Our Privacy Policy

A Brief Summary

We here at Luciferous Shadows believe that privacy is a fundamental human right. As such we have a few foundational principles concerning your privacy and information. We:

• collect only the minimum required information to keep this website working as smoothly as possible.
• ask for your consent before gathering personal or identifying data.
• share your information only with services that require it to maintain the functionality or security of this website.
• store your information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
• use reasonable measures to protect your information.
• do not sell your information for any reason.
• give you access to and control over as much of your information as possible.
• aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles. This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use our website and its functions, hereafter referred to as “Services”. It explains how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Our Policy Details

Information that we Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to improve our Services.

We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information you provide to us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

• Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a luciferous-shadows.com account to provide an email address and password, along with a username or name — and that’s it. You may provide us with more information — like your address and other information you want to share — but we don’t require that information to create a luciferous-shadows.com account.
• Public profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a luciferous-shadows.com account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, like a photo or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that — public — so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
• Content information: You might provide us with information about you in draft and published content (a blog post or comment that includes biographic information about you, or any media or files you upload).
• Communications with us (hi there!): You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with us about a support question, or sign up for a newsletter. When you communicate with us via form, email, luciferous-shadows.com comment, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

• Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services.
• Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that site administrators and users perform on our site — in other words, who did what and when (e.g., [username] deleted “[title of post]” at [time/date]). We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, comments, etcetera) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better, and understand and make predictions about user retention.
• Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
• Information from cookies & other technologies: 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. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Luciferous Shadows uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example:

• Third-Party Login: If you create or log in to your luciferous-shadows.com account through another service (like WordPress.com or Google) we’ll receive associated login information (e.g. a connection token, your username, your email address)
• Social Sharing Services: If you connect your account to a social media service (like Twitter or FaceBook), we’ll receive information from that service (e.g., your username, basic profile information, friends list) via the authorization procedures for that service.

The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorize and what options are available.

How and Why we use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you to:

• provide our Services. For example, to set up and maintain your account, provide customer service, and verify user information.
• ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Services. Or by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy or make our Services easier to use.
• market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing. For example, by advertising our Services, analyzing the results of our marketing campaigns, and understanding and forecasting user retention.
• protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Luciferous Shadows and others, which may result in us, for example, terminating Services.
• fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
• customize the user experience. For example, to personalize your experience by recommending content through our post suggestions, and providing new essays and stories for your reading pleasure.
• communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, or keep you up to date on Luciferous Shadows.

Legal Basis for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

1. The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device; or
2. The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
3. The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
4. We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; safeguard our Services; communicate with you; measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or
5. You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We share information about you in limited circumstances and with appropriate safeguards for your privacy. These are spelled out below, as well as in the section called Analytics Services Provided by Others:

• Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like cloud storage services or email delivery services that help us communicate with you) as well as those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers).
• Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
• To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Luciferous Shadows, third parties, or the public at large.
• With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorize us to do so, like when you connected your account to a social media service.
• Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate our Services.
• Published support requests: If you send us a request for assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.

We do not sell our users’ data. Luciferous Shadows is not a data broker, we do not sell your personal information to data brokers. We do not sell your information to other companies at all.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is — you guessed it — disclosed publicly.

That means information like your public profile, posts, or other content that you make public, and your “Likes” and comments are all available to others — and we hope they get a lot of views!

Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.

How Long We Keep Information

We discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we’re not legally required to keep it.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Your Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information and profile information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, some features of our Services may not be accessible.
• Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, Luciferous Shadows does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using our website, with the drawback that some features of our website may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
• Close your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example: when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The CCPA requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it.

The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. We collect the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

• Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
• Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);
• Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services;
• Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
• Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information (such as your profile picture, if you uploaded one) and;
• Inferences we make (such as the likelihood of retention or attrition).

You can find more information about what we collect and the sources of that information in the Information that We Collect section above.

We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section.

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

• Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
• Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
• Opt out of any sale of personal information; and
• Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

Contacting us About These Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to or you’d like to contact us about one of the other rights, scroll down to “How to Reach Us” to, well, find out how to reach us.

When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us through our web form or via email.

Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)

Transferring Information

Because our Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us, or third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above.

Analytics Services Provided by Others

Other parties may provide us with analytics services. These analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, as well as determine the popularity of certain content. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Luciferous Shadows and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party analytics providers.

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.

Third-Party Software and Services

We use a few plugins, or other software, that enable services provided by third parties. Some third-party services may request or require access to our visitors’ information. Please note that information sent to third parties will be handled in accordance with the third party’s privacy policy and practices. We don’t own or control these third parties, and they have their own rules about information collection, use, and sharing, which you should review before using the software or services.

Third-party services include but are not limited to:

• Bluehost web hosting
• The WordPress blogging software
• The Yoast SEO plugin
• Securi Security
• Several services provided by Automattic, including Akismet, Jetpack, and VaultPress.
• Cloudinary Digital Asset Management.

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. We also use the Cloudinary DAM (Digital Asset Management) network to help speed up site load times. Thus, images uploaded here are stored on servers around the world. You may wish to read Cloudinary’s privacy policy

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. We share this information with the Akismet spam protection service. You may wish to read Akismet’s privacy policy.

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. You may wish to read Gravatar’s privacy policy. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Cookies

We use a mix of persistent and session cookies, some of which are essential while others function only for your convenience. Your device retains persistent cookies even after you go offline, but deletes session cookies when you close your web browser. We automatically set essential cookies, but obtain explicit permission from users before setting convenience cookies.

Cookie Instances

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. Closing your browser removes this cookie.

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. In all cases, logging out of your account removes login cookies.

Editing or publishing an article sets an additional cookie. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

You may wish to read more about how WordPress uses cookies.

We also use several services provided by Jetpack. You may wish to read Automattic’s information about cookies and visitors to websites with Jetpack installed. In particular, we are using the options for Jetpack comments, subscriptions, and the EU cookie banner.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Luciferous Shadows may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to our Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard. Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

Privacy Policy Acknowledgments

Most of this Privacy Policy is a heavily modified version of Automattic’s Privacy policy, both are available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. You can grab a copy of Automattic’s Privacy Policy and other legal documents on GitHub. You’re more than welcome to copy, adapt, and repurpose it, or this one, for your own use. Just make sure to revise the language so that your policy reflects your actual practices. If you do use it, please credit and link to Automattic somewhere on your site.