Privacy Policy

The document you are about to read on this page is The Write Place’s Privacy Policy, which consists of information that intends to help you better understand how The Write Place may use, collect, store and share your personal data as you use our site and our services that we offer. 

By using our website, and any services that consist within thereof, you agree and consent to our collection and use of your personal data as detailed in this Privacy Policy below.

Please click on each heading to toggle down to its relevant section; we highly emphasise the importance of reading our Cookie and Privacy Policy statements in full so please remember to do so. 

1 Introduction 

• Privacy Policy overview

2 What Information Do We Collect? 

• Information you provide voluntarily
• Non-voluntary Information via site usage
• (Blog) Comments
• Non-voluntary Information via third parties
• Information we receive via third party embedded content
• Plugins

3 How We Use Your Information 

• To Provide The Write Place Services
• Marketing purposes
• WP Statistics

4 Disclosing of Your Information to Third Parties 

• Legal reasons
• Fulfilment of our Terms of Service
• Company changes

5 Third Party Links and Services

• Embedded content
• Butter
• Policy assurances/indemnifications with embedded content

6 Storing of Your Information

• Information via system integrations
• Information via external suppliers 
• Data Retention 
• Comments
• Paid Membership Pro Users

7 Updating and Controlling Your Information

• Marketing Opt-Out  
• Contacting us
• Request of deletion
• Request of Removal (for Published Work)
• Exceptions

8 Request of Your Information 

• Incorrect Information

9 Security of Your Information

• Information transmitted to other databases 
• Security, third party usage and internet risks

10 Social Media 

11 Cookies 

• (First-party) On-site cookies and your personal Information 
• Site Comments
• Site Subscribers
• (Third-party) Cookies 
• Refusal of cookie usage

12 Privacy Rights for California Residents Specified (non-California residents also apply) 

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INTRODUCTION

The Write Place website address is: https://www.thewriteplaceishere.com, and our address is: 105 Masons Avenue Harrow HA3 5AN. The Write Place is an online literary hub designed to showcase original creative works of fiction, and at times, nonfiction, with other literature readers and enthusiasts, as well as to help those interested to build creative portfolios. The Write Place is owned by Marisa Paulson, the Site Administrator, who also occasionally shares her work through the role of a Contributor Writer.

This Privacy Policy statement, (the “Policy”) aims to help you understand the data (“Data”) or information (“Information”) as outlined in the Data Protection Act 1998 and UK GDPR 2018 Act, and CPRA (CCPA amended) (where applicable), that we collect about you as you use our service(s) (“Service” or “Services”). This data includes Information that is personal. All your Information will be held and used in accordance with these aforementioned Acts.

The Write Place, (who in this statement, will also be referred to as, “we”, “us” and “our”) respects your privacy and we are committed to protecting your personal Information. The protection of personal Information is at the core of our ethos and values, and this statement affirms that. In this statement, you will also be referred to as: “you”, “your”, “yours”, “site visitors”/”consumers”. 

Our Policy is updated on occasion, (in accordance with CPRA (CCPA amended), we will update our Policy every 12 months minimum), so please check back for the latest update, which will be clearly stated at the top of this document and marked as the following: ‘Last Updated: Applicable Date, (and time if applicable)’. Should we ever change our statement or procedures, we will post these changes so that you are aware of them, how they are used, the circumstances to which they are disclosed, and how they might affect you and your personal Information. So please remember to refer back to this page. We highly recommend saving this webpage to your bookmarks for future reference. 

By default, your continued use of our website or Services after this Policy has been ascertained, shall confirm your continued acceptance of the terms and conditions of this Policy, as amended.

If you are not okay with sharing your personal Information with us and our site and/or Services, then you must immediately exit this site and stop usage of said site and/or our Services.

If you change your computer, change your browser or delete certain cookies, you will need to renew your preferences. For other devices, please double check your settings before refreshing.

Please remember that you can choose not to provide us with certain Information, but this may stop you from gaining access to a Service, or limit the features that you can use on our website. 

This Policy aims to inform you of how we collect, use and disclose your personal Information and aims to assist you in making informed decisions about your Information when using our website or the Services provided by us, or our third parties.

By using our website and Services, you agree and consent to our collection and use of your Information as detailed in this Policy.

In addition to this Policy, each Service offered by us or third parties may have additional privacy provisions that are specific to their particular service. These supplementary disclosures are made alongside with the particular service at the time your Information is collected. A list of our third parties can be seen at the bottom of this document.

2 WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

When you visit and use our website or request our Services, you may provide us with, or we may collect your Information, such as your postal address, email address and other personal Data. You may provide or we may collect this Information in a number of ways:

2.1 Information you voluntarily provide to us

During your use of our site and Services, we will collect and maintain Information that you voluntarily submit to us. For example:

• If you sign up to receive an enewsletter or a print magazine (once this Service becomes available), you may provide us with contact Information (e.g. email, and/or snail mail address, i.e. your physical address.) You may also willingly provide this Information via completing a contact or submission form (by default, our submission forms necessitate that you provide this information). We only ever request this Information for the purposes of fulfilling our terms of service, for instance, which may include the option of sending selected submitters a non-monetary token gift, such as a free copy, or otherwise, should this apply. The Write Place will never send you anything without your prior consent, be that online or otherwise.
• When completing submission forms, you will, by default, be voluntarily sharing with us your personal Information, some of which include Information as mentioned above (email and postal addresses), as well as the following: name and/or pseudonym (if applicable), age and title of work(s), as well as the work(s) in of itself. Depending upon the content of your bio, The Write Bio, you may also voluntarily share with us more personal and sensitive Information about you. For example, through you supplying a social media link in your bio to promote your authorship and any additional work, we will then be in receipt of this Information, or depending on the nature of how you construct your bio, we may be in receipt of sensitive Information, or any other categories of personal Information as listed in CPRA (CCPA) about you that you disclose.
• Other forms where you may provide us with Information include on both the Insights Sharer and Submitter’s Updated Info forms, which require you to share your name, and postal address (for Submitter’s Updated Info forms, in the event that we decide to send you a non-monetary token gift and the previous postal Information we have of you via submissions or The Write Insights forms are incorrect, and require updating in order for us to correctly send the aforementioned example).
• You may additionally provide us with Information in the course of email and customer support correspondence, and contact and submission forms; e.g. when sending us a manuscript, you may include personal Information such as your name, email and snail mail (postal) addresses, and contact numbers on the title page of your document. If you intend to submit photographs, then The Write Place will also be in possession of this Data. Please note that all forms by default, require the input of your address, so should you submit a form, please be aware that you are volunteering the sharing of this Information with us. If you submit to us an audio file (for the purposes of poetry and/or other text readings), we will be in possession of this personal Information and should we proceed to upload it onto our site, then additional site visitors will also have access to this Data, i.e. your voice and work authorship. Furthermore, should we decide to proceed with publication of your work(s), as per our Submitters Agreement, your banking details are amongst some of the personal Information we will request in order to send you royalty payments and/or payments for online publication via Stripe, (see sections 3.1 Sending Payment for Royalties and 4.1 a – Token-gifts/Payments for Online Non-Voluntary Publication of our Submitters Agreement for more).
• In the event where you decide to subscribe to our paid memberships, then we will also be in possession of some of your financial related personal Information, such as your bank account name and details, which are stored purely for the use of upholding our agreement of Services to you, i.e. permitting you access to members only site content and Services, as well as for monitoring in the case of subscription and account changes, i.e. payment confirmations and failures etc. Additionally, other Services that require the personal Information of bank account name and details, include the following: club sign up forms (where upon completing, you are directed to secure your booking by completing payment for one-time attendance; should you decide to opt for a regular member attendance, you will receive a Stripe payment link via email within the next 48 hours, upon which you are free to choose the right payment subscription which suits you: we offer ongoing trimonthly subscription, and one-off and recurring annual subscriptions); joining an available workshop (whereby you will be directed to complete payment via Stripe integration); and, independent and collaborations Services (whereby upon us agreeing to enter into a contract of collaborations with you, and following completion of our The Write Services Client Agreement, as amended, you will first be required to send payment to us via a Stripe payment link over the course and/or upon completion of our Services to you, which will be mutually agreed upon and stated in The Write Services Client Agreement).

2.2 (Non-voluntary) Information we collect through your use of our Website 

As you use our website, Information may also be passively collected by us through our use of cookies, log files and other systems/technologies. This Information allows us to deliver more helpful information, Services, and tools. Please see our Cookie Policy for more information. Blog comments may provide us with additional Information about you as well, especially pertaining to circumstances where a commenter volunteers Information about your authorship (which may or may not have been actioned by the incentive of Information you supplied in your bio), which is then publicised on our site. Other non-voluntary Information we may receive this way is your direct action of sharing your personal Information, e.g. back and forth correspondence with another commenter, in which you willingly disclose your personal Information to them.

2.2(a) (Blog) Comments  

When you, or other site 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 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. (Please note that this only applies should we proceed to include this Gravatar third-party service.) At present, it is yet to be activated.

2.3 (Non-voluntary) Information we receive from third parties

We may also combine online and/or offline information received from third parties with your Information. The third party information is used for a variety of purposes, including to verify other Information about you (e.g., verify your mailing address to send you a requested Service, i.e. via signing up to our enewsletter; or, to fulfill a Service as per our terms of service, i.e. email verification for the purposes of allowing us to fulfill our submission processes); and to enhance the content and other Services we provide to you.

2.4 Information we receive via third party embedded content

We may also receive Information about you via our usage of embedded content on our site. These embedded contents may be via payment gateways, e.g. Stripe, when you subscribe to a paid subscription Service, i.e. The Write Place Membership, or clubs and workshops sign ups . Moreover, for membership subscription, we use Paid Membership plugin to operate our memberships. Where applicable, whenever you complete any forms on our site or subscribe to a paid membership, by default, you will be sharing your Information with these aforementioned sourced third parties, and they will also be in collection of your Data; it is therefore important that you also take the time to review the privacy policies of such third parties, so you are aware of their usage and storage of your personal Information. These third parties act as data processors for us and are strictly controlled in how they may/may not use your Information, and we remain responsible for the protection of your Information while we use their services. 

2.4 a Plugins

In addition to the above, by default, installed plugins on our site may collect, store and thereby be in possession of your personal Information on their systems in order to fulfill their service to us, which allows us to thereby fulfill our Service to you. By default, active plugins used on our site process your Information as third party contingencies, and act as data processors for us and they are strictly controlled in how they may/may not use your Information, and we remain responsible for the protection of your Information while we use their services. A full list of our plugins and its function can be found at the end of this document.

3 HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We will use your Information in the ways described below and as described at the time that the Information is collected. Please make sure to read our terms of service, agreements, and any disclosures stated on our contact/submission forms, or any other forms, or anywhere on our site before proceeding to share any of your personal Data with us.

3.1 To Provide the Services

In general, we use your Information as necessary or appropriate for the purposes of operating our business and/or Services, as well as including the following:

• To administer your account where you have opened an account with us, i.e. in the case of subscription sign ups (The Write Place Membership or enewsletter).
• To register you and provide you access to the website or Services requested by you, i.e. via subscription sign up, enewsletter sign ups, completing The Write Place forms, etc.
• To fulfill our obligations to you for a product or Service(s), i.e. for a selected writer, the product here indicates the non-monetary token gift, whilst the Service indicates the publishing of the writer’s work (whether online or otherwise, and as applicable). (Please note that our obligations are not limited to selected writers only, and for whatever obligations we have set forth in our terms of service and agreements, will be applicable where it is evidently deemed appropriate.)
• To process payments via Stripe pertaining to your signup of any of our available Services.
• To fulfil our contractual agreements to you for independent services and collaborations Services as per our Client Agreement. 
• To coordinate and deliver trimmestral clubs and seasonal workshops (as required).
• To customise and better coordinate the components, performance and assistance of the website and our Services for your use; analyse, standardise and oversee research on user Data and user interactions with the website and our Services.
• To respond to enquiries or requests that you direct to us and have been engaged between us, i.e. via email correspondence or forms, or via social media, i.e. our YouTube channel (once this is introduced).
• To send communications and administrative emails about the website or our Services including additional features, i.e. enewsletter updates or changes to our site/Services; selected submitter notifications/correspondence, latest posts or other articles and details included in and sent therefrom.
• Other purposes pertaining to any of the above.

3.2 Marketing

Where you have provided us with the appropriate consents, or where the Act allows us to do so, we may send you marketing materials about the Services we offer, i.e. via enewsletter sign ups. In addition, where you have provided us with the appropriate consents, we may also pass your Information to one or more of our other selected third parties for marketing purposes, i.e. in the case of our social media accounts, e.g. YouTube, and using their services to promote our site/Services, i.e. via a direct link to our site/Services, which may also give access to where your published work is displayed, or, a direct link to a new post on our site where you happen to be the author of the promoted work. In the case of these sole site/Services promoting, please understand that should your work be published on our site, then by default, such third parties may become aware and in possession of your personal Information, as it is displayed on our site/Services, (this also includes any Information that is present in your bio).

Please note that we do not promote ads on our website.

We may sometimes decide to post your Information independently on these social media sites instead of sharing a link, e.g. in the case of YouTube, we may decide to construct a video promoting your work independently or alongside others’, whereby we will display the work in text form on the video footage. Please understand that under such circumstances, the Information shared will only be an excerpt of your work, in of itself, your bio, which may contain further Information about you such as your name, pseudonym, age, and location, i.e. State, Province, City or Country, and any other Information you’ve supplied which you felt supports your authorship, (again, an excerpt); we will never include any social media links that you may have supplied in your bio, which allows access to other places you may have published work or any further disclosures to your personal Information.

We may also share your Information in the case of printed publication (although at the moment, such processes are not yet actioned), where we aim to use a third parties’ services to proceed with printed copies, with the intention of fulfilling our objectives as outlined in our terms of service and agreements (as applicable). In such circumstances, we may share your Information in one or more of the scenarios outlined above; again, only following your confirmed permissions. Please understand that work here also pertains to photography and audio files (audio files are not applicable regarding printed publication).  Other ways that your Information may be indirectly passed on to third parties is via word-of-mouth, email or messaging applications, such as SMS/MMs text and/or Whatsapp, where again, such actions and use of services will be used for the promoting of our actual site/Services only, i.e. using SMS/MMS text and/or Whatsapp to share a link to our site, informing people via word-of-mouth to visit said site.

3.3 WP Statistics

We use WP Statistics, an analytical plugin designed to help optimise website performance, and is GDPR and CPRA and cookie-laws compliant, amongst others. This is the only analytics tool we use for Data collection. 

As stated on their website, ‘WP Statistics tracks the usage of a website, it does not collect any personal data or personally identifiable information (PII), does not use cookies, and respects website visitors’ privacy.’

The Write Place’s usage of WP Statistics is a part of our decision-making process, with regards to the decision of making technical or content-related changes to our site. Examples of this is where WP Statistics will process Information to detect which attributes of our site receive highest and/or lowest grades of interest, to analyse which contest and/or open submission categories have generated the most consumer interest-based results, via records of site category visits, comments, etc., and so forth. This can help us to make relevant changes that allow for better engagement with our site visitors, and overall improved interaction from the user experience perspective. 

As stated on their privacy policy page, WP Statistics only collect  ‘…the information necessary to show [us] simple analytics’. WP Statistics tracks ‘overall trends in website traffic, not individual visitors. No cookies are used, no persistent identifiers are generated and no personal information is collected or stored…Only the most essential data points are measured.’ 

The Write Place uses WP Statistics as our analytics tool since they ‘do not use cookies, browser cache, or local storage’ to track or store information about you. This is in line with our ethos, since The Write Place, at all paradigms, aims and intends to limit the personal Information we collect and hold on you as much as possible, and within the refrains of legal compliance.

By using our website, you consent to the processing of your Data by WP Statistics in the manner, and for the purposes, set out above. 

For more information regarding WP Statistics’ collection and usage of information, please refer to their privacy policy.

4 HOW WE DISCLOSE YOUR INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES

As mentioned in Sections 2 and 3, we may share your Information with third parties following confirmation of your approval, or, in addition to this, under the circumstances outlined below:

4.1 Disclosure for legal reasons

We may disclose your Information if we are under a duty to disclose or share your Information. Reasons for this are due to our duty of compliance with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply, or fulfill our terms of service and agreements, or, to protect the rights, property, or security and safety of our customers, our team, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for, for instance, detecting security breaches, malicious activity and fraud protection or otherwise, etc. Below is a brief breakdown of our legal disclosures of your Personal Information:

• Auditing
• Security
  • Detecting security breaches
  • Protecting against fraud and malicious activity
  • Taking action against wrongdoers (e.g. fraudsters and hackers)
• Debugging
  • Identifying and fixing technical errors
• Performing services
  • Account maintenance
  • Customer service
  • Processing transactions
  • Marketing
• Internal research to develop or demonstrate technology
• Testing or improvement of any service or device “owned, manufactured, manufactured for, or controlled by” the business (as applicable)

As aforementioned in Sections 2 and 3, we also use a number of third party organisations to help provide a professional Service to our customers/site visitors (i.e. CMS systems for coordinating and facilitating more efficient submission processes, packaging, graphic and printing designers and companies, and website designers, namely for the purposes of site design, assistance and maintenance, and magazine – or other – printing formats), notwithstanding HR systems such as Upwork and the wordpress plugin Job Manager (to coordinate and advertise available job positions). These organisations act as data processors and are strictly controlled in how they may/may not use your Information, and we remain responsible for the protection of your Information while we use their services.

4.2 Changes to our Company

In the (unlikely) event that we go through business changes such as an affiliate, change of ownership, acquisition by another company, or sale of all, or a portion, of our resources, your Information may be among the resources transferred, i.e. in order to maintain the Services already existent and/or to make any evident and appropriate changes to such Services during the course of the business change. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur and are permitted by this Policy.

5 THIRD PARTY LINKS AND SERVICES

5.1 Embedded Content

Posts, pages and articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behave 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.

5.1 a Butter

If you sign up to our trimestral clubs, then by default, you are agreeing and consent to the processing, sharing and storage of your personal Information via Butter, our current third party provider for coordinating clubs (all of which are conducted online), such as your name, email address (for virtual club room access) physical identity (should you decide to provide camera access, though it is not mandatory), and audio (through the course of your voluntary discussion exchanges, during the clubs’ durations). For quality, training and – at times – marketing purposes only, such online club sessions may be recorded, in which case Butter will have your aforementioned personal Information stored on their systems. In the case of marketing, only your written responses during the Butter chat/messaging feature will be shared, none of which is defined as personal Information according to the Act, and none of which will include any breaches of copyright and thereby authorship of any original work you disclose.

5.2 Policy assurances/indemnifications with embedded content

Please remember that when you use a link to go from our website to another website, or you request a service from a third party, our Policy no longer applies. Your browsing and interaction on any other website or your dealings with any other third party service provider, is subject to that website’s or third party service provider’s own regulations and policies. We do not monitor, control, or endorse the information collection or privacy practices of any third parties. We encourage you to become familiar with the privacy practices of every website you visit, or third party service provider that you deal with, and to contact them if you have any questions about their respective privacy policies and practices. This Policy applies solely to Information collected by The Write Place through our website (including subdomains) or Services and does not apply to these third party websites and third party service providers.

6 WHERE WE STORE YOUR INFORMATION

The Information that we collect from you may be transferred to, stored and processed at a destination outside the European Economic Area, (all EU countries plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), and the State of California USA. Details of such collection are outlined below: 

6.1 Collected Information via system integrations

The Write Place themselves may store your Information on third parties’ data storage systems and services, (and of which systems may or may not operate outside the EEA or State of California USA), such as Google Workspac, and our email/mailing provider systems and storage facilities, notwithstanding serviced wordpress plugins and our website hosting provider, which is DreamHost; your Information that is stored in such paradigms will essentially range from Data obtained via The Write Place forms, i.e. contact and submission forms or any other, as well as Data sent to us by you via direct email, i.e. any further Information provided by you via the course of our correspondence; where it is not, such Information will be obtained via other third parties, such as the systems and/or site plugins that we have integrated onto our site/Services, in order to optimise best quality, Service and overall performance of our site for site visitors. Details of such plugins will be listed at the end of this document.

6.2 Collected Information via external suppliers

Your Information may also be processed by our third party suppliers operating outside the EEA or State of California USA, for customer Service purposes, i.e. packaging and printing designers and companies, parcel couriers, who through our use of their services, may be in possession of your Information, such as your postal address in order for us to fulfill agendas outlined in our terms of services and agreements (as applicable). In some circumstances, for instance, with printing companies, they may be able to view your personal Information which may be displayed on our supplied documents to them during the printing processes; so whilst the holding of your Information may be temporary, they may still be in possession of it. By submitting Information to us, you agree to this transferring, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary, such as reviewing their privacy policies before requesting/undergoing any services from them, to ensure that your Information is treated securely and in accordance with this Policy and the Act. 

As mentioned in Section 5, for quality, training and – at times – marketing purposes only, online club sessions may be recorded, in which case Butter will have your aforementioned personal Information stored on their systems. In the case of marketing, only your written responses during the Butter chat/messaging feature will be shared, none of which is defined as personal Information according to the Act, and none of which will include any breaches of copyright and thereby authorship of any original work you disclose.

6.3 How long we retain your Information

The Information we collect or process about you is retained for a specific duration dependent on the type of Data, as well as, the way in which this Data is received. In general, we retain Information from the relevant sources for the durations as outlined below: 

• Analytics records are retained for 1 year.
• Customer purchase records, i.e. paid subscriptions, are retained for 3 years.
• Subscription records (unpaid) are retained for 1 year. 
• Enewsletter sign ups are retained for 1 year.

All of our online forms, are retained for a minimum of 8 months; however, if any of these forms contain personal Information from either, selected submitters (in the case of all submissions, including the write insights/photo/audio file submissions,), then these forms will be retained for a maximum of up to 2 years; the intentions behind The Write Place doing do is to ensure that we are able to fulfill either our agendas and/or our obligations as outlined in our terms of service; part of this Service may include, for example, receipting selected submitters/writers with their paid token-gift, which may include or require us to send this via online; other examples are in the event that we profit from printed publication, and decide to receipt all selected submitters with a one-time token gift. Since we are a newly established and operating online platform, and cannot foresee our operations in the future, therefore due to the nature of our obligations, we require a maximum of 2 years’ data retention for such applicable Information, in order to ensure that our transparent, integral and obliged relations can both be met and maintained between us and yourself, (should your Information apply). Such reasons are especially evident in the case of our backdated submissions Service; since we welcome backdated publications, we anticipate a high demand of writer enthusiasts to service with us in the hopes of building a creative writing portfolio in a short span of time; as such, retaining personal Information from repeated submissions from the same submitter, will help us to better coordinate a more efficient Service (should your personal Information apply).

6.3(a) Comments

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.

6.4 Paid Membership Pro Users

For users that register to The Write Place Memberships via Paid Membership Pro plugin, we also store the Information you provide in your user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their Information at any time. Website administrators can also see the backend of this Information and can thereby edit said Information.

7 UPDATING, AND CONTROL OF YOUR INFORMATION

There are a number of ways in which you can control the collection, use, and sharing of your Information and update your Information and preferences.

7.1 Opting-out on receipt of marketing communications

When you receive marketing communications from us, you will have the opportunity to ‘opt-out’ by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the marketing e-mail, i.e. the enewsletter. This will normally be located at the end of the enewsletter.

7.2 Contacting us

If your Information has changed or if you no longer wish to receive marketing communications from us, then please contact us to update your Information.

7.3 Request of deletion

You have the right to request deletion of your personal Information that we hold about you. The processes of such requests are the same as any request of Information (see section 8 below), and will require you to complete an online Contact Us form which can be found on our Contact Us page, which is located as a dropdown under the ‘About‘ of our site’s main navigation menu in the header of our site. Under the ‘Select the nature of your query’ field, select ‘Privacy Policy’. Under the ‘Select the nature of your subject’ field, select ‘Request of Deletion’. In the ‘Your Message’ field, please disclose that you are requesting for deletion of your Information. No further details are required, however, you are free to include more should you wish to. Requests of deletion will take up to 45 days maximum to be processed. 

7.3 a Request of Removal (for Published Work)

For any request of deletion pertaining to your published work(s) on our site, removal will only take effect once the 5 months’ exclusive rights term has been fulfilled, and following your written request of said removal, which you can do by completing the following steps: Complete a Contact Us form; Under the ‘Select the nature of your query’ field, select ‘Privacy Policy’. Under the ‘Select the nature of your subject’ field, select ‘Request of Removal’. In the ‘Your Message’ field, please disclose that you are requesting for removal of your published Information, and please specify the exact Information, i.e. title of work(s) etc (as applicable). Please understand that we will only action such removal requests of this nature (i.e. regarding published work) if you put forward your removal request within 4 weeks following the fulfillment of the 5 months’ first rights exclusivity. Removal requests of this nature shall take up to a maximum of 8 weeks with written confirmation. Unfortunately, removals of already published work, whether printed/digitized formats or anything else equivalent, cannot be actioned, however, we do accept written requests for future removals so long as the aforementioned conditions have been adhered to. For more information, please visit our Submitters Agreement.

7.3 b Exceptions

Please note that whilst you have a right to request deletion of your personal Information that we hold on you, nevertheless, this right does not include the exceptions outlined below, in the event where we must retain your personal Information in order to ascertain any of the following circumstances:

• Providing Services to you
• Detect or resolve security or functionality-related issues
• To remain in compliance with the law
• Conducting research in the public interest
• Safeguarding the right to free speech

Lastly, in order to carry out any actions for internal purposes that you might reasonably expect, i.e. completing obligations to you in accordance with our terms of service.

8 REQUESTING OF INFORMATION THAT THE WRITE PLACE HOLDS ON ME

If you want to know what Information we collect and hold about you, please complete a Contact Us form and under the ‘Select the nature of your query’ field, select ‘Privacy Policy’. Under the ‘Select the nature of your subject’ field, select ‘Request of Information’. In the ‘Your Message’ field, please disclose the exact personal Information you are requesting, otherwise, if it is all of your personal Information that we collect and hold about you, please simply state that you are requesting for your Information. No further details are required, however, you are free to include more should you wish to. We do not process queries via direct email so please do not send us queries through such methods. Fortunately, in an attempt to go greener, we do not accept mail via post.  In accordance with CPRA, you will receive a full disclosure of the Information we collect and hold about you within 45 days maximum from the date of your request of Information.

8.1 Incorrect Information

The Act permits you the right to request a copy of the Information that we hold about you. If any of the Information that we hold about you is incorrect, please click on the ‘Contact Us’ page link, found as a dropdown option of the main navigation menu underneath ‘About’; this will redirect you to our Contact Us page where you can complete a Contact Us form; alternatively, please click the above hyperlinks.

If the incorrect Information relates to any form of subscription, i.e. enewsletter, The Write Place Membership, or otherwise (in the event that more Services become available), again, please complete a Contact Us form and select ‘Privacy Policy’ and ‘Technical (or other) Concerns’ as the appropriate fields, and disclose your relevant issue in the ‘Your Message’ field. Our customer support team will then update your details as soon as objectively possible. 

Please bear in mind that our initial response time for all enquiries is a minimum of 5 to 10 working days; unfortunately, during peak seasons, such as open submissions seasons, such as open submissions, this may further delay our response time, but we will always endeavour to get back to you within a reasonable duration. (For more information regarding the privacy rights of California residents only, please see Section 12.)

9 SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION

9.1 Information transmitted to other databases 

As highlighted in Section 6, your Personal Information may be processed, transferred to, and maintained on servers and databases located outside of the jurisdiction in which you are based; in such circumstances, these locations may be where the privacy laws are not as protective as your jurisdiction. As a result, The Write Place has put in place appropriate safeguards (such as cybersecurity softwares, and prior reviewing of such parties’ privacy laws before commencing services with them (should it be applicable), to ensure that your Information is adequately protected. If, for whatever reason, The Write Place feels as though such third parties’ privacy laws are not adequate enough, as in accordance with the Act, then we will not proceed to receive services from them, of which services include the processing, transferring and maintenance of your Information on their servers or databases.

9.2 Security of personal Information, third party usage and acknowledgement of internet risks

We follow appropriate security procedures in the storage and disclosure of your Information so as to prevent unauthorised access by third parties. We also require those parties to whom we transfer personal Information to comply with the same efforts, measures, procedures and ethos regarding such securities. However, unfortunately, the transmission of Information via the Internet is not completely secure, and no system of physical or electronic security is impenetrable. Therefore, we cannot ensure the security of your Information transmitted by you to us via the internet, nor can we ensure the security of servers, networks or databases, and the guarantee of such security is thereby not absolute. 

By using and continuing use of our site and Services, you agree to assume all risk in connection with your Personal Information. Any such transmission is at your own risk and you acknowledge and agree that The Write Place shall not be responsible for any unauthorised use, distribution, damage or destruction, or for any loss of such personal Information, or the consequences thereof, except to the extent where we are required to accept such responsibilities by the Act. Once we have received your Information, we will use security procedures and components, such as, and not limited to, WordPress security plugins, other cybersecurity softwares such as All-in-One Security (AIOS), mailing and data storage providers’ security systems, our website’s host’s security softwares/services, i.e. DreamShield Website Security, and others, to prevent unauthorised access to your personal Information.

In the event that we believe the security of your Personal Information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you. If notification is appropriate, we may notify you by email (default), or otherwise (should it apply and be appropriate).

10 SOCIAL MEDIA

We do not control how your personal Information is collected, stored or used by such third party sites or to whom it is disclosed. Please make sure you review the privacy policies and settings on any social networking site that you subscribe to and use so that you are both made aware, and understand the realms of Information about you that they might be sharing. If you do not want your networking sites to share Information about you, you must contact that site and establish whether it gives you the opportunity to opt-out of sharing such Information. We are not responsible for how these third party sites may use Information collected from or about you, except with our limitations disclosed in this document, e.g. Section 3.

11 COOKIES

We want to provide a simple, efficient and reliable service for our site visitors. Therefore, to achieve this, we use cookies to improve user experience while you navigate through our website.

Cookies are small text files that are used to store small pieces of information, and they are stored on your device when the website is loaded on your browser. We use and rely on many cookies that have specific roles or characteristics. Some of these may be categorised as necessary, to allow for the working of basic functionalities of our website; some of these may be third-party cookies for the purposes of data and site analyses. Of these cookies, the usage and purposes of them are outlined below:

11.1 (First-party) On-site Cookies 

These types of cookies are our own cookies, set by our own Services and used to optimise the performance of our site. When you visit our website, these cookies allow us to maintain your connection to our website, as well as for overall functionality and performance purposes. These types of cookies are categorised as necessary, or essential, and are stored on your browser. This website may use cookies for detecting what kind of device you have in order to present content in the best way, for a language switch, to store simple pieces of information such as, ‘this user wants to stay logged in’, and/or for other purposes. These cookies cannot be used to identify you personally, and can neither collect nor store any such Information. These settings help us to display our site in the best possible way for your device and to improve our Services for you.

11.1(a) Site Comments

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.

11.1(b) Site Subscribers

For site subscribers only, (should this be introduced), if you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal Information 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.

11.2 (Third-party) Cookies

Third party cookies are cookies found in other companies’ internet tools which we use to enhance our site, both through providing functionality, as well as gathering analytical statistics and data to help us understand how you use our website, and to improve our overall performance over time. Whilst we only directly source WP Statistics for analytics (see Section 3), however, other embedded plugins we use may store and process data through cookies usage, and thereby your personal Information, as you use our site and/or Services. These are classified as non-essential cookies, and will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. You can refuse the use of cookies (please see Section 11.3). However, opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.

11.3 How to refuse the use of Cookies 

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings in your browser. However, if you do this, you may lose some useful functionality such as personalisation and ‘keep me signed in’ and ‘remember me’ features and standard site appearance such as easier intended readability and general site interface, especially in the case of plugin usage for website design. 

You may also refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate option in our Cookie Notice pop up banner, which can be seen from the onset of visiting our site. By ignoring the pop-up banner and continuing site and/or Service usages, you are accepting and confirming your agreement of our Cookie and Privacy Policy statements, and as such, that by default, cookies in place may be storing your Information as you navigate through our site and/or Services.

12 PRIVACY RIGHTS FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS SPECIFIED (NON-CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS ALSO APPLY)

12.1 Do not sell my information

The Write Place does not sell any of your personal Information that we collect or store to any parties, and will not ever do so, with the exception of our obligation of service fulfilment to you, regarding undergoing necessary and reasonable processes of publishing your selected work in print/digitized or any otherwise equivalent formats, and in accordance with our Submitters Agreement, if your work was selected following competition of any of our submission forms (should such a case apply); to clarify, the selling of information here is regarding the reasonable standard B2B transaction of, for example, outsourcing a printing service to fulfill aforementioned obligations of published work, and B2C standard transactions consisting of the marketing, distribution, and selling of said works as outlined in our Submitters Agreement.

12.2 Categories of collected personal Information (12 months)

Please see below for an overview of the categories of your personal Information we have collected over the last 12 months: 

• Category of personal Information | Example of personal Information collected (not limited to): 
• Identifiers (Personal Information listed in the California Customer Records Statute) – Identifiable personal Information such as name, including pseudonyms; email address; IP address (where applicable), etc; browsing type, network Information; financial related Information, including bank account name, account number, bank routing details; other similar identifiers. 
• Audio, Visual or similar Information – Audio of your voice in the event that you attach an audio in MP3, WAV or WMA formats of your original work on a submission form, which, by default, will be sent to us and in our possession; visual identifiable Information of yourself via display photos, whether on your subscription membership account or via leaving comments on the comment sections of any applicable posts.  
• Geolocation Data – Your geolocation. 
• Inferences about personal preferences and attributes drawn from profiling (e.g. via cookies)
• Protected legal characteristics – Age (18 years or older); sex. 
• Commercial Information – Records of your purchase of our Services, in the case of membership subscriptions to our site and Services offered. 
• Internet activity – Activity pertaining to usage of our site and Services only.

12.3 Sources of each category of collected personal Information

Please see below for an overview of the list of sources of your personal Information we have and do collect:

Sources: 

Source / Plugin	Site Function
All in One SEO	Efficient site optimisation for meta, posts and pages construction
Categories to Tags Converter Importer	Efficient transition of categories to tags, and vice versa for variables on the site
Canva	Site design pertaining to images, newsletters, and other design-based features , and book design (where applicable)
CookieYes | GDPR  Cookie Consent	Cookie banner display, site scanning for cookies, to remain GDPR and CCPA compliant
Display Posts	Efficient site interface design for posts
DreamHost	Website shared hosting manager
Flipbox – Awesomes Flip Boxes Image Overlay	Efficient site interface design for site content
Google Workspace	Email, Sheets, Drive, Docs
Guest Author	Efficient display of guest authors on posts
Image Hover Effects Ultimate	Efficent site interface and design
MalCare WordPress Security Plugin – Malware Scanner, Cleaner, Security Firewall	Site security
Molongui Post Contributors	Efficient site interface and display of contributor writers of posts
Newsletter	Efficient site integration and optimisation for The Write Place newsletter
Otter – Page Builder Blocks & Extensions for Gutenberg	Efficient site interface and design for pages and posts
Paid Memberships Pro	Efficient site optimisation of The Write Place Membership
Paid Memberships Pro – Akismet Integration	Efficient Askimet integration and configuration for security optimisation of The Write Place Membership
Paid Memberships Pro – Update Manager	Efficient site optimisation and configuration of The Write Place Membership
PublishPress Series	Efficient site interface and design for serial posts
Sliced Invoices	Efficient site configuration of payments for related Services
Smart Slider 3	Efficient site interface and design for content
StarBox	Efficient site interface and design for authors of articles
SVG Support	Efficient site support for SVG files
Total Upkeep	Efficient site backup storage
Total Upkeep Premium	Efficient site backup storage
Ultimate Blocks	Efficient site interface and design for display of posts and other features
UnderConstructionPage PRO	Efficient site integration of maintenance mode
WP Mail SMTP	Efficient integration and configuration of mailing services for site via website hosting provider
WP Super Cache	Efficient management of site’s cache
WPCode Lite	Efficient integration of site function via short codes
WPForms Lite	Efficient CMS for site services
YouTube	Marketing for site and its features/services

12.4 Categories of disclosed personal Information for business purposes (12 months)

Please see below for an overview of the categories of your personal Information we have disclosed for business purposes over the last 12 months:

Category of personal Information | Example of personal Information disclosed to for business purposes (not limited to): 

• Identifiers (Personal Information listed in the California Customer Records Statute) – Identifiable personal Information such as name, including pseudonyms; email address; IP address (where applicable), etc; browsing type, network Information; financial related Information, including bank account name, account number, bank routing details; other similar identifiers. 
• Audio, Visual or similar Information – Audio of your voice in the event that you attach an audio in MP3, WAV or WMA formats of your original work on a submission form, which, by default, will be sent to us and in our possession; visual identifiable Information of yourself via display photos, whether on your subscription membership account or via leaving comments on our blog.  
• Geolocation Data – Your geolocation. 
• Protected legal characteristics – Age (18 years or older); sex. 
• Commercial Information – Records of your purchase of our Services, in the case of membership subscriptions to our site and Services offered. 
• Internet activity – Activity pertaining to usage of our site and Services only.