Last updated: March 2021
The following is a disclaimer for CuriousFem (www.curiousfem.com) | All rights reserved.
www.curiousfem.com is a monetized blog which includes content and affiliate links which changes constantly. My aim is to provide a service to the lifestyle community, which includes lifestyle, food, recipes, fitness, organization, blogging and pets among other things.
The articles and information found on this blog is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, though some errors and mistakes may occasionally slip through.
The content presented on this blog is strictly created by CuriousFem and any opinions and statements mentioned are that of my own. I do not reflect any opinion or statements of any other company, organization or individual.
Any advice followed on this blog by anyone is at their own risk and I do not accept any liability.
The blog posts are for informational as well as entertainment purposes only and should not be seen as advice that should be followed, be it medical, legal, financial psychological or any other type of advice.
I am not a medical, financial, legal etc. professional in which advice followed can lead to harm or damage. Advice and information followed by any individual is at their own risk.
I reserve the right to change and edit any or all content on this website at any time.
Affiliate Terms
CuriousFem’s website makes use of affiliate links from various platforms. This means that certain links to products is included in blog posts and other media. It doesn’t cost the user anything when clicked on. It is a way for the CuriousFem to earn commission so that the site can remain up and running.
Privacy Policy
Who we are
In this privacy policy you will find more information on how we collect and store data for users on www.curiousfem.com.
By providing us with your data, you guarantee that you are over the age of 13 years.
As CuriousFem is a sole proprietorship, the owner of the site is also the Data Protection Officer.
Contact person: Tanya Viljoen
E-mail address: hello[at]curiousfem[dot]com
Mailing address: If you require our mailing address for postal purposes, please contact us via e-mail.
Collection of user data
Jargon
“Cookies” – these are data files that are placed on your device and includes a unique and anonymous identifying code. For more info about cookies, go to www.allaboutcookies.org
“Beacons”, “pixels” and “tags” – these are files that record information about how you use this website.
“Log files” – these files track actions that you incur on this website. This may include non-sensitive information such as the date and time you accessed our website, referring pages, exit pages, your internet service provider and web browser, and your IP address.
How and why we collect data
When you visit our website, the website, along with some other third party plugins and applications, automatically collect certain information about you and your device, including your IP address, browser, time zone, and some cookies that are installed on your device. Also, as you browse our website, we collect information about certain things you click on or follow, such as the individual web pages or products that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to our website, and information about how you interact with the website.
We collect information using cookies, beacons, pixels, tags and log files – all are discussed in the “jargon” section above.
Furthermore, when you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through our website, we may collect certain information from you, including your name and payment information (including credit card numbers, email address, and phone number.)
In addition, we may also collect communication data that includes interaction and communication that you send to us. This may be through a contact form on our website, via e-mail, social media channels or any other form of communication you share with us. We store this data for the purpose of communicating with you, for record keeping and for legal reasons. Legal reasons may include our legitimate interests, which in this case means our desire to communcate with you. We may also keep records to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
We also use data to deliver relevant web content to you, and to bring your relevant advertisements based on your user interaction with our website. We use this info to improve our business and website, and to grow it. We may also use this information for marketing purposes to you only. The purpose of this is so that we can keep you interested in our content.
We will never share your email address or other private information with anyone without your permission.
Applications and plugins used to collect data
We use the following applications and plugins to gather user information data:
- Google Analytics
- Jetpack
- Akismet
- Shareaholic
- Mailerlite
- Yoast
- Ubersuggest
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to analyze the data of users on our website. By using this tool, it gathers information about website use by means of cookies. The information gathered relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of our website. Google’s privacy policy is available at: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
Jetpack
We also use Jetpack for more information on analytics and user data. Jetpack allows us to see how many users visits our pages, where they are from and what blog posts do well, and which ones don’t, among other things.
To read Jetpack’s privacy policy, go here: https://automattic.com/privacy/
Akismet
This is also developed by the same company as Jetpack (Automattic.com). We use Akismet to block spam on our website. This helps us to avoid getting hacked or to prevent our personal and user data from being stolen.
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).
You can read more about Akismet’s policies here: https://automattic.com/privacy/
Shareaholic
To track all of our social media shares and interaction, we use this plugin called “Shareaholic”. It may access non-sensitive user data and also to which platforms our users share our content. Their privacy policy is here: https://shareaholic.com/privacy/
MailerLite
This is our e-mail platform for gathering users’ names and e-mail addresses. The reason why we need this info is to send weekly newsletters, promotions and marketing e-mails. To read more about Mailerlite’s privacy policy, go here: https://www.mailerlite.com/privacy-policy
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
Some of our blog posts have free downloadable PDF’s to help users get more out of our content. These PDF’s don’t have any coding of any sort embedded to collect or harm the user’s information.
Contact forms
We have a contact form on our “Contact Us” page in which users enter the following information to make contact with us:
- Name (required)
- E-mail (required)
- Website
- Subject/topic/reason for contact
- Your message (required)
Note: We may keep contact form submissions for a certain period for customer service purposes, but we do not use the information submitted through the contact form for marketing purposes.
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 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.
Please see the “Applications and plugins used to collect data” section of this policy to see which other applications we may use to collect cookies.
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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics and Jetpack for our analytics purposes, as well as Shareaholic for social media analytics.
Please see the “Applications and plugins used to collect data” section again to review our applications that may use user data.
Who we share your data with
We do not share your data with any third party website, partnership or cloud based platform.
How long we retain your data
The GDPR requires us to state for how long we need to retain user data and information. We would like our users to take note that some of the data are kept indefinitely, until a user politely requests that we remove his or her data from our records.
In this instance, we refer to analytics data only, because we would like to review our statistics every now and then to see how we improve on our website. We also use these statistics for setting future goals and determining what our users like and want to see more of on our website.
Contact form entries are only kept for a period of one year, unless a user makes contact with the Data Protection Officer to request us to remove their 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 we send your data
This section lists all transfers of our website data outside the European Union and describe the means by which that data is safeguarded to European data protection standards. This may include our web hosting, cloud storage, or other third party services.
European data protection law requires data about European residents which is transferred outside the European Union to be safeguarded to the same standards as if the data was in Europe. We ensure that these standards are met ourselves or by our third party providers, whether that is through an agreement such as Privacy Shield, model clauses in our contracts, or binding corporate rules.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
If you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise this right, please email us at hello[at]curiousfem[dot]com.
Sensitive Data
We do not collect, store or share any sensitive data about you. Sensitive data refers to any data that includes details about your race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliations, or sexual orientation.
We will use your personal data only, and for a purpose it was collected for or a reasonabe compatibility purpose if necessary. For more information on this please email us at hello[at]curiousfem[dot]com.
We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law or by our local authorities.
Policy updates
We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.
Contact Details for privacy specific concerns
You can contact us at:
hello[at]curiousfem[dot]com
Affiliate Policy
Some of the pages, blog posts or sections of our website will allow you to purchase different products and services online provided by other merchants. Some of theses links that we post on our website are called “affiliate links.” These are unmarked and unlabeled ads and we will earn commission if you shop through these links at no extra cost to you.
We are not responsible for the quality, accuracy, timeliness, reliability or any other aspect of these products and services. Also, these merchants will likely have a privacy policy and data collection practice of their own. As we work with many different merchants outside our website, we cannot link to each one.
When you click on one of our affiliate links, some of your data from our website will also be tracked by the merchant’s analytics. This means that a string of code will be attached to your user data so that the merchant knows which website the buyer (you) is coming from. This is necessary for us in order to earn commission.
For more information regarding a merchant, their online store, their privacy policies, and/or any additional terms and conditions that may apply, visit that merchant’s website and click on their information links or contact the merchant directly.
This information and clause in our privacy policy are disclosed in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
