Privacy and Cookies Policy

Last updated: February 4, 2020​

Please read the Privacy Policy statement (“Privacy”, “Privacy Policy”) carefully before using the https://technologyaddictioncenter.com website (the “Service”) operated by Technology Addiction Center (“us”, “we”, or “our”).

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

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

When you send forms on this website you are opting in to my email list. You will have the option to unsubscribe from any newsletter you may be added to. You are also agreeing to correspondence with me, Michael Shelby, and I may save your contact information for future reference.

Cookies

Our Cookies Policy explains what cookies are, how we use cookies, how third-parties we may partner with may use cookies on the Service, your choices regarding cookies and further information about cookies.

What are cookies

Cookies are small pieces of text sent to your web browser by a website you visit. A cookie file is stored in your web browser and allows the Service or a third-party to recognize you and make your next visit easier and the Service more useful to you.

Cookies can be “persistent” or “session” cookies. Persistent cookies remain on your personal computer or mobile device when you go offline, while session cookies are deleted as soon as you close your web browser.

How we use cookies

When you use and access the Service, we may place a number of cookies files in your web browser.

We use cookies for the following purposes:

  • To enable certain functions of the Service
  • To provide analytics

We use both session and persistent cookies on the Service and we use different types of cookies to run the Service:

  • Essential cookies. We may use cookies to remember information that changes the way the Service behaves or looks, such as a user’s language preference on the Service.
  • Analytics cookies. We may use analytics cookies to track information how the Service is used so that we can make improvements. We may also use analytics cookies to test new advertisements, pages, features or new functionality of the Service to see how our users react to them.
Third-party cookies

In addition to our own cookies, we may also use various third-parties cookies to report usage statistics of the Service, deliver advertisements on and through the Service, and so on.

What are your choices regarding cookies

If you’d like to delete cookies or instruct your web browser to delete or refuse cookies, please visit the help pages of your web browser.

Please note, however, that if you delete cookies or refuse to accept them, you might not be able to use all of the features we offer, you may not be able to store your preferences, and some of our pages might not display properly.

Where can you find more information about cookies

You can learn more about cookies and the following third-party websites:

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

We use Google Analytics to track our website performance. Your data will be collected to inform us about the traffic on our website.

Who we share your data with

Although your data is collected, it is not shared with any third party. Your messages or comments may be filtered through a spam detection service.

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.

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.

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

Akismet Anti-Spam

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).