Privacy Policy

This is the Privacy Policy of The Web Smith, owned by me, Suzanne Smith. It explains who I am, how we collect, share and use personal data about you when you interact with this website, and how you can exercise your privacy rights. 

This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with our Terms of Use, Conditions of Sale, and Affiliate Policy.

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact Suzanne Smith using this contact form.

1. What is The Web Smith?

The Web Smith is a website owned and operated by me, Suzanne Smith. The full website URL is: https://thewebsmith.net.

For more information about Suzanne Smith, please take a look at the About section of this website and Suzanne’s LinkedIn profile.

Suzanne Smith is the “Data Controller” for the purposes of data privacy legislation.

2. What personal data does The Web Smith collect and use?

We obtain personal data about you (such as your name and email address) whenever you complete an online form or provide information to us by email.  For example, we obtain your personal data when you sign up for our newsletter, buy a course, membership, coaching or digital content.

We will use your personal data for the purposes described in the data protection notice that was given to you at the time your data were obtained. These purposes include:

• performing any contract with you (for example to take payment and deliver the products you have ordered)
• identifying you and any subscriptions you hold with us or purchases you have made
• assisting you with any enquiries that you make
• customer profiling and analysing your preferences
• providing you with information about goods and services we offer that are similar to those that you have purchased, inquired about, or shown an interest in
• provide you with information about goods and services we believe would be of interest to you
• conduct market research, statistical analysis, and track our performance to help us improve our service offerings
• marketing—see ‘Marketing and opting out’, below
•  fraud prevention and detection
• billing and order fulfilment
• customising this website and its content to your particular preferences
• notifying you of any changes to this website or to any of our products services that may affect you
• improving this website, newsletter and our products services

3. Cookie Policy

When you visit our website, we use cookies, which are small text files on your computer that allows our website to recognise you as a user.  For example, we may monitor how many times you visit, which pages you go to, traffic data, location data and the originating domain name of your internet service provider. This information helps us to build a profile of our users. Most of this data will be aggregated or statistical, which means that we will not be able to identify you individually.

For example, the information provided by a cookie may include:

• information about any device you have used to access our websites or our emails, for example: your device’s make and model, the browser you used, your internet protocol (IP) and/or address internet service provider (ISP) and your broad geographic location
• how you use our website; for example: how your device has interacted with our website, including the pages accessed and links clicked, the websites you visited before or after our website, the products you viewed or searched for and the length of your visits to certain pages

Collecting this information helps us ensure that the website is presented in the most effective manner for you. It also enables us to better understand the visitors who come to our website, where they come from, what information on our website is of interest to them and to send them appropriate marketing messages and advertising related to their interest. 

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.

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.

4. Newsletter Subscription

When you sign up for The Web Smith newsletter, you provide your email address and sometimes your name.

This information is maintained in two places:

1. On the blog by WordPress. I access this information via the WordPress dashboard only. I do not process your email further, do not download it and do not share it with any third party.
2. On the mailing list host ConvertKit. We have full access to all data stored there and can delete a subscriber’s data should they so wish.

I will use your email address to email you The WebSmith newsletter, which may contain direct or indirect marketing material such as blog posts where I have partnered or collaborated with companies in exchange for a fee or commission.

When you subscribe to receive my newsletter, you consent to receiving this marketing information which forms part of my blog or newsletter. If you do not wish to receive such marketing information, you should not subscribe to the newsletter or you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in the newsletter, or by contacting me. You can continue to use my website freely, without subscribing to my newsletter.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Who we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

8. How long we 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.

9. 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, subject to the payment of a small fee. 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.

If you wish to exercise your right to request access to personal data, you need to do the following:

• put your request in writing;
• include proof of your identity and address (eg a copy of your driving licence or passport, and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
• specify the personal data you want access to.

You have the right to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your data free of charge. If you wish to exercise this right, you should:

• put your request in writing;
• provide us with enough information to identify you; and
• specify the information that is incorrect and what it should be replaced with.

You also have the right to ask us to stop processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. If you wish to exercise this right, you should:

• click on the ‘unsubscribe’ button on one of our emails, or
• put your request in writing via our contact form with the message “unsubscribe”,
•  provide us with enough information to identify you (eg your full name), and
• if your objection is not to direct marketing in general, but to direct marketing by a particular channel (eg email), please specify the channel you are objecting to.

10. Marketing and opting out

If you have given permission, we may contact you by email (including in our newsletter) about our services, promotions and special offers that may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive any direct marketing communications from us, you can unsubscribe and opt out at any time.

Last updated: 24 July 2023