Privacy statement

This privacy policy describes what information is captured when you visit our team’s website: the Digital Services Factory (DSF).

This website is hosted on the WordPress platform, so most information about you that is captured is processed by the company that provides WordPress: Automattic. The exception is the ‘contact us’ form. We at DSF receive the information you submit through the contact form as an email, stored on servers in Cyprus.

Types and methods of information collection

Automattic collects information about you:

• directly: when you interact with a website beyond reading it, such as leaving a comment or using the site search
• automatically: routine information about your device, such as which browser you’re using, or your approximate location

Information collected directly

Automattic collects the information when you do things like type into a text field on our website, such as in a comment field or a sign-up form. Through our website, they’ll collect information when you interact with any of the following website features:

• follow and subscribe: if you sign up to follow or subscribe to our website using ‘Jetpack’ or WordPress.com, Automattic collects the sign-up information, which normally includes an email address
• comments: if you leave a comment on our website, Automattic collects that comment, and other information that you provide along with the comment, such as your name and email address
• other information you give on the website: Automattic may also collect other information that you submit on our website, such as when you use our contact form or enter a search query.

The Print and PDF feature uses the PrintFriendly plugin. PrintFriendly.com collects “log files” like all other websites with non-personally-identifying information such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Read more on their privacy policy

Information collected automatically

Automattic also routinely collects some information about the device you use to visit our website. The information they automatically collect can vary but includes: 

• technical data from your device: Automattic collects the information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as your IP address, browser type, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information
• interactions: Automattic collects information about your interactions with our website, including anything you ‘like’ or ‘rate’ using WordPress.com or Jetpack
• your approximate location: Automattic may determine the approximate location of your device from the IP address. Automattic collects and uses this information to, for example, show us the number of people who visit our website from certain geographic regions
• site activity: Automattic collects visitor activities related to the management of the website, such as login attempts/actions and management actions. For more information, read the Jetpack site activity privacy information
• information from cookies and other technology: Automattic uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track how websites are used. For more information about Automattic’s use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, read their cookie policy

How your information is used

Automattic uses information about you in order to provide services and functionality to their customers (people like us) and their customers’ websites. We’ve used Automattic’s services to create and manage our website, and to invite people to contact us using our form. 

In addition, Automattic uses some information about you if you are also one of their customers, as described in their privacy policy. 

Automattic may also use and share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify any individual. For instance, Automattic may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our services.

How Automattic might share information about you

Automattic may share information collected about you with certain groups in these limited circumstances:

• subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors: Automattic may disclose website visitor information to their subsidiaries, their employees, and individuals who are their independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help them provide their services to their customers and customers’ website, or to process the information on their behalf. Automattic requires their subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this privacy notice for information about visitors that is shared with them
• third party vendors: Automattic may share your information with third party vendors who need to know this information in order to provide their services to Automattic. This group includes vendors that help Automattic provide services to their customers and their customers’ website. Automattic requires vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them
• legal requests: Automattic may disclose your information in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. For more information on how Automattic respond to requests for information, read their legal guidelines
• to protect rights, property, and others: Automattic may disclose your information when they believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, their customers, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if Automattic have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, they 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 Automattic’s business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Automattic goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, your 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 notice would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving this information may continue to use this information, but only in a way that’s consistent with this privacy notice
• information shared publicly: any information that you choose to make public is publicly available. That means that if you click to ‘like’ a page, that information is available to others, including information about you that is displayed in connection with the ‘like’ (such as your WordPress.com username and Gravatar if you have one). Automattic provides a ‘firehose’ stream of public data (including comments) from websites to provide that data to firehose subscribers, who may view and analyse the content, but do not have rights to re-publish it publicly. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties

How long your information is stored

Automattic generally deletes information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes it was collected for.

For example, Automattic keeps the web server logs that record information about website visitors, such as your IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. Automattic retains the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, investigate issues if something goes wrong on a customer’s website.

As another example, when you view our website, Automattic uses your IP address in order to give us anonymous statistics about your visit, like what country you’re in. Automattic keeps your IP address for approximately 30 days to give them time to calculate our monthly website statistics and address any issues with those counts.

Other tools

This privacy notice only covers the collection of information by Automattic, and not by any third party. 

Other resources

You can read:

• Automattic’s privacy policy for its customers (which includes DSF)
• Automattic’s cookie policy

Your rights

Contact privacypolicyupdates@automattic.com if you want to:

• get a copy of the information held about you
• restrict the processing of your data
• correct, update or erase all or part of your personal information
• object to the processing of your personal information
• have your information transferred to another organisation or to you

Complaints

You can complain about the way your personal information has been used by contacting the Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection. 

Credit

Adapted from Automattic’s privacy notice for their customer website visitors.