Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how Practical Self Reliance uses and protects any information that you give while using www.practicalselfreliance.com

In order for us to operate our business and provide the best user experience, it is sometimes necessary for us to collect or process information about you as a user. This information includes:

1. Information that you provide to us directly, such as in the situation where you complete an online form or sign up for our newsletter;
2. Information that is automatically sent to us by Your computer’s internet browser when you visit our website, such as your computer’s technical address (or ‘IP address’) or information about which particular internet browser you are using and so on;
3. Information about how you use our website or our services, such as which pages you visit, how frequently you visit the site, etc.

The goal of this privacy policy is to outline what information we collect, as well as how that data is used and protected.

Data Privacy

We are fully committed to maintaining the privacy of any information (‘personal data’) that you provide to us. Furthermore, we commit to ensuring that such data is held securely, used appropriately and only retained for as long as is necessary.  It’s our goal to collect as little information as possible about our users while still being able to provide our services efficiently.  We aspire to comply to the fullest extent possible with applicable data protection regulations, in particular, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) and ePrivacy Directive, where applicable.

Contact Information

In terms of your use of this website, the individuals doing business as Practical Self Reliance, act in the capacity of Data Controller, and should you have any questions or concerns about the data we hold about you, we can be contacted using the information below:

Data Controller: Practical Self Reliance
Primary Contact: Ashley Hetrick
Email correspondence: Ashley.Adamant@gmail.com

Personal Data

When we refer to ‘personal data’ we mean any information that allows us to identify you personally. Obvious examples include your name, email address, postal address etc. We will always seek to gain your explicit consent to providing this information before we collect it from you, although this may not be the only legal basis on which we collect the data.

Other types of information, such as your computer’s ‘IP’ address or broad geographical location do not, generally, allow us to identify you directly.  This privacy policy will also attempt to cover the use of that data for regulatory purposes.

How Your Data is Protected

We take the security of all personal data very seriously and take specific actions to ensure that any personal data is secure.  Access is controlled by individual user accounts, protected by password access.  We use a very limited number of third-party service providers, but some are essential for the provision of physical hosting environments and cloud services. One of the core factors in the selection of such providers is their ability to provide secure systems and processes.

We follow best practices for information security. Anyone visiting the site does so using SSL, which encrypts all data sent and received. Our server software is regularly updated to address any security issues. Administrative access to the database server requires 2-factor authentication and occurs only over encrypted channels. We maintain logs that monitor system operation, some of which may include information which could identify you, such as IP addresses. These logs are stored on a secure server, and are deleted when no longer operationally relevant.

Types of Data Collected

Website Comments & Contact Forms

When you complete one of the contact forms on our website, we will ask you for a number of pieces of personal information, such as your name, email address and other contact details. This is obviously required for us to respond to your request or reply to your comment.  In some of these contact methods, you are given an explicit option to opt-in for our email newsletter for periodic updates.  This data is never sold or provided to 3rd parties.

If you do not use contact forms and comment fields, no information of this sort is collected about you.

Technical Information (IP Addresses, etc)

When you visit our website, our systems will log a record of your visit in our server logs, and typically this record will include the technical ‘IP’ address that is associated with your device and the browser type and version that you are using.

Such server logs are extremely common practice and are used to monitor technical resources, monitor high-level server activity, and importantly to detect and prevent malicious or fraudulent activity on our systems. This data can also be used, if required, to diagnose reports of technical issues. The storage of IP addresses, allow us to identify patterns of behavior (such as repeated malicious attempts to access a system).

We will store this technical information in our website server logs, and to maintain the integrity of our systems, we may also store this data in infrastructure backups

IP addresses, in and of themselves, do not allow us in any way to identify you as an individual, especially given that it is very common for IP addresses to be dynamically allocated by your service provider, and will therefore often routinely change.

Furthermore, we do not and will not use the content of server access logs to attempt to determine an identifiable individual. We, therefore, do not consider that data held within server logs falls within the scope of ‘personal data’, and accordingly, we do not seek your consent to collect it.

Cookies and Similar Technology

Cookies and other similar technologies allow us to better understand how users are using our website and other related services. They can also be an essential part of providing certain online functionality. They are all essentially small data files placed on your computer (or other device) that allow us to tell when you have visited a particular page, or performed a particular action (such as clicking a particular button) on our website.

These technologies are used by most websites as they provide useful insight into how the services are being used, as well as improving speed, performance and security, and enabling us to improve our personalization of your experience.

These are small text files placed in the memory of your browser or device when you visit a website. Cookies allow a website to recognize a particular device or browser.  Some of these cookies may be session cookies that expire at the end of your browser session, and others may be persistent cookies that are stored on your device in between browser sessions, allowing us to remember your preferences or actions across multiple sites.

There are a number of ways that you can influence how cookies are used on your particular device. Most commercial browsers (such as Chrome, Safari, Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox etc) allow you to set preferences for whether to allow or block website cookies.

They will also provide tools that allow you to remove any cookies that have already been set. Using the ‘Help’ functionality of your browser, or an internet search will help you to understand how to use these features for your particular browser.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. Some portions of this website may not function correctly with cookies disabled.

Website Analytics Information

We use Google Analytics to better understand what people look at on our website.

When people visit our site, information about their visit (such as which pages they look at, how long they spend on the site and so on) is sent in an anonymous form to Google Analytics (which is controlled by Google).

As analytics information is not personal data, we do not specifically ask for your prior consent.

Advertising

Some of our advertisers occasionally serve you cookies as well. We do not have control over cookies placed by advertisers. We may use advertising service vendors to help present advertisements on the website. These vendors may use cookies, web beacons, or similar technologies to serve you advertisements tailored to interests you have shown by browsing on this and other sites you have visited, to determine whether you have seen a particular advertisement before and to avoid sending you duplicate advertisements.

In doing so, these vendors may collect non-personal data such as your browser type, your operating system, web pages visited, time of visits, content viewed, ads viewed, and other clickstream data. The use of cookies, web beacons or similar technologies by these advertising service vendors is subject to their own privacy policies, not ours.

The following is a disclosure that my advertizing company requires I include as part of my disclosures:

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.1)

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at All About Cookies.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

• IP Address
• Operating System type
• Operating System version
• Device Type
• Language of the website
• Web browser type
• Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit National Advertising Initiative opt out page. You may also visit Digital Advertising Alliance website and Network Advertising Initiative website to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at Digital Advertising Alliance’s AppChoices app to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please visit Mediavine Partners.

Links to Other Website

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest, and once you leave our website you are subject to their privacy policy. Other sites we link to are obviously not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Affiliates Disclosure

Modifications & Changes