Privacy Policy

1. Who I am

My website address is: https://thesupercargo.com

For more about me personally see my About pages.
About John Nixon TheSupercargo: https://thesupercargo.com/about-john-nixon-author/
About TheSupercargo website: https://thesupercargo.com/about-thesupercargo-website/

2. What personal data I collect and why I collect it

 2.1(a) Comments

When you leave comments on the site, the site collects the data shown in the comments form. It also collects your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. In compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Requirements – GDPR – I have directed WordPress to forget the IP address as soon as your visit ends, The address is anonymized before it passes on to Google Analytics.

2.1(b) Subscriptions

When you complete the subscription form (https://thesupercargo.com/subscribe/) you give me your e-mail address in return for receiving a weekly e-mail from the site with links to the three most recent posts. This e-mail is sent automatically every Thursday at noon (CET). In order to subscribe you must confirm your subscription by responding to an e-mail I send automatically to the address you have provided. This double opt-in ensures that you really want to receive my e-mails. I encourage you also to put my address into your the address list so there is less chance of your e-mail software treating the subscription as spam.

I will keep the subscription address you have given me in this site’s database until you unsubscribe from the list.

The software I use is Mailpoet, which is GDPR compliant. If Mailpoet detects that you have not opened your subscription e-mail for more than 6 months. It will automatically take your address off the subscription database.

 2.2 Gravatar

The site creates an anonymized string from your e-mail address (also called a hash). It sends the string to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. If you have a Gravatar profile, then after approval of your comment, your Gravitar profile picture will be visible to the public in the context of your comment. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.

 2.3 Contact form

If you want to get in touch with me and you don’t have my personal e-mail address, you can always use the Contact Form (https://thesupercargo.com/contact/). The form forwards your e-mail to me and I will receive your e-mail address.

 2.4 Cookies

If you leave a comment on this site you must leave your name and an e-mail address, optionally you may also leave your website address. The first time you do this your comment will be held until I’ve moderated it. Once I approve your first comment, the site will keep you details so that it recognises you in future and allows your future comments to be published directly. For your convenience, so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment, you’ll be asked to check a box to accept a cookie on your computer. If you don’t check the box, your comment will still appear (after approval), but there won’t be any cookie.

From 25th May 2018, there is a cookie warning on this site that invites you to accept the site’s cookies.

I have discontinued the cookie warning. This is why:

  • I have accepted Google’s Data Processing Amendment, which stipulates that Google only processes the anonymised data it receives when you visit TheSupercargo.com.
  • I do not share data regarding your use of my site with Google Analytics.
  • Nor do I use analytics cookies for advertising purposes.
  • Your IP address is anonymized before it is sent to Google Analytics.
  • The data of Google Analytics cookies is sent securely over an https connection.

To opt-out of analysis by Google Analytics please visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

It is my understanding that this frees me from the obligation to publish a cookie warning. If this is not the case, I’m open to being corrected. Please use the contact form.

As far as I can ascertain, apart from the Gravater cookie (see above under 2.2), the only cookies this website will post on your computer come from WordPress and Google. The WP and Google cookies are used as described below under 3. Analytics to give me an idea of where visitors to the site come from, whether they follow internal links from one page or post to another and what technology they are using to access the site. Theoretically this helps me plan future content.

 2.5 Embedded content from other websites/cookies from third parties

Articles on this site may include embedded content. (I’m thinking in particular of videos that are hosted on YouTube.) Embedded content from YouTube and other websites behaves in the exact same way as if you have 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. I am trying to keep all of this to a minimum. YouTube videos are the only embedded content I have so far been unable to prevent collecting information with third party tracking.

I am gradually removing YouTube videos from the site.

 2.6 Social Sharing

As of 1st January 2021, posts and pages include social sharing buttons to allow you to share the posts on Facebook and Twitter, by e-mail and SMS, and some other options. These buttons will not lay you open to cookies from the social networks.

 2.7 Cookie housekeeping

For your own peace of mind, you can clear the cookie cache held on your computer. You can do this when you shut down your browser, every few days, every month – whatever you feel comfortable with. How to do this will depend on your browser. All good browsers will provide clear and easily found information on how to clear your browsing history and clear cookies. If your browser does not give you this information – change browser!

3. Analytics

 3.1 Who I share your data and contact information with

I do not deliberately share your personal data and contact information with anyone and I will not do so in the future.

I use Google Analytics in combination with a WordPress plug-in called Monster Insights to keep track of the flow of visitors to the site. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect information about the page or pages you view, and the browser and screen resolutions you are using. It also identifies the language that your browser is set to use and your location. (Your location depends on your IP address, though because it counts as personal data the IP address itself is anonymized before being sent to Google Analytics.) You can fool the location tracker if you wish by using a Virtual Private Net (VPN).

To see Google Analytics’ own Privacy Policy, follow this link https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en

Comments are checked through Akismet (https://akismet.com/), an automated spam detection service. At the time of writing Akismet tells me it has protected TheSupercargo site from 126,334 spam comments in about 10 years of service. See Akismet’s Privacy Policy here: https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/

 3.2 How long I retain your data and contact information

In the past, if you left a comment, the comment and its metadata were retained indefinitely. This was so the site could recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. Following the coming into force of the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) on 25th May 2018, you will be asked to approve this process by putting a tick in a box.

If you don’t already have one, it might be an idea now to get yourself a separate e-mail address that you use, for example to post comments on blogs. In this way you will be able to keep your private address private. Alternatively, you can use a fake e-mail address along the lines of myaddress@isnotforshari.ng.

Subscription addresses remain in my database until you ask me to remove them. Use the Unsubscribe button at the foot of every subscription e-mail or contact me directly. If my software detects that you are no longer opening the subscription e-mails. (If you have not opened a subscription e-mail for more than 6 months.) It will automatically remove your address from the list. Obviously you cannot use a fake address for the e-mail subscription, but you could use a separate e-mail address from your personal or private one.

 3.3 What rights you have over your data and contact information

If you’ve left comments on this site you can ask for and expect to receive an exported file of the information the site has kept on you, including any data you have provided to the site. You can also ask me to erase this data from the site. This I will do as long as there is nothing I am obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. Providing you a zip file of the data the site has collected, and erasing it if that’s what you want, are mostly automated processes and I will carry them out quickly.

Some time after the 25th May 2018 I plan to go manually through all the addresses left as legacy on my various websites. I will be contacting everyone who has left a comment to check that they are OK with me retaining their address. If not, or if they do not reply within a limited time, I undertake to erase the addresses (and their comments) from my database. This process, because it’s manual, will take some time.

4. Additional information and data protection

TheSupercargo is a small website with limited traffic. It is very much a one-man operation. I’d like it to grow, but at present it’s little more than a hobby. For this reason what I do to protect your data is limited to what I can afford. I take the usual precautions with my home computers and network. My personal data protection comes from the Business version of Bidefender. (https://www.bitdefender.com/)

For the website I depend on the security protocols of Binero (https://www.binero.se/), the web hotel where my website is housed. Binero has a good reputation with thousands of customers in Scandinavia. I believe them to be reliable.

John Nixon
TheSupercargo

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 28th July 2021
when I included 2.1(b) and information about subscriptions.