It is Oxford Communications’ policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our website.

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Oxford Communications collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Oxford Communications’ purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Oxford Communications’ visitors use its website. From time to time, Oxford Communications may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

Oxford Communications also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on WordPress.com blogs. Oxford Communications only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses and email addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Oxford Communications’ websites choose to interact with Oxford Communications in ways that require Oxford Communications to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Oxford Communications gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for a blog at WordPress.com to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with Oxford Communications — by purchasing access to the Akismet comment spam prevention service, for example — are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, Oxford Communications collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Oxford Communications. Oxford Communications does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

Aggregated Statistics

Oxford Communications may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Oxford Communications may monitor the most popular blogs on the WordPress.com site or use spam screened by the Akismet service to help identify spam. Oxford Communications may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Oxford Communications does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Oxford Communications discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Oxford Communications’ behalf or to provide services available at Oxford Communications’ website, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Oxford Communications’ website, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Oxford Communications will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Oxford Communications discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Oxford Communications believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Oxford Communications, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Oxford Communications website and have supplied your email address, Oxford Communications may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Oxford Communications and our products. We primarily use our various product blogs to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example, via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Oxford Communications takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

Cookies

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. Oxford Communications uses cookies to help Oxford Communications identify and track visitors, their usage of Oxford Communications website, and their website access preferences. Oxford Communications visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Oxford Communications’ websites, with the drawback that certain features of Oxford Communications’ websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Business Transfers

If Oxford Communications, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that Oxford Communications goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Oxford Communications may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

Ads

Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Oxford Communications and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Comments

Comments and other content submitted to our Akismet anti-spam service are not saved on our servers unless they were marked as false positives, in which case we store them long enough to use them to improve the service to avoid future false positives.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Oxford Communications may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Oxford Communications’ sole discretion. Oxford Communications encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If you have a WordPress.com account, you should also check your blog’s dashboard for alerts to these changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Further information for California consumers

This section of the document integrates with and supplements the information contained in the rest of the privacy policy and is provided by the business running this Application and, if the case may be, its parent, subsidiaries and affiliates (for the purposes of this section referred to collectively as “we”, “us”, “our”).

This section applies to all Users (Users are referred to below, simply as “you”, “your”, “yours”), who are consumers residing in the state of California, United States of America, according to the “California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018” (the “CCPA”), as updated by the “California Privacy Rights Act” (the “CPRA”) and subsequent regulations. For such consumers, this section supersedes any other possibly divergent or conflicting information contained in the privacy policy.

This part of the document uses the terms “personal information” (and “sensitive personal information”) as defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Notice at collection

Categories of personal information collected, used, sold, or shared

In this section we summarize the categories of personal information that we’ve collected, used, sold, or shared and the purposes thereof. You can read about these activities in detail in the section titled “Detailed information on the processing of Personal Data” within this document.

Information we collect: the categories of personal information we collect

We have collected the following categories of personal information about you: identifiers and internet or other electronic network activity information.
We have collected the following categories of sensitive personal information: username
We will not collect additional categories of personal information without notifying you.

Your right to limit the use or disclosure of your sensitive personal information and how you can exercise it
You have the right to request that we limit the use or disclosure of your sensitive personal information to only that which is necessary to perform the services or provide the goods, as is reasonably expected by an average consumer.
We can also use your sensitive personal information to perform specific purposes set forth by the law (such as, including but not limited to, helping to ensure security and integrity; undertaking activities to verify or maintain the quality or safety of our service) and as authorized by the relevant regulations.

Outside of the aforementioned specific purposes, you have the right to freely request, at any time, that we do not use or disclose your sensitive personal information. This means that whenever you ask us to stop using your sensitive personal information, we will abide by your request and we will instruct our service providers and contractors to do the same.

To fully exercise your right to limit the use or disclosure of your sensitive personal information you can contact us at any time, using the contact details provided in this document.

For a simplified method you can also use the privacy choices link provided on this Application.

We use any personal information collected from you in connection with the submission of your request solely for the purposes of complying with the request.

Once you have exercised this right, we are required to wait at least 12 months before asking whether you have changed your mind.

What are the purposes for which we use your personal information?
We may use your personal information to allow the operational functioning of this Application and features thereof (“business purposes”). In such cases, your personal information will be processed in a fashion necessary and proportionate to the business purpose for which it was collected, and strictly within the limits of compatible operational purposes.

We may also use your personal information for other reasons such as for commercial purposes (as indicated within the section “Detailed information on the processing of Personal Data” within this document), as well as for complying with the law and defending our rights before the competent authorities where our rights and interests are threatened or we suffer an actual damage.

We won’t process your information for unexpected purposes, or for purposes incompatible with the purposes originally disclosed, without your consent.

How long do we keep your personal information?
Unless stated otherwise inside the “Detailed information on the processing of Personal Data” section, we will not retain your personal information for longer than is reasonably necessary for the purpose(s) they have been collected for.

How we collect information: what are the sources of the personal information we collect?
We collect the above-mentioned categories of personal information, either directly or indirectly, from you when you use this Application.

For example, you directly provide your personal information when you submit requests via any forms on this Application. You also provide personal information indirectly when you navigate this Application, as personal information about you is automatically observed and collected.

Finally, we may collect your personal information from third parties that work with us in connection with the Service or with the functioning of this Application and features thereof.

How we use the information we collect: disclosing of your personal information with third parties for a business purpose
For our purposes, the word “third party” means a person who is not any of the following: a service provider or a contractor, as defined by the CCPA.

We disclose your personal information with the third parties listed in detail in the section titled “Detailed information on the processing of Personal Data” within this document. These third parties are grouped and categorized in accordance with the different purposes of processing.

Sale or sharing of your personal information
For our purposes, the word “sale” means any “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to a third party, for monetary or other valuable consideration”, as defined by the CCPA.

This means that, for example, a sale can happen whenever an application runs ads, or makes statistical analyses on the traffic or views, or simply because it uses tools such as social network plugins and the like.

For our purposes, the word “sharing” means any “sharing, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to a third party for cross-context behavioral advertising, whether or not for monetary or other valuable consideration, including transactions between a business and a third party for cross-context behavioral advertising for the benefit of a business in which no money is exchanged”, as defined by the CCPA.

Please note that the exchange of personal information with a service provider pursuant to a written contract that meets the requirements set by the CCPA, does not constitute a sale or sharing of your personal information.

Your right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information and how you can exercise it
We sell or share your personal information with the third parties listed in detail in the section titled “Detailed information on the processing of Personal Data” within this document. These third parties are grouped and categorized in accordance with the different purposes of processing.

You have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. This means that whenever you request us to stop selling or sharing your personal information, we will abide by your request.

Such requests can be made freely, at any time, without submitting any verifiable request.

To fully exercise your right to opt out, you can contact us at any time using the contact details provided in this document.

For a simplified opt-out method you can also use the privacy choices link provided on this Application.

If you want to submit requests to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information via a user-enabled global privacy control, like the Global Privacy Control (“GPC“), you are free to do so and we will abide by such request in a frictionless manner (as defined in the CPRA regulations). The GPC consists of a setting or extension in the browser or mobile device and acts as a mechanism that websites can use to indicate they support the GPC signal. If you want to use GPC, you can download and enable it via a participating browser or browser extension. More information about downloading GPC is available here.

We use any personal information collected from you in connection with the submission of your opt-out request solely for the purposes of complying with the opt-out request.

Once you have opted out, we are required to wait at least 12 months before asking whether you have changed your mind.

Your privacy rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act and how to exercise them

The right to access personal information: the right to know and to portability
You have the right to request that we disclose to you:

• the categories of personal information that we collect about you;
• the sources from which the personal information is collected;
• the purposes for which we use your information;
• to whom we disclose such information;
• the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you.

You also have the right to know what personal information is sold or shared and to whom. In particular, you have the right to request two separate lists from us where we disclose:

• the categories of personal information that we sold or shared about you and the categories of third parties to whom the personal information was sold or shared;
• the categories of personal information that we disclosed about you for a business purpose and the categories of persons to whom it was disclosed for a business purpose.

The disclosure described above will be limited to the personal information collected or used over the past 12 months.

If we deliver our response electronically, the information enclosed will be “portable”, i.e. delivered in an easily usable format to enable you to transmit the information to another entity without hindrance – provided that this is technically feasible.

The right to request the deletion of your personal information
You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information, subject to exceptions set forth by the law (such as, including but not limited to, where the information is used to identify and repair errors on this Application, to detect security incidents and protect against fraudulent or illegal activities, to exercise certain rights etc.).

If no legal exception applies, as a result of exercising your right, we will delete your personal information and notify any of our service providers and all third parties to whom we have sold or shared the personal information to do so – provided that this is technically feasible and doesn’t involve disproportionate effort.

The right to correct inaccurate personal information
You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate personal information we maintain about you, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing of the personal information.

The right to opt out of sale or sharing of personal information and to limit the use of your sensitive personal information
You have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. You also have the right to request that we limit our use or disclosure of your sensitive personal information.

The right of no retaliation following opt-out or exercise of other rights (the right to non-discrimination)
We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights under the CCPA. This means that we will not discriminate against you, including, but not limited to, by denying goods or services, charging you a different price, or providing a different level or quality of goods or services just because you exercised your consumer privacy rights.

However, if you refuse to provide your personal information to us or ask us to delete or stop selling your personal information, and that personal information or sale is necessary for us to provide you with goods or services, we may not be able to complete that transaction.

To the extent permitted by the law, we may offer you promotions, discounts, and other deals in exchange for collecting, keeping, or selling your personal information, provided that the financial incentive offered is reasonably related to the value of your personal information.

How to exercise your rights
To exercise the rights described above, you need to submit your verifiable request to us by contacting us via the details provided in this document.

For us to respond to your request, it’s necessary that we know who you are. Therefore, you can only exercise the above rights by making a verifiable request which must:

• provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative;
• describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We will not respond to any request if we are unable to verify your identity and therefore confirm the personal information in our possession actually relates to you.

Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will use any personal information collected from you in connection with the verification of your request solely for the purposes of verification and shall not further disclose the personal information, retain it longer than necessary for purposes of verification, or use it for unrelated purposes.

If you cannot personally submit a verifiable request, you can authorize a person registered with the California Secretary of State to act on your behalf.

If you are an adult, you can make a verifiable request on behalf of a child under your parental authority.

You can submit a maximum number of 2 requests over a period of 12 months.

How and when we are expected to handle your request
We will confirm receipt of your verifiable request within 10 days and provide information about how we will process your request.

We will respond to your request within 45 days of its receipt. Should we need more time, we will explain to you the reasons why, and how much more time we need. In this regard, please note that we may take up to 90 days to fulfill your request.

Our disclosure(s) will cover the preceding 12-month period. Only with regard to personal information collected on or after January 1, 2022, you have the right to request that we disclose information beyond the 12-month period, and we will provide them to you unless doing so proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort.

Should we deny your request, we will explain you the reasons behind our denial.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable request unless such request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. In such cases, we may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse to act on the request. In either case, we will communicate our choices and explain the reasons behind it.