Hi there! This Privacy Notice explains how we, at MySimpleAutomation, process information about the visitors of our users’ websites in connection with the services we provide through mysimpleautomation.com, Jetpack (including WooCommerce Shipping & Tax) and Akismet. Read on!
Who’s Who and What This Privacy Notice Covers
Let’s talk first about who we are at Automattic, what we do, and what this Privacy Notice covers.
We are the folks behind a variety of products and services designed to allow anyone–from bloggers, to small business owners, and enterprises–to create, publish, and manage their own websites:
- mysimpleautomation.com 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 mysimpleautomation.com and WooCommerce Shipping & Tax.
- Akismet helps keep spam under control by filtering out spam comments–hundreds of millions, every day!
To keep things simple, in this Privacy Notice we’ll refer to the users of the services we provide through these products and services–such as a website’s administrator, contributor, author, or editor–as our “Users,” and we’ll refer to our Users’ websites as “Sites.” Visitors to those Sites can read published content and interact with the Sites through features such as comments, “likes,” poll/survey responses, and follows.
We put together this Privacy Notice to help our Users understand the information we collect about their Site visitors (a/k/a our Users’ users), and how that happens on their Sites. Our Users are responsible for publishing a privacy policy on their Sites that explains to their visitors how data is collected via the Sites and how that information is used and disclosed.
This Privacy Notice does not apply to the information we collect about Users and those who visit mysimpleautomation.com websites (like jetpack.com, or akismet.com).
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.
Information We Collect About Visitors to Our Users’ Sites
We collect information about visitors to our Users’ Sites in a few different ways–we collect certain information that the visitors provide to the Site, we collect some information automatically, and we collect any information that our Users provide to us about their visitors.
Information a Visitor Provides to a Site
We’ll start with information that visitors provide directly to a Site, which primarily happens when visitors type into a text field on a Site, like a comment field or a sign-up form. Our Users may also implement other ways to allow Site visitors to provide information directly through their Sites.
Here are the most common ways in which a visitor directly provides information to a Site:
- Follower and Subscriber Information: When a visitor signs up to follow or subscribe to a Site using Jetpack or mysimpleautomation.com, we collect the sign-up information requested by the Site, which typically includes an email address.
- Site Comments: When a visitor leaves a comment on a Site, we collect that comment, and other information that the visitor provides along with the comment, such as the visitor’s name and email address.
- Order and Shipment Information: If a visitor orders something (hooray!) from a Site using our store and ecommerce features available through mysimpleautomation.com or Jetpack (including WooCommerce Shipping & Tax), we may collect information to process that order, such as credit card and billing information, and an address for shipping the package along to the recipient and calculating applicable taxes. We may also use this information for other purposes on behalf of our Users–for example, to send marketing and other communications from our Users to their customers, and to provide our User with analytics information about their ecommerce site (e.g., the number of orders from particular geographic areas).
- Other Information Entered on the Site: We may also collect other information that a visitor enters on the Site–such as a contact form submission, a search query, or Site registration.
Information We Automatically Collect from the Site
We also automatically collect some information about visitors to a Site. The information we automatically collect depends on which of our services the Site uses. We’ve listed examples below:
- Technical Data from a Visitor’s Computer and Etcetera: We collect the information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available about visitors to a Site, such as the IP address, browser type, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information.
- Visitor Interactions: We collect information about a visitor’s interactions with a Site, including the “likes” and “ratings” left by visitors to a Site using WordPress.com or Jetpack.
- Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of a visitor’s device from the IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, tally for our Users how many people visit their Sites from certain geographic regions. If you’d like, you can read more about our Site Stats feature for WordPress.com sites and Jetpack sites.
- Akismet Commenter Information: 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…oh, and the comment itself, of course).
- Jetpack Site Activity: We collect visitor activities related to the management of the Site, such as login attempts/actions and comment submission and management actions. For more information, please see the Jetpack Privacy Center.
- Information from Cookies and Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a Site stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the Site each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on Sites. MySimpleAutomation uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track visitors and Site usage, and to deliver targeted ads when ads are enabled for free WordPress.com sites or when ads are enabled on a Site through WordAds or Jetpack Ads (see the “Other Tools” section below for more details).
Other Information Provided by Our Users
We also collect any other information that our Users provide to us about visitors to their Sites. For example, a User may upload a directory or other information about Site visitors and customers to the “backend” administrative platform for managing the Site.
How We Use Visitor Information
We use information about Site visitors in order to provide our Services to our Users and their Sites. Our users may use our Services to, for example, create and manage their Site, sell products and services on their Site, flag and fight comments from spammers, and collect information through polls, quizzes and other surveys.
We may also use and share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify any individual. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our services.
How Long We Keep Visitor Information
If we are not legally required to keep it, we generally discard information about Site visitors when no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it on behalf of our users — those purposes which are described in the “How We Use Visitor Information” section above.
For example, we keep the web server logs that record information about a visitor to one of our user’s Sites — such as the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system — for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, investigate issues if something goes wrong on a user’s Site.
As another example, when a Site visitor views your Site we use their IP address in order to update your Site Stats with information about their visit, like what country they are in. We keep that IP address for approximately 30 days to give us time to calculate your monthly Site Stats and address any issues with those counts.
Other Tools
Our Users’ Sites may contain ads from third party ad networks and advertisers, and our Users may integrate other tools and services on their Sites (such as Google Analytics and third party plugins). Please note that this Privacy Notice only covers the collection of information by MySimpleAutomation, and does not cover the collection by any third party.
Ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about visitors’ use of a Site and across other websites and online services, such as a visitor’s IP address, web browser, mobile network information, pages viewed, time spent on pages, links clicked, and conversion information. This information may be used by those companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to visitor interests. For more information about how to manage and delete cookies, visit aboutcookies.org, and for more information on interest-based ads, including information about how visitors may be able to opt out of having their web browsing information used for behavioral advertising purposes, please visit aboutads.info/choices (US based) and youronlinechoices.eu (EU based).