Last Updated: Friday, November 17, 2023
The basics: I only use cookies to improve user experience and my ability to serve you. The details are below.
I endeavor to conduct my business affairs with integrity and transparency. I believe I am called to love God and love people, and that includes in this area of respecting privacy.
I am deeply concerned about abuses of our privacy online, and do my best to be open about my usage of cookies and other technology that can affect our privacy.
In general, I support regulations put in place to limit and make more transparent how companies use personal data.
The only cookies I really love are the ones with Chocolate Chips. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.
The thing is, to provide a great, user-friendly, interactive experience on my website (and most others on the internet), tracking cookies are used to ensure the site loads for you quickly, and other functions work. I have apps attached to this website which help me provide you with a better experience and improve my customer service game.
The nitty-gritty details as required by various legal entities are below.
My website address is: https://thoughtsanddesigns.studio.
This website is home to Thoughts and Designs LLC, a single member LLC in Thomasville, Georgia owned by Kimberly Eddy, providing web design services to small businesses and organizations.
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. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
To assist with sending you requested information, I use forms to collect and store your email address. The creator of the form plugin (Elementor) never has access to this information.
I also use Mailchimp for my newsletter. Their use of your data is outlined here. You may opt out of the collection of your data by unsubscribing (I will remove your data) and contacting them using the instructions on their privacy page.
For client management, we use the Hubspot CRM to manage communications with clients, tasks, and support requests.
Articles on this site may include embedded content (such as YouTube and Pinterest). 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.
I use an embedded scheduler from Hubspot to schedule calls with clients and potential clients. You can view Hubspot’s privacy policy here.
I use Google analytics to record information about the pages a user has seen, for example the URL of the page, time of day, device used, etc. The information that I collect is anonymized and sent to Google Analytics for analysis.
Google Analytics also collects Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to provide and protect the security of the service, and to give website owners a sense of which country, state, or city in the world their users come from (also known as “IP geolocation”).
Google Analytics mainly uses first-party cookies to report on visitor interactions on this website. Users may disable cookies or delete any individual cookie. Learn more
In addition, Google Analytics supports an optional browser add-on that – once installed and enabled – disables measurement by Google Analytics for any site a user visits. Note that this add-on only disables Google Analytics measurement.
See this page for Google Analytics security and usage of data.
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.
If you hire me to design a website or any graphic design work for you, I will ask for different media assets from you (Images, logos, etc.), depending on the job. I usually ask you upload these via my client management software or Google Drive, and not on this website, but the same holds true. Of you have embedded location data, that will be accessible to anyone with those images, so keep that in mind.
I kinda hate this question because I don’t just hand out your data to anyone. That’s not cool.
But in using some embedded services like my CRM and MailChimp, as well as embedding YouTube videos or using Google Analytics, they have access to your behavior on this website.
We will never sell, rent, or lease your Personal Data to a third party.
Service Providers and others who help with our business operations and assist in the delivery of our products and services including, but not limited to, application development, site hosting, maintenance, data analysis, infrastructure provision, IT services, customer service, email delivery services, payment processing, marketing, analytics, and enforcement of our Terms of Service Agreement and other agreements;
Persons or entities with whom you consent to have your Personal Data shared;
Third parties in order to prevent damage to our property (tangible and intangible), for safety reasons, or to collect amounts owed to us;
Merchants and payment processors; and
Third parties as we believe necessary or appropriate, in any manner permitted under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence to: comply with legal process; respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; enforce our Terms of Service Agreement and other agreements; protect our operations; protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you, or others; and allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
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, 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.
Google Analytics data is retained indefinitely.
Contact forms and comments cookies are held for one year.
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.
If you have contacted me for a quote for design services, your information will be held for one year after your project is completed or my last contact with you.
This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, tax, or security purposes.
Again, I don’t just “send your data” to people. I wouldn’t want anyone doing that to me, and so I’m not doing that to you. However, this is the internet, and here online, data moves around a bit.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Third parties have access to your data as noted within this agreement.
My Services are not directed to and I do not knowingly collect Personal Data from children under the age of 13. If wI become aware that a child under the age of 13 has provided me with Personal Data, I will take steps to remove such data. If you become aware that your child has provided me with Personal Data without your consent, please contact me at [email protected].
By using the Services, you are representing to me that you are not under the age of 13.
Contact me regarding this privacy policy via the contact form on this website.
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I believe we should stay in our own zone of genius. For me, this is website design and optimization.
For you, your zone of genius is probably not building websites.
That’s what I’m here for.