for example, to notify you when her next book is published, or to provide you with particular information should she come across that information in future). Should you wish to have the message and its associated personal data deleted sooner, please request removal using the e-mail address that you provided when you submitted the message.

Signing up for the mailing list (e-mail newsletter)

If you choose to sign up for Shannon’s mailing list (e-mail newsletter), the e-mail address that you submit through this website will be forwarded to AWeber, who provide us with e-mail newsletter services. We consider AWeber to be a third party data processor (see below). The e-mail address that you submit will not be stored within this website’s own database.

We use a double opt-in procedure, which means that AWeber will send a confirmation e-mail to the e-mail address you submitted. You must click on the “Confirm my subscription” link to complete the mailing list sign-up process. If you do not confirm your subscription, your e-mail address will be deleted from the AWeber database after 30 days.

If you confirm your subscription, you will receive weekly newsletter-style e-mails from Shannon. Your e-mail address will remain within AWeber’s database for as long as we continue to use AWeber’s services for our e-mail newsletter, or until an e-mail newsletter sent to your e-mail address has been undeliverable (bounced) more than 3 times, or until you specifically request removal from the list. You can do this by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link found at the bottom of any e-mail newsletter that Shannon sends you, or by requesting removal via e-mail using the e-mail address that subscribed to the mailing list.

If you are under 16 years of age you MUST obtain parental consent before signing up for the mailing list.

Analytics

Like most websites, this site uses Google Analytics to track user interaction. We use this data to determine the number of people visiting the website, to better understand how they find and use the site’s pages, and to see their path through the website.

Although Google Analytics records data such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, none of this information personally identifies you to us. Google Analytics also records your device’s IP address, which could be used to personally identify you, but Google does not grant us access to this. We consider Google to be a third party data processor (see below).

Google Analytics makes use of cookies, details of which can be found in the guide to “Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites.”

Disabling cookies on your internet browser, or installing the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on, will stop Google Analytics from tracking any part of your visit to pages within this website.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos). 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.

Third party data processors & their privacy policies

As detailed above, we use the following third parties to process personal data on our behalf. All of these third parties are based in the USA, and all are EU-US Privacy Shield compliant.

• Akismet (Privacy policy)
• AWeber (Privacy policy)
• Google (Privacy policy)
• Zoho (Privacy policy).

Data breaches

We will report any unlawful data breach of this website’s database or the databases of any of our third party data processors to any and all relevant persons and authorities within 72 hours of the breach, if it is apparent that personal data stored in an identifiable manner has been stolen.

What rights you have over your data

You can request a copy of any personal data we hold about you. 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. To request data access or data removal, e-mail shannon@shannonselin.com. We will comply with your request within 30 days.

Changes to this privacy policy

This privacy policy may change from time to time. We will not explicitly inform our website users of these changes. Instead, we recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes. This privacy policy was last updated on June 1, 2018.