Who I am

I am Chris Evans (no, not one of the famous ones with that name!)  This website is:

https://www.psyctc.org/pelerinage2016/

It’s just my personal pages and blog, started when I retired from clinical work in 2016 and cycled from London to Santiago de Compostella in case you are wondering about that URL.

What personal data I collect and why I collect it

Comments

I think anyone can leave comments on the blog.  If you do, the software behind my site, WordPress and plugins and various supporting software collect the data shown in the comments form, and the IP address and browser user agent string you are using at the time.  Most of that is 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 that service. 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 with your comments, please be avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) that might reveal any location data you don’t want shared: any visitor to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

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.

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

With whom I share your data

I currently allow Google Analytics and the free layer of MonsterInsights access to visit data gathered by cookies on the site (see above).  The MonsterInsights privacy policy is here and I don’t believe they can get access to anything via our pages other than the IP address from which you are visiting (which may vary from time to time even when you come from the same home computer if you don’t have a fixed IP address and will vary if you come to the pages from different locations).   Google analytics is at https://analytics.google.com/ but you can only log in with a google account.  I wish that I could get away from using both companies but for the moment they’re the realistic way for me to be able to see useful aggregated usage data.  I may be able to shift from them in the future but not now.

How long I retain your data

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

If you register for updates about the site, blog or any particular blog post or comment, then the system stores your Email address and any personal information you provide.  As far as I can see, you can always see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username and I don’t think they can not have an Email address saved: that can only be achieved by unsubscribing to the updates which I believe is possible for any for the alert systems I use).  I can see and edit that information but I’m the only site administrator so that dies with me!  I suspect that it’s not insuperably difficult for administrators at the ISP we use to host the site to see that data but I trust them that they won’t (and their contract with us promises that they won’t).  The are Mythic Beasts and, though I can’t yet (23.v.18) see a privacy statement on their site, I know from conversations with them that they take privacy extremely seriously.

As noted, the only other data we have that can be personal data when you are the only person using an IP address is that address in the visit logging and tracking services.  I have set the Google Analytics retention period for that data to 50 months, I don’t know what MonsterInsights does with its IP address data.

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.

Where we send your data

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

My contact information

The best way to contact me/us is via the contact_me form but snailmail can be sent to:
Prof. Chris Evans, c.o. Prof. Michael Barkham,
Psychology Department,
University of Sheffield,
Cathedral Court,
1 Vicar Lane,
SHEFFIELD
S1 2LT

Additional information

How we protect your data

Mythic Beasts have a 31 day backup retention programme for our data and excellent layers of protection and I keep a backup copy of the site, including all its data, on an encrypted drive.

What data breach procedures we have in place

To the best of my knowledge we have never had any.

What third parties we receive data from

The only situation I can see in which I ever receive personal data about others from third parties is when someone writes to me recommending I contact another person.  Very occasionally I might decide the introduction so clearly has permission that I would act on that and make contact with the other person, mostly I would just invite the third party to make an (E)introduction between us. I believe I can confidently say that for CST I have no personal information, beyond those IP addresses of people visiting the site, on anyone that they didn’t know I had.

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

None at the level of individuals.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

I am not aware of any that apply.

Tangential reference

I do strongly recommend a post about GDPR-related anxiety disorder (academic-type) by Emily with whom I’m working on YP-CORE and on life events.