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Privacy Policy

This website is owned and operated by L.T. Garvin, author. The author seeks to make some literary works, news, photos, and art available to readers and WordPress users who choose to visit.

  • WordPress offers the design, features, and support to bring a website to life.
  • Jetpack provides website connections to features and tools available through WordPress.com.
  • Akismet controls spam through filters that sometimes may catch non-spam.

Currently, L.T. Garvin does not use any plug-ins, but may add Pay-Pal for future purchases of books, merchandies, and lesson plans. Currently, in 2021, there are also no Amazon Affiliate links on this blog, but may also be added in the future.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that the author collects about participants and visitors to LT Garvin.com when you use:

  • The website (including automattic.com, wordpress.com, jetpack.com, gravatar.com, intensedebate.com, akismet.com);
  • Any mobile applications (including the WordPress mobile app for Android and iOS);
  • The products and services that are available on or through our websites (including paypal.com, goodreads, bookbaby.com, and amazon.com);
  • Other users’ websites that use our services.

Throughout this Privacy Policy, LT Garvin refers to this website, mobile applications and other products and services collectively as “Services.” All who write, read, view and visit L.T. Garvin.com will be classified collectively as “you.”

Below is the explanation how this site collects, uses, and shares information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

LT Garvin only collects information about you to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

LT Garvin collects information in three ways: if and when you provide information automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources such as:

Information you provide to L.T. Garvin:

Basic Information: L.T. Garvin would ask basic information from you when you submit text for guest blogs. Emails gathered in this way are only used for communication regarding submissions. This information remains private and will be cleared annually.

Public Profile Information: If you have an account with WordPress, Automattic collects the information that you provide for your public profile, including your username, any photo you provided or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that — public — so please keep that in mind when deciding what information to include.

Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from L.T. Garvin— a subscription to a newsletter, services, merchandise, patronage, or a book, for example — you will provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information through PayPal.com

Content Information: Depending on the Services you use, you may also provide LT Garvin with information about you in draft and published content (such as for your website or a survey). For example, if you write a guest blog post that includes biographic information about you, L.T. Garvin will have that information, and so will anyone with access to the Internet because we publish the guest posts publicly.

Communications with this website: You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, communicate with L.T. Garvin, or post in our public comments.

Through Automattic’s normal website functions, they also collect some information automatically:

  • Log Information: Like most online service providers, Automattic web tools collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. They collect log information when you use our Services — for example, when you submit stories through the WordPress.com form.
  • Usage Information: Automattic collects information about your usage of our Services. They use this information to, for example, to provide Services at CRLC, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
  • Location Information: Automattic may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. This information calculates how many people visit CRLC from certain geographic regions.
  • Interactions with Other Users’ Sites: Automattic collects some information about your interactions with other users’ sites while you are logged in to your WordPress account, such as your “Likes” and the fact that you commented on a particular post. As another example, for Intense Debate users, Automattic collects information about the comments you make while logged in to your account, and use that information to, for example, tally up statistics about your comments (check them out in your WordPress dashboard!) and provide the information about your comments in your Intense Debate public profile.
  • Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Automattic uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help WordPress identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services. For more information about Automattic’s use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see their Cookie Policy.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

L.T. Garvin.com may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log into your WordPress.com account through another service (like Google) or if you connect your website or account to a social media service (like Twitter) through our Publicize feature, we will receive information from that service (such as your username, basic profile information, and friends list) via the authorization procedures used by that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available.

L.T. Garvin may also get information, such as a mailing address, from third party services about individuals who are not yet our users (…but we hope will be!), which we may use, for example, for marketing and advertising purposes like postcards and other mailers advertising our services. (Currently CRLC does not purchase mail list, but in the future,  we may expand our readership for collections and books through this type of third-party service.)

How and Why This Information is Used

Purposes for Using Information

L.T. Garvin uses information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

  • To provide Services and space to practice, share and engage with other writers;
  • To further develop and improve my Services;
  • To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with my Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
  • To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of site advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition;
  • To monitor and prevent any problems with my Services, protect the security of my Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of writering on L.T. Garvin and other users of Automattic and other blog platforms, which may result in declining a transaction or the use of this website’s Services;
  • To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers, promotions and events at L.T. Garvinwe think will be of interest to you, to solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on L.T. Garvin.com; and

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

(1) The use is necessary to function as a web-based literary community that provides an online platform for you to participate (which is open to those willing); or

(2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation (L.T. Garvin has purchased Automattic products and defers to their legal obligation); or

(3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or

(4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update this website’s Services, to improve its Services so that L.T. Garvin can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard Services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of community engagement and promotions, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with my Services, and to personalize your experience; or

(5) You have given L.T. Garvin your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in Automattic’s Cookie Policy.

Sharing Information

How Information is Shared:

L.T. Garvin does not sell users’ private personal information.

L.T. Garvin would share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

  • Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: Information about subsidiaries that need to know the information in order to help L.T. Garvin provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
  • Third Party Vendors: L.T. Garvin may share information about you with third-party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to L.T. Garvin, or to provide their services to you or your site. This group includes vendors that help this site provide Services to you (like payment providers that process your credit and debit card information, fraud prevention services that allow LT Garvin to analyze fraudulent payment transactions, postal and email delivery services that help stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help communicate with you, registrars, registries, and data escrow services that allow to provide domain registration services, and your hosting provider if your site is not hosted by Automattic), those that assist with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns), those that help LT Garvin understand and enhance Services (like analytics providers), and companies that make products available on this website (such as the extensions on WooCommerce.com), who may need information about you in order to, for example, provide technical or other support services to you. Vendors must agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them. Other vendors are listed in Automattic’s more specific policies (e.g. our Cookie Policy).
  • Legal Requests: LT Garvin may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or another governmental request. For more information on how we respond to requests for information about WordPress.com users, please see Automattic’s Legal Guidelines.
  • To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: LT Garvin may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if there is a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, LT Garvin 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, user 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 Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
  • With Your Consent: LT Garvin may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, LT Garvin may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so, such as the social media services that you connect to your site through our Publicize feature.
  • Aggregated or De-Identified Information: Information may be shared that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, aggregate statistics may be published about the use of Services a hashed version of your email address may be shared to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
  • Other Site Owners: If you have a WordPress.com account and leave a comment on a site that uses my Services (like a site created on WordPress.com or a site running Jetpack), your IP address and the email address associated with your WordPress.com account may be shared with the administrator(s) of the site where you left the comment.
  • Published Support Requests: And if you send WordPress a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), LT Garvin reserves the right to publish that request in order to help clarify or respond to your request or to help support other users.

Special thank you to GitHub for form usage:

Special thank you to GitHub for form usage: https://github.com/Automattic/legalmattic