Privacy Policy

At The Potter’s Bench, accessible from thepottersbench.com, one of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors. This Privacy Policy document contains types of information that is collected and recorded by thepottersbench.com and how we use it.

This privacy policy has been compiled to better serve those who are concerned with how their ‘Personally Identifiable Information’ (PII) is being used online. PII, as described in US privacy law and information security, is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context. Please read our privacy policy carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect or otherwise handle your Personally Identifiable Information in accordance with our website.

Collection of data

We collect personal information from you when you subscribe to a newsletter, respond to a survey, fill out a form or enter information on our site. Information is also obtained through cookies as you use and interact with our site, which will be explained further in detail.

Thepottersbench.com follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and a part of hosting services’ analytics.

The following types of personal information may be collected, stored, and used:

  • information about your computer including your IP address, geographical location, Internet Service Provider (ISP), browser type and version, and operating system;
  • information about your visits to and use of this website including the referral and exit source, date and time stamp, length of visit, page views, number of clicks and website navigation paths;
  • information, such as your email address, that you enter when you register with our website;
    information that you enter when you create a profile on our website—for example, your name, profile pictures, gender, birthday, relationship status, interests and hobbies, educational details, and employment details;
  • information, such as your name and email address, that you enter in order to set up subscriptions to our emails and/or newsletters;
  • information that you enter while using the services on our website;
  • information that is generated while using our website, including when, how often, and under what circumstances you use it;
  • information relating to anything you purchase, services you use, or transactions you make through our website, which includes your name, address, telephone number, email address, and credit card details;
  • information that you post to our website with the intention of publishing it on the internet, which includes your username, profile pictures, and the content of your posts;
  • information contained in any communications that you send to us by email or through our website, including its communication content and metadata;
    any other personal information that you send to us.

The purpose of this information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movement on the website, and gathering demographic information. We allow third-party behavioral tracking.

When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your name, email address or other details to help you with your experience.

Before you disclose to us the personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with this policy.

We honor Do Not Track signals and Do Not Track, plant cookies, or use advertising when a Do Not Track (DNT) browser mechanism is in place.

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.

Use of information

Personal information submitted to us through our website will be used for the purposes specified in this policy or on the relevant pages of the website. We may use your personal information for the following:

  • administering our website and business; personalizing our website for you;
  • enabling your use of the services available on our website; sending you goods purchased through our website;
  • supplying services purchased through our website;
  • sending statements, invoices, and payment reminders to you, and collecting payments from you;
  • sending you non-marketing commercial communications;
  • sending you email notifications that you have specifically requested;
  • sending you our email newsletter, if you have requested it (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter);
  • sending you marketing communications relating to our business or the businesses of carefully-selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you, by post or, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications);
  • providing third parties with statistical information about our users (but those third parties will not be able to identify any individual user from that information);
  • dealing with inquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our website;
  • keeping our website secure and prevent fraud;
  • verifying compliance with the terms and conditions governing the use of our website (including monitoring private messages sent through our website private messaging service); and other uses.

If you submit personal information for publication on our website, we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the license you grant to us.

Information used in forms may be used for informational, transactional, and marketing purposes by The Potter’s Bench.

Your privacy settings can be used to limit the publication of your information on our website and can be adjusted using privacy controls on the website.

Third-party disclosure

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third-party for their or any other third party’s direct marketing.

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your Personally Identifiable Information unless we provide users with advance notice. This does not include website hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or serving our users, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release information when it’s release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property or safety.

We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers, or subcontractors as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group of companies (this means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and all its subsidiaries) as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information:

  • to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
  • in connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;
  • in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
  • to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and
  • to any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.

Non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Our website includes hyperlinks to, and details of, third party websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.

Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your personal information to third parties.

International data transfers

Information that we collect may be stored, processed in, and transferred between any of the countries in which we operate in order to enable us to use the information in accordance with this policy.

Information that we collect may be transferred to the following countries which do not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Economic Area: The United States of America, Russia, Japan, China, and India.

Personal information that you publish on our website or submit for publication on our website may be available, via the internet, around the world. We cannot prevent the use or misuse of such information by others.

You expressly agree to the transfers of personal information described in this Section

Information retention

This Section sets out our data retention policies and procedure, which are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations regarding the retention and deletion of personal information.

Personal information that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes. We will usually delete personal data falling within the categories set out below at the date/time set out below:

  • if you make a request that your personal information be deleted which we will process free of charge
  • If your information is deemed no longer necessary

We will retain documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data to the extent that we are required to do so by law, or if we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings; and in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk).

Securing personal information

Our website is scanned on a regular basis for security holes and known vulnerabilities in order to make your visit to our site as safe as possible.

  • We use regular Malware Scanning.
  • Your personal information is contained behind secured networks and is only accessible by a limited number of persons who have special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential. In addition, all sensitive/credit information you supply is encrypted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.
  • We implement a variety of security measures when a user places an order enters, submits, or accesses their information to maintain the safety of your personal information.
  • All transactions are processed through a gateway provider and are not stored or processed on our servers.
  • We will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information.
  • We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers.
  • All electronic financial transactions entered into through our website will be protected by encryption technology.
  • You acknowledge that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.
  • You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential; we will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our website).

Privacy Policies

You may consult this list to find the Privacy Policy for each of the advertising partners of The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com.

Third-party ad servers or ad networks uses technologies like cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons that are used in their respective advertisements and links that appear on thepottersbench.com, which are sent directly to users’ browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. These technologies are used to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and/or to personalize the advertising content that you see on websites that you visit.

Note that The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

Third-Party Privacy Policies

The Potter’s Bench and thepottersbench.com Privacy Policy does not apply to other advertisers or websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options.

You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. To know more detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers, it can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.

Cookies

Consenting to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy when you first visit our website permits us to use cookies every time you visit our website.

Like any other website, thepottersbench.com uses ‘cookies’.

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies. We use both session and persistent cookies on our website.

These cookies are used to store information including visitors’ preferences, and the pages on the website that the visitor accessed or visited. The information is used to optimize the users’ experience by customizing our web page content based on visitors’ browser type and/or other information.

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. Most of these are persistent cookies that 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 typically expires after 1 day.

We use Google Analytics and Adwords on our website to recognize a computer when a user visits the website / track users as they navigate the website / improve the website’s usability / analyze the use of the website / prevent fraud and improve the security of the website / target advertisements which may be of particular interest to specific users.

Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.

For more general information on cookies, please read What Are Cookies.

Third-party links

Thepottersbench.com website may contain links to external websites that are not provided or maintained by or in any way affiliated with The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com.

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third-party products or services on our website. These third-party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

While we strive to provide only quality links to useful and ethical websites, we have no control over the content and nature of these sites. These links to other websites do not imply a recommendation for all the content found on these sites. Site owners and content may change without notice and may occur before we have the opportunity to remove a link which may have gone ‘bad’.

The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com do not guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any information on these external websites.

Google

Google’s advertising requirements can be summed up by Google’s Advertising Principles. They are put in place to provide a positive experience for users. See: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/1316548?hl=en.

We use Google AdSense Advertising on our website. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to our users based on previous visits to our site and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt-out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google Ad and Content Network privacy policy.

We have implemented the following Google AdSense and Google Marketing Platform

We, along with third-party vendors such as Google use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookies) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) or other third-party identifiers together to compile data regarding user interactions with ad impressions and other ad service functions as they relate to our website.

Opting out

Users can set preferences for how Google advertises to you using the Google Ad Settings page. Alternatively, you can opt out by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative Opt Out page or by using the Google Analytics Opt Out Browser add on.

Affiliate disclaimer

This affiliate disclosure details the affiliate relationships of The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com with other companies and products.

Some of the links are “affiliate links,” a link with a special tracking code. This means if you click on an affiliate link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission.

The price of the item is the same whether it is an affiliate link or not. Regardless, we only recommend products or services we believe will add value to our readers.

By using the affiliate links, you are helping support the Service, and we genuinely appreciate your support.

Affiliate advertising programs used by The Potter’s Bench include Amazon Services LLC Associates Program.

Pages on this Service may include affiliate links to websites on which the owners of this Service will make a referral commission.

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.

Analytics

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

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 an account on this site, or 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. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Children’s Information COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)

Another part of our priority is adding protection for children while using the internet. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/or monitor and guide their online activity.

When it comes to the collection of personal information from children under the age of 13 years old, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) puts parents in control. The Federal Trade Commission, United States’ consumer protection agency, enforces the COPPA Rule, which spells out what operators of websites and online services must do to protect children’s privacy and safety online.

The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com does not specifically market to children under the age of 13 years old, nor does it knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

Fair Information Practices

The Fair Information Practices Principles form the backbone of privacy law in the United States and the concepts they include have played a significant role in the development of data protection laws around the globe. Understanding the Fair Information Practice Principles and how they should be implemented is critical to comply with the various privacy laws that protect personal information.

In order to be in line with Fair Information Practices we will take the following responsive action, should a data breach occur:

  • We will notify users via email within 7 business days.
  • We will notify users via in-site notification within 7 business days.

CAN SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have emails stopped from being sent to them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

We collect your email address in order to:

  • Send information, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions
  • Process orders and to send information and updates pertaining to orders.
  • Send you additional information related to your product and/or service
  • Market to our mailing list or continue to send emails to our clients after the original transaction has occurred.

To be in accordance with CANSPAM, we agree to the following:

  • Not use false or misleading subjects or email addresses.
  • Identify the message as an advertisement in some reasonable way.
  • Include the physical address of our business or site headquarters.
  • Monitor third-party email marketing services for compliance, if one is used.
  • Honor opt-out/unsubscribe requests quickly.
  • Allow users to unsubscribe by using the link at the bottom of each email.

If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, you can email us at info@thepottersbench.com or follow the instructions at the bottom of each email to unsubscribe from any further emails and we will promptly remove you from ALL correspondence.

California Online Privacy Protection Act

CalOPPA is the first state law in the nation to require commercial websites and online services to post a privacy policy. The law’s reach stretches well beyond California to require any person or company in the United States (and conceivably the world) that operates websites collecting Personally Identifiable Information from California consumers to post a conspicuous privacy policy on its website stating exactly the information being collected and those individuals or companies with whom it is being shared. – See more at: http://consumercal.org/california-online-privacy-protection-act-caloppa/#sthash.0FdRbT51.dpuf.

According to CalOPPA, we agree to the following:

  • Users can visit our site anonymously.
  • Once this privacy policy is created, we will add a link to it on our home page or as a minimum, on the first significant page after entering our website.
  • Our Privacy Policy link includes the word ‘Privacy’ and can easily be found on the page specified above.
  • You will be notified of any Privacy Policy changes on our Privacy Policy Page
  • You can change your personal information by emailing us at stephanie@thepottersbench.com

Your rights

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you; provision of such information will be subject to the following:

  • The request needs to be made from the email address on file.
  • You have the right to request that your data be deleted or corrected.
  • You have the right to request any information that our company has about you.
  • You have the right to request that your data be transferred to a third party.
  • We will only use your data in the ways described within this privacy policy after you have given explicit consent.
  • We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.
  • You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes.

In practice, you will usually either expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, or we will provide you with an opportunity to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.

All requests will be processed free of charge. If you would like to request this information please email stephanie@thepottersbench.com.

General Disclaimer

The information contained on thepottersbench.com website (the “Service”) is for general information purposes only.

The Potter’s Bench assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in the contents on the Service.

In no event shall The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com be liable for any special, direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental damages or any damages whatsoever, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tort, arising out of or in connection with the use of the Service or the contents of the Service. The Potter’s Bench or thepottersbench.com reserves the right to make additions, deletions, or modification to the contents on the Service at any time without prior notice.

The Potter’s Bench or the pottersbench.com does not warrant that the Service is free of viruses or other harmful components.

Updating your information

Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

Credit

Parts of this document were created using free privacy policy generators by freeprivacypolicy.com, termsfeed.com, privacypolicygenerator.org, privacypolicyonline.com, seqlegal.com and websiteplanet.com.

Changes

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to modify or replace these terms at any time. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you understand any changes to this policy. If a revision is material we will try to provide notice prior to any new terms taking effect. What constitutes a material change will be determined at our sole discretion.

Consent

By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy and agree to its Terms and Conditions.

Contact Us

If you have additional questions or require more information about our Privacy Policy, please contact us at: info@thepottersbench.com