PRIVACY & COOKIES POLICY
Privacy Notice for Visitors to Our Users’ Sites
Hi there! This Privacy Notice explains how we, at Automattic, process information about the visitors of
our users’ websites in connection with the services we provide through WordPress.com, Jetpack
(including WooCommerce Shipping & Tax), IntenseDebate, Crowdsignal.com, 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:
WordPress.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 WordPress.com and WooCommerce Shipping & Tax.
Crowdsignal helps site owners create quizzes, surveys, and polls that fit their brand and vision.
Intense Debate gives site owners tools to manage comments on their websites.
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
Automattic’s websites (like automattic.com, wordpress.com, jetpack.com, or akismet.com)–that’s covered
in our Privacy Policy.
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 WordPress.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.
Crowdsignal Survey Responses: When a visitor completes a poll, quiz, or other type of survey
prepared by a User via Crowdsignal.com, we collect the visitor’s responses to those surveys, and other
information that the survey owner requires for a poll/quiz/survey response, like an e-mail address.
Order and Shipment Information: If a visitor orders something (hooray!) from a Site using our store
and ecommerce features available through WordPress.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).
Crowdsignal Response Information: We collect information about visitors who respond to a
Crowdsignal survey. The information that we collect typically includes IP address, browser type,
operating system, user agent, and the web page last visited.
Intense Debate Commenter Information: We collect information about visitors who comment on
Sites that use our Intense Debate service. The information that we collect depends on how the User sets
up Intense Debate for the Site, but typically includes the IP address and account information on the
Site, along with the comment.
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. Automattic 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). For more
information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how visitors can
control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.
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.
In addition to the above, we use some information about Site visitors who are also our Users as described
in our Privacy Policy.
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 We Share Visitor Information
We may share information collected about Site visitors in the limited circumstances spelled out below:
Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose Site visitor information
to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to
know the information in order to help us provide our services to our Users and their Sites, or to process
the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to
follow this Privacy Notice for information about visitors that we share with them.
Third Party Vendors: We may share Site visitor information with third party vendors who need to
know this information in order to provide their services to us. This group includes vendors that help us
provide our services to our Users and their Sites. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments
in order to share information with them.
Legal Requests: We may disclose Site visitor information in response to a subpoena, court order, or
other governmental request. For more information on how we respond to requests for information,
please see our Legal Guidelines.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose Site visitor information when we believe
in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, our
Users, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an
imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the
emergency without delay.
Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a
portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Automattic goes out of
business or enters bankruptcy, Site visitor information would likely be one of the assets that is
transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Notice
would continue to apply to Site visitor information and the party receiving this information may
continue to use this information, but only consistent with this Privacy Notice.
Information Shared Publicly: Information that visitors choose to make public is–you guessed it–
disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like visitor comments and “likes” are all
available to others, including information about the visitor that is displayed in connection with a
comment or “like” (such as a visitor’s WordPress.com username and Gravatar). We provide a
“firehose” stream of public data (including comments) from Sites to provide that data to firehose
subscribers, who may view and analyze the content, but do not have rights to re-publish it publicly.
Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.
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 Automattic, 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).
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JVK Lasercut 