Privacy Policy

Who we are

I am Andreas Broscheid, Assistant Director at the Center for Faculty Innovation, and a Professor of Political Science at James Madison University. My website address is: http://andreasbroscheid.org.

My address is:

Center for Faculty Innovation
James Madison University
Rose Library, MSC 4603
1251 Carrier Drive
Room 5101
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807

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 (globally recognized avatar) 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

I am not currently using contact forms on this website.

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 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.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

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

What do I use to analyze the data that you leave here? I am somewhat stumped by this, but I will investigate. This site runs WordPress, which does not in itself collect your data. WordPress then is hosted on a ReclaimHosting server, and they collect a bunch of anonymous data such as hits, page views, countries, browsers used, etc. I can see these things if I log in and go to the corresponding app. I rarely do, mainly because it’s slightly depressing to see how little visitors I have here. They seem to be mostly analytics machines… (Hello, machines!)

OK, here’s what I can check behind the scenes:

  • IP addresses
  • URL accesses (like /robot.txt lol)
  • Date and time of access
  • bytes of whatever has been downloaded or accessed
  • referring URL
  • browser used
  • operating system used

I can use various apps with decidedly retro graphics (Awstats, anybody?) that do some aggregation and figure out, for example, what country an IP address comes from.

Who we share your data with

While I do not personally share your data with others (except if require by law enforcement and such), and WordPress does not collect any data to share, your (anonymous) data is used by ReclaimHosting, as I noted in the previous section. Here is their privacy policy. Also, note the entries about comments, cookies for comments, and comment spam protection on this page—these functions require the sharing of data with Akismet, to prevent comment spam, and possibly Gravatar, to check if you has an Avatar to be used for your comment.

I am using a bunch of plugins that may collect your data as well. I couldn’t find out whether they do, though I suppose some have to (see Akismet). Besides Akismet, I use the following plugins: Advanced Gutenberg editor, Atomic Blocks (another editor plugin), Caxton (still another editor plugin), Cookies for Comments (which also protects against spam comments), Easy Google Fonts, Limited Login Attempts Reload, Stackable Gutenberg Blocks, Subscribe to Comments (this one collects your data if you subscribe to comments!), Complianz (to alert you of cookie use), and WordPress Importer.

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.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. I use the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin for that purpose. Here is what they have to say about privacy:

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).

Akismet

Here is the full Akismet privacy statement, and here is the privacy statement for Automattic, the company behind Akismet.

My contact information

Andreas Broscheid

Center for Faculty Innovation
James Madison University
Rose Library, MSC 4603
1251 Carrier Drive
Room 5101
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807

broschax[at]gmail[dot]com

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