Privacy Policy

Protecting your privacy is a priority. This page explains how the personal information collected through this website will be treated.

Who we are

Our website address is: https://thecommunicatedstory.com.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

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 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 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 store user input data sent through the contact forms on this website, along with meta information about the submissions, including the time stamp, the origin IP address, and the user agent (browser).

Cookies

We use cookies (small data files transferred onto computers or devices by sites) for record-keeping purposes and to enhance functionality on our site, including understanding how visitors interact with our site. You may deactivate or restrict the transmission of cookies by changing the settings of your web browser. Cookies that are already stored may be deleted at any time.

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.

A cookie named “itsec_interstitial_browser” is created to track a user’s login process to implement enhanced security features. Visiting the login page sets a temporary cookie that aids compatibility with some alternate login methods. This cookie contains no personal data and expires after 1 hour.

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.

Appointment Booking (Simply Schedule Appointments)

When you book an appointment on this site, we collect the information you provide — such as your name, email address, and any additional details you submit — solely for the purpose of scheduling and managing your appointment.

This data is securely stored and processed through the Simply Schedule Appointments system, which operates within our website. We do not share this information with third parties, and it is used only to communicate with you regarding your appointment.

If at any time you wish to update or delete your booking information, please contact us.

Analytics

In response to concerns about data privacy and ownership, this site retains all of your visit data on our website hosting server and your information is not sent to a third party. When you visit our site, we will store: the website from which you visited us from, the parts of our site you visit, the date and duration of your visit, your anonymised IP address, information from the device (device type, operating system, screen resolution, language, country and city you are located in, and web browser type) you used during your visit, and more. We process this usage data in Matomo Analytics for statistical purposes, to improve our site and to recognize and stop any misuse.

Security Logs

The IP address of visitors, user ID of logged in users, and username of login attempts are conditionally logged to check for malicious activity and to protect the site from specific kinds of attacks. Examples of conditions when logging occurs include login attempts, log out requests, requests for suspicious URLs, changes to site content, and password updates. This information is retained for 60 days.

Who we share your data with

This site is scanned for potential malware and vulnerabilities by the SolidWP Site Scanner. We do not send personal information to the scanner; however, the scanner could find personal information posted publicly (such as in comments) during the scan.

How long we retain your data

We don’t set a particular time limit on storing information because we need it for future reference. If you want your information to be removed from our database, please contact us. We will remove it anytime there are concerns about your privacy.

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.

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.

Security logs are retained for 60 days.

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 use Brevo as our email marketing platform. When you subscribe to our mailing list or interact with our website, Brevo may collect your email address, website activity data (such as pages visited), and other information you provide. This data is used to personalize our emails, track campaign performance, and send you relevant offers. You can manage your email preferences and unsubscribe at any time by using the unsubscribe link in our emails. Brevo's privacy policy can also be accessed for more details on data processing

This site is part of a network of sites that protect against distributed brute force attacks. To enable this protection, the IP address of visitors attempting to log into the site is shared with a service provided by solidwp.com. For privacy policy details, please see the SolidWP Privacy Policy.

We may use the Formidable plugin to manage contact form submissions. The information is sent as email messages that only TCS staff are allowed to access for the sole purpose of responding to your message. The information is also stored in the database on our hosting server for reference purposes. A2 hosts this website.

Additional information

How we protect your data

This site utilizes SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protection for end to end encryption. This site is also regular scanned for data breaches and compromises to data security.

What data breach procedures we have in place

If we become aware of a data breach, we will reach out through the last email (if you have elected to store this information with us) associated with your data within 10 business days of securing the compromised damage and assessing the extent of the breach. Any recommendations for action will be provided at that time.

What third parties we receive data from

For analytic purposes we utilize MaxMind GeoLite2 databases for geolocation assistance.no