Intro and who we are
We respect your privacy and the importance of protecting your personal data. Our focus in this website is on providing a platform for zen practitioners to find out information about our Zazen and other activities and to share and express related ideas, and to interact with visitors in a positive way. To do this, our site is set up in ways that use your information, such as our contact form and newsletter sign up, please read this privacy policy for more details.
We are an independent group of practitioners sitting in the Soto Zen tradition. Our website address is: https://glasgowzengroup.com.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Newsletter Sign Up Form
In this sign up form we use Mailchimp to collect the names and email addresses of visitors who agree to sign up to our Newsletter. We send our newsletter using the Mailchimp platform, though we may also alternatively send a newsletter through email without using Mailchimp. Please check the mailchimp privacy policy for detailed information. After you have signed up to our newsletter, we store your name and email address. You can unsubscribe from receiving our newsletter from the link in the Mailchimp newsletter or by replying to our email with the words ‘Unsubscribe’ or similar.
Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/
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 anonymised 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 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
We use the plugin ‘Contact Form 7’ to allow you to contact us easily. We keep contact form submissions to reply to your submission and for our records. These are held by us as emails on the email server we use and our email software, but we do not use the information submitted through them for marketing purposes.
However Google’s reCAPTCHA v3 (part of the Contact Form 7 plugin we use) may send information to Google – please check their privacy policy.
https://policies.google.com/?hl=en
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.
Our Website is set up using the WordPress platform – their plugins, such as Jetpack, use cookies. Please check the WordPress and Jetpack privacy policies about cookies. WordPress have strict guidelines about how plugins hosted by them behave. We use Google Analytics, who use cookies. Please check their privacy policy for more information.
Jetpack: https://automattic.com/privacy/
Google Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
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
Our site is set up using WordPress, their Jetpack plugin collects analytics data. It tells us information such as how many page views we have per month, or if visitors have been referred to our site from another website. Please check WordPress and Jetpack privacy policy. Our site host 34sp may collect analytics data, please check their privacy policy. We also use Google analytics to see which pages have been viewed, to see how visitors interact with the site, which blog posts articles visitors are interested in, and overall to improve our site and make it more enjoyable to visit 🙂 Here is their privacy policy:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
Jetpack: https://automattic.com/privacy/
34sp: https://www.34sp.com/securityandprivacy
You can opt out of Google Analytics using their Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/
Other possibilities for opting out of analytics tracking are from your browser, or other browser add ons. Some software which may be helpful are Firefox Focus, Duck Duck Go, or Privacy Badger.
Do we share your information with other parties?
Due to the embedded content and analytics we have mentioned above, some of your data may be shared automatically with these parties. Here are the privacy policies of these service providers: Google Analytics, 34sp, Vimeo. We only use WordPress plugins which are hosted by WordPress.org, the guidelines of WordPress.org are clear in prohibiting the tracking of users without their consent. We do not sell your data or information to any third parties at all.
34sp: https://www.34sp.com/securityandprivacy
Google Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
Youtube(Google): https://policies.google.com/privacy
Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise 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.
We will keep your personal information according to the law and relevant regulations for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy and we will never retain your personal information for longer than necessary. Newsletter sign up names and email addresses we keep indefinitely – however when a person unsubscribes from our Mailchimp newsletter, or if an email address which is no longer used ‘bounces’ back to us, in these cases we will remove from our computers immediately. Please note however that Mailchimp (due to their system and legal policy) will retain sign up data even after a person unsubscribes from receiving the newsletter, though they will not receive any further newsletters or marketing. Anyone who has subscribed to our newsletter can edit their personal information using Mailchimp, or unsubscribe, or contact us please and we will edit their records. Google Analytics records are kept for 14 months (we would prefer shorter, but this is the shortest time offered by Google).
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.
We don’t use cloud storage for storing any information, except for Mailchimp for newsletter names and email addresses. Apart from Mailchimp, WordPress, Jetpack, Facebook and Google Analytics mentioned above, we don’t deliberately give any information to areas outside the EU/UK, which are safeguarded to European data protection standards. However Google’s reCAPTCHA v3 (part of the Contact Form 7 plugin) may send information to Google – please check their privacy policy.
Additional information
How we protect your data
Measures we have taken to protect your information: two-factor authentication for Mailchimp information; using plugins such as from WordPress which have strict guidelines prohibiting tracking; website staff awareness on how to comply with data protection regulations.
Many thanks for reading 🙂