Privacy Policy

Who we are

This privacy notice for Melonie Gallegos “meloniegallegos.com” (“Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our“), describes how and why we might collect, store, use, and/or share (“process“) your information when you use our website (“Site“), such as when you:

  • Visit our website at meloniegallegos.com to view this privacy notice
  • Engage with us in other related ways

For administration of the Site we use WordPress for opt-ins, emails, and discussions. Our Site uses:

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Forms
  • Contact form plugin 
  • Plus, other plugins and services that add features or functionality to WordPress 

View Google Product Privacy Guide: https://policies.google.com/technologies/product-privacy?hl=en-US

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

Personal information you disclose to us

In Short: We only collect personal information that you provide to us.

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you express an interest in obtaining information about us, such as when you submit the contact form.

Sensitive Information. We do not process sensitive information.

Information automatically collected

In Short: Some information — such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address and/or browser and device characteristics — is collected automatically when you visit our Site.

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate the Site. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, location, information about how and when you use our Site, and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Site, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

The information we collect includes:

  • If you are a registered user, we save your content activity like create/update/delete posts and comments.
  • We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).
  • Device Data. We collect device data such as information about your computer, phone, tablet, or other device you use to access the Site. Depending on the device used, this device data may include information such as your IP address (or proxy server), device and application identification numbers, location, browser type, hardware model, Internet service provider and/or mobile carrier, operating system, and system configuration information.
  • Location Data. We collect location data such as information about your device’s location, which can be either precise or imprecise. How much information we collect depends on the type and settings of the device you use to access the Site. For example, we may use GPS and other technologies to collect geolocation data that tells us your current location (based on your IP address). You can opt out of allowing us to collect this information either by refusing access to the information or by disabling your Location setting on your device. However, if you choose to opt out, you may not be able to use certain aspects of the Site.

HOW DO WE PROCESS YOUR INFORMATION?

In Short: We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Site, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent.

We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our Site, including:

  • To respond to inquiries and other form submissions. 
  • To save or protect an individual’s vital interest. We may process your information when necessary to save or protect an individual’s vital interest, such as to prevent harm.

WHAT LEGAL BASES DO WE RELY ON TO PROCESS YOUR INFORMATION?

In Short: We only process your personal information when we believe it is necessary and we have a valid legal reason (i.e., legal basis) to do so under applicable law, like with your consent, to comply with laws, to protect your rights.

DO WE COLLECT INFORMATION FROM MINORS?

In Short: We do not knowingly collect data from or market to children under 18 years of age.

We do not knowingly solicit data from or market to children under 18 years of age. By using the Site, you represent that you are at least 18 or that you are the parent or guardian of such a minor and consent to such minor dependent’s use of the Site. If we learn that personal information from users less than 18 years of age has been collected, we will deactivate the account and take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records. If you become aware of any data we may have collected from children under age 18, please contact us at: meloniegallegos.com/#contact 

CONTROLS FOR DO-NOT-TRACK FEATURES

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track (“DNT”) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice.

However, please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal, nor when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

Who we share your data with

We do not sell or disclose any personal information obtained about you from this Site to third parties. We may use the information to contact you in response to form submissions you send through this Site. 

How long we retain your data

We retain your data for 12 months or until it is no longer required in order to process your form submission, communicate and respond to you.

What rights you have over your data

If you submit your information through a form on this Site, you can opt to receive a copy of your form submission by selecting ‘Send me a copy of my responses’ prior to clicking ‘submit’. If you have not done this, you may also 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. You can also correct any factual errors in that information or require us to remove your details from any list under our control. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Form submissions may be sent by email to our website administrators for the purpose of reviewing, responding and communicating to you, and any other activities related to your submission. We use WordPress and/or Google Drive to store information privately with limited access to trusted website administrators. Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

INFORMATION COLLECTED BY THIRD-PARTIES

When you visit our Site information may be automatically collected by third-party tools and technologies used on the Site. These include and are not limited to the following.

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.

Embedded content from other websites

Pages 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.

YouTube

Our website uses plugins from YouTube, which is operated by Google. The operator of the pages is YouTube LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA.

If you visit one of our pages featuring a YouTube plugin, a connection to the YouTube servers is established. Here the YouTube server is informed about which of our pages you have visited.

If you’re logged in to your YouTube account, YouTube allows you to associate your browsing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your YouTube account.

YouTube is used to help make our website appealing. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) DSGVO.

Further information about handling user data, can be found in the data protection declaration of YouTube under https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy.

Vimeo

Our website uses features provided by the Vimeo video portal. This service is provided by Vimeo Inc., 555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011, USA.

If you visit one of our pages featuring a Vimeo plugin, a connection to the Vimeo servers is established. Here the Vimeo server is informed about which of our pages you have visited. In addition, Vimeo will receive your IP address. This also applies if you are not logged in to Vimeo when you visit our plugin or do not have a Vimeo account. The information is transmitted to a Vimeo server in the US, where it is stored.

If you are logged in to your Vimeo account, Vimeo allows you to associate your browsing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your Vimeo account.For more information on how to handle user data, please refer to the Vimeo Privacy Policy at https://vimeo.com/privacy.

Google Web Fonts

For uniform representation of fonts, this page uses web fonts provided by Google. When you open a page, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache to display texts and fonts correctly.

For this purpose your browser has to establish a direct connection to Google servers. Google thus becomes aware that our web page was accessed via your IP address. The use of Google Web fonts is done in the interest of a uniform and attractive presentation of our plugin. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) DSGVO.

If your browser does not support web fonts, a standard font is used by your computer. Further information about handling user data, can be found at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq and in Google’s privacy policy at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

SoundCloud

On our pages, plugins of the SoundCloud social network (SoundCloud Limited, Berners House, 47-48 Berners Street, London W1T 3NF, UK) may be integrated. The SoundCloud plugins can be recognized by the SoundCloud logo on our site.

When you visit our site, a direct connection between your browser and the SoundCloud server is established via the plugin. This enables SoundCloud to receive information that you have visited our site from your IP address. If you click on the “Like” or “Share” buttons while you are logged into your SoundCloud account, you can link the content of our pages to your SoundCloud profile. This means that SoundCloud can associate visits to our pages with your user account. We would like to point out that, as the provider of these pages, we have no knowledge of the content of the data transmitted or how it will be used by SoundCloud. For more information on SoundCloud’s privacy policy, please go to https://soundcloud.com/pages/privacy.

If you do not want SoundCloud to associate your visit to our site with your SoundCloud account, please log out of your SoundCloud account.

Cookie Policy

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all websites this Site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.

How We Use Cookies

The Site uses necessary cookies to operate properly and collect statistics cookies. We do not use advertising cookies.

Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this Site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this Site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

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 visit our login page, 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 approximately one day.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this Site.

  • This Site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the Site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google privacy & terms page.
  • Forms related cookies: When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or forms, cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence. These cookies set and managed through Google Forms. For more information on Google Forms cookies, see the official Google Product Privacy page.

More Information

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our Site.

For more general information on cookies, please read HTTP Cookie on Wikipedia.

And Google Analytics’ currently available opt-outs for the web.

Changes to this Policy

Last updated: September 6, 2023

Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be placed here and will supersede this version of our policy. We will take reasonable steps to draw your attention to any changes in our policy. However, to be on the safe side, we suggest that you read this document each time you use the website to ensure that it still meets with your approval.

Contacting Us

Please contact us regarding our Privacy Policy at:

meloniegallegos.com/#contact