Who we are

SherylMonks.com is the website of author Sheryl Monks and is designed to share news and information with book fans and readers along with other writers pursuing their own interests in creative writing. Sheryl provides advice on writing, editing, publishing, and marketing and promoting short story collections, memoirs, essays, and novels. Our website address is https://sherylmonks.com.

Contact Information

Please contact us at sherylmonksauthor (at) gmail (dot) com for questions related to this Privacy Policy.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

We may receive information about you from other sources. If you choose to link your social media or Google accounts to your user profile, we will receive your name, email address, and profile photo associated with that account.

When you use our website, we automatically collect information about you and the device you use to access our site, including your IP address, operating system type, browser type, referring website, pages you viewed, and the dates/times when you accessed our website. We may also collect information about actions you take when using our website, such as links clicked.

By default WordPress does not collect any personal data about visitors to our website, and only collects the data shown on the user profile screen from registered users. However, some of the plugins on our website may collect your personal data.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on our website, 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 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 our website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to our website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

If you complete a contact form on our site, your personal information such as name, email address, and any other personal identifiers you share may be collected for customer service purposes.

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.

Anonymous data

From time to time, we may use anonymous data, which does not identify you alone or when combined with data from other parties. This type of anonymous data may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Examples of this anonymous data may include analytics or information collected from cookies.

Publicly Visible Information

If you create a user profile on our website or leave a comment, certain information may be publicly visible. To create a user profile, you must choose a username and password and input your email address for profile confirmation. Your email address will never be available publicly. At your option, you may also add an avatar, a profile description, and a link to your website. Users may see your username, avatar, profile description, and website information.

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 into that website.

How we use your information

The information we collect from you may be used to operate and maintain our website; to identify you as a site user, create your account, and customize our website for your user experience; to send newsletters that you opt-in to receive, which may include promotional information (you may opt-out at any time); to communicate with you about your account, to provide user support and/or share technical notices about our website, notify you of policy updates or security alerts or to respond to your questions or comments; to track ads on our website; and to protect, investigate, and deter any unauthorized or illegal activity on our website.

Analytics

By default WordPress does not collect any analytics data. However, we may use third-party service providers to service various aspects of our website. Each third-party service provider’s use of your personal information is dictated by their respective privacy policies.

We currently use the following third-party service providers:

We use a variety of WordPress plugins by Automattic. You can read Automattic’s privacy policy here: https://automattic.com/privacy/

Google Analytics – this service tracks Website usage and provides information such as referring websites and user actions on the Website. Google Analytics may capture your IP address, but no other personal information is captured by Google Analytics.

Additionally, we may share your information with third parties when you explicitly authorize us to share your information. For instance, if you subscribe to our newsletter, your information may be shared with Mailchimp. This is a service provider we use to deliver email updates and newsletters. We store your name and email address in order to send these communication materials.

At this time, your personal information is not shared with any other third-party applications. This list may be periodically amended in our sole discretion to maintain our website.

Except when required by law, we will not sell, distribute, or reveal your email addresses or other personal information without your consent; however, we may disclose or transfer personal information collected through our website to third parties who acquire all or a portion of our business, which may be the result of a merger, consolidation, or purchase of all or a portion of our assets, or in connection with any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding brought by or against us.

Retargeting Ads

Occasionally, our website may engage in remarketing efforts with third-party companies, such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram, in order to market our website. These companies use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to our website. You may opt out of Facebook remarketing ads here and opt out of Google remarketing ads here.

Newsletters

You may subscribe to our newsletter, which may be used for advertising purposes. All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels. The pixel is embedded in emails and allows an analysis of the success of online marketing campaigns. Because of these tracking pixels, we may see if and when you open an email and which links within the email you click. Also, this allows our website to adapt the content of future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behavior will not be passed on to third parties.

Who we share your data with

SherylMonks.com does not share any personal data with anyone, nor does WordPress. If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

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

At no time should you submit sensitive personal information to our website. This includes your social security number, information regarding race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health information, criminal background, or trade union memberships. If you elect to submit such information to us, it will be subject to this Privacy Policy.

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.

You may opt-out of future email communications by following the unsubscribe links in our emails. You may also notify us at restarterhome@gmail.com to be removed from our mailing list. You may also access the personal information we have about you by submitting a request to restarterhome@gmail.com. If you wish to amend or update your personal information, you may contact us at sherylmonksauthor (at) gmail (dot) com. In certain situations, you may request that we erase your personal data. To do so, please submit a request to sherylmonksauthor (at) gmail (dot) com. Please note that we may need to retain certain information for record-keeping purposes or to complete transactions, or when required by law.

Where your data is sent

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

How we protect your data

We take your privacy very seriously and take measures to protect your data. Our website does not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 16. If a parent or guardian believes that our website has personally identifiable information of a child under the age of 16 in its database, please contact us immediately at sherylmonksauthor (at) gmail (dot) com and we will use our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

What data breach procedures we have in place

In the event of a data breach on our website, we will make our best effort to inform you by the contact information you provided.