Privacy Policy

Who we are

This is an author website for Helen Bell, British YA fantasy author of the Ilmaen Quartet, published by Light-Carillon Publishing, with options to leave comments, request updates and order books and event tickets. Our website address is: https://helenbellauthor.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 anonymised 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

This website will hold contact data you submit – for instance your contact name and email if you leave a comment or sign up for updates, a delivery address if you order books. It will not hold bank details, as payment details are processed within Paypal.

The information will only be used for the stated purpose you sign up for – delivering updates, or delivery of orders, etc. – and can be removed on request if not needed for administrative, legal or security purposes.

Cookies

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.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data 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.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics to view anonymised data to help understand how effective marketing and advertising is. Their Privacy Policy can be found here.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

Contact form entries are retained for no more than 5 years, Customer purchase records for 10 years.

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.

What rights you have over your data

If you 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 – removal from update lists, for example. 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.

How we protect your data

This website is protected by two-factor authentication and monitored by Wordfence and our website provider. In the unlikely event of a data breach we will be able to identify and advise you quickly of any problems.

How to contact us

Please use the CONTACT ME option in the menu if you have any privacy-specific concerns.