Privacy and Policies

Let’s talk first about who we are again, what we do, and what this Privacy Notice covers.

We are the folks behind such cherished works as the Jason Sheridan Chronicles, The Dark Harp, Day Life Breaks, and other tellings. We use a few services to host our site.

• WordPress offers the design, features, and support to bring a website to life.
• With Jetpack, website owners that host their websites elsewhere can connect those websites to features and tools available through WordPress.com and WooCommerce Shipping & Tax.
• Crowdsignal helps site owners create quizzes, surveys, and polls that fit their brand and vision.
• AWS for the back-end of some hosting services and digital books.
• Akismet helps keep spam under control by filtering out spam comments–thousands each and every day.
• WooCommerce. It powers the store.
• MailChimp and MailPoet. These services are used for notifications and email distribution lists.

This Privacy Notice was put together to help Users understand the information collected. Alright, with those introductions out of the way, let’s turn to how we collect, use, and share information about visitors to our Users’ Sites.

Stuff is sold on this site, myths and legends—specifically books. This is a labor of love and all proceeds, if any are made, are given to charity. Or for getting the next project off the ground. For getting your credit card/accepting payments, two services are leveraged: PayPal and Stripe. One has options to use either, whatever works and provides the most comfort. If PayPal is chosen, the transaction is handled on their website. If one chooses to checkout on the store, the transaction is handled by Stripe, which enables merchants to post their transactions securely off the internet into the credit card payments environment. Both of these are PCI-compliant solutions and no credits cards or numbers as part of the transaction are stored on the site, which is perfect for businesses large and small.

Typically, the folks who contributed to these works enjoy spending time with family, writing books, designing sites, and having a day job. Handling payments doesn’t make my list. As these companies are both world-class at collecting information and handling payments, this is a wise choice. That being said, there is always payment risk when dealing with any online payment solution. Feel free to reach out as you have concerns.

The policy is only to collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. This information is collected from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

• Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, at times we require individuals who sign up for a WordPress.com account to provide an email address and password, along with a username or name — and that’s it. You may provide us with more information — like your address and other information you want to share — but we don’t require that information to create a WordPress.com account.
• Public profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a WordPress.com account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, like a photo or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that — public — so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
• Payment and contact information: There are various ways in which you may provide us payment information and associated contact information. For example, if you buy something from us. We also keep a record of the purchases you’ve made. If you use our Ecommerce Services (including Store on WordPress.com, WooCommerce Shipping & Tax, and WooCommerce Payments), you’ll have to create a WordPress.com account or connect an existing account and, for some Services, provide your site URL. You may also provide us with financial details to set up a payments integration, like the email address for your Stripe or PayPal account or your bank account information.
• Content information: You might provide us with information about you in draft and published content (a blog post or comment that includes biographic information about you, or any media or files you upload).
• Credentials: User names and passwords and other such whatnots.
• Communications with us (hi there!): You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, etc., When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, WordPress.com comment, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications (including any call recordings as permitted by applicable law).
• Submissions: If you send us a work, that’s great. We obviously keep that detail to review. Note, we delete this information if we elect not to move forward.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

• Log information: Our service provider collects information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. Surprisingly, a number of bad actors try to hijack this site, which is why we review said information.
• Transactional information: When you make a purchase through our Services, we collect information about the transaction, such as product details, purchase price, and the date and location of the transaction. This includes when you purchase something we sell or when you use our Services to buy something from a third party.
• Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people read our stuff from certain geographic regions.
• Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example:

• Third Party Login: If one creates or log in to your WordPress.com account through another service (like Google) we’ll receive associated login information (e.g. a connection token, your username, your email address).
• Social Sharing Services: If you connect your website or account to a social media service (like Twitter) through our Publicize feature, we’ll receive information from that service (e.g., your username, basic profile information, friends list) via the authorization procedures for that service.
• Financial Account Info: If you use WooCommerce Payments, we’ll receive information relating to your Stripe account, such as your email address and phone number. If you use WooPay, we’ll receive your payment information from Stripe.

The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorize and what options are available.

Third-party services may also give us information, like mailing addresses for individuals who are not yet our users (but we hope will be!). We use this information for marketing purposes like postcards and other mailers advertising our Services.

We generally discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it.

Security

Hosting providers are awesome these days, but bad actors happen. That’s why we try not to keep things around longer than necessary.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services — for example, premium themes that carry an additional charge — may not be accessible.
• Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt-out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
• Set your browser to reject cookies: There are caveats to this, hard for the site to function in some cases.
• Close your account: Contact us and we’ll be happy to delete any and all information about you.

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

• To market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing. For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users (like those who have a particular plan with us or have been users for a certain length of time), advertising our Services, analyzing the results of our marketing campaigns (like how many people purchased a paid plan after receiving a marketing message), and understanding and forecasting user retention.
• To customize the user experience. For example, to personalize your experience by serving you relevant notifications and advertisements for our Services, recommending content through our Reader post suggestions, and providing new essays and stories through Longreads for your reading pleasure.
• To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback. This is rare.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that: (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or (3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or (4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalize your experience; or (5) You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in our Cookie Policy.

If one leaves a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely (or until you want it removed). This is so one can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (not common), we also store the personal information provided 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 one has an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data, including any data you have provided. One 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. If you have questions, feel free to reach out on the submission form.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Typically, this doesn’t apply. We don’t typically approve or accept comments on the site.

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

• Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
• Commercial information (your billing information and purchase history, for example);
• Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);
• Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services, like the actions you take as an administrator of a WordPress.com site);
• Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
• Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as your profile picture, if you uploaded one);
• Professional or employment-related information (for example, your company and team information if you are a Happy Tools user, or information you provide in a job application); and
• Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

You can find more information about what we collect and sources of that information in the Information We Collect section above. We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section. If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

• Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
• Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
• Opt out of any sale of personal information; and
• Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Second Act may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Second Act encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy.

Typically, we keep fairly close watch on the site through regular updates, this is a managed service that includes data breach procedures and such. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. That’s it, all good.

10/26/22: Made a few cosmetic changes, including the accordion format for ease.