(Note: the page was updated in early 2019. It’s mostly a copy/paste job from WordPress & its recommendations + text from theWebalyst EU Cookies plugin.

FWIW, I rarely look at site traffic info, but a lot of the tech involved in Internet communication seems to collect info. There are loads of browser extensions you can get to protect your privacy & I recommend you look into it. I personally use Privacy Badger, Location Guard, & TrackMeNot.)

This page describes how we treat the information provided by visitors, what other information we gather and how we use it, why we sometimes need to store “cookies” and how to prevent this.

In common with almost all professionally run websites, this website logs the IP address of each visitor in order to keep it running reliably. This is also essential for protecting the website and its visitors from malicious attacks, including infection with malware.

This website provides information as a service to vistors such as yourself, and to do this reliably and efficiently, it sometimes places small amounts of information on your computer or device (e.g. mobile phone). This includes small files known as cookies.

The cookies stored by this website cannot be used to identify you personally.

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.

How Cookies Are Used

We use cookies to understand what pages and information visitors find useful, and to detect problems such as broken links, or pages which are taking a long time to load.

We sometimes use cookies to remember a choice you make on one page, when you have moved to another page if that information can be used to make the website work better. For example:

  • avoiding the need to ask for the same information several times during a session (e.g. when filling in forms), or
  • remembering that you have logged in, so that you don’t have to re-enter your username and password on every page.

Cookies for Google Analytics

(This is older info from theWebalyst EU Cookies plugin. May still be relevant.)

We use analytics to measure how many visitors are using the website, which pages interest them and so on, and this involves storing the following cookies:

  • Name: _utma
    Typical content: randomly generated number
    Expires: 2 years
  • Name: _utmb
    Typical content: randomly generated number
    Expires: 30 minutes
  • Name: _utmc
    Typical content: randomly generated number
    Expires: when user exits browser
  • Name: _utmz
    Typical content: randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search)
    Expires: 6 months

For more information Google Analytics website.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit.

Who we are

Our website address is: https://www.tourabsurd.com. The site is owned and managed by Katrina Stovold.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments & Contact Forms

When visitors leave comments or send messages on the site we (well… the plugins, anyway) collect the data shown in the comments/contact form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised 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.

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

I have Google Analytics integrated into the site. I’m going to copy the handy text from House.gov about it:

“We use a tool called “Google Analytics” to collect information about use of this site. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to this site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve this site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit this site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to this site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use (as amended for government websites) and the Google Privacy Policy. You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to this site by disabling cookies on your browser.”

Personal data

Personal information that you submit to us through this website will only be used for the purposes we solicited it. For example, to respond to an enquiry, and will not be used for any other purpose without your consent. We will never pass it on to any third party without your consent, unless legally required to do so.

Other Websites

The information on this page applies only to this website and not to other sites linked to from these pages.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise 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

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. In this case, I use Google’s Captcha service by means of a plugin called “Google Captcha (reCAPTCHA)” by BestWebSoft.

Some of the content of this page was copied with permission from the theWebalyst EU Cookies plugin. The rest came from WordPress or the site owner.