Just like a well-marked trailhead, we want you to know exactly where you’re headed when it comes to your information. This Privacy Policy covers our entire family of websites, where we share our thoughts, brews, and mountain aspirations:
- AppalachianMountainDreams.com
- CoffeeMuses.com
- GaryWayneBoyd.com
Who We Are
Our mission across these sites is to share the stories and spirit of the hills. While we love a good conversation, we prioritize keeping our digital “homestead” secure and transparent.
What Data We Collect (And Why)
Comments
When you leave a comment on our sites, we collect the information shown in the comments form. To keep the “weeds” (spam) out of our garden, we also collect your IP address and browser user agent string.
Note on Gravatar: An anonymized string created from your email address (a “hash”) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. If your comment is approved, your profile picture will be visible to the public alongside your words. You can find their policy here:https://automattic.com/privacy/.
Media
If you choose to upload images to the site (within comments or contact forms), please be mindful of embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Other visitors could potentially download these images and extract that data. It’s best to strip that info before sharing your mountain photos!
Cookies
To make your journey through our sites a bit smoother, we use cookies:
- Comment Cookies: If you leave a comment, you can opt-in to saving your name, email, and website. This is purely for your convenience so you don’t have to re-type your details next time. These last for one year.
- No Logins: Please note that we do not allow visitors to set up accounts or log in to our sites. Therefore, you won’t encounter the typical “Login” or “Subscriber” cookies often found elsewhere.
Embedded Content from Other Trails
Our articles may include embedded content like videos, images, or maps. This content behaves exactly as if you had visited the other website directly.
These external sites (like YouTube or Vimeo) may collect data about you, use their own cookies, and track your interaction with that content—especially if you have an account and are logged into their service at the time.
Your Rights & Data Management
How Long We Keep Your Words
If you leave a comment, that comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This allows us to recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically, rather than keeping you stuck in the moderation queue every time you want to chime in.
Your Control Over Your Data
Even though we don’t host user accounts, if you have left comments on any of our sites, you have rights:
- Export: You can request an exported file of the personal data we hold about you.
- Erasure: You can request that we “clear the trail” and erase any personal data we hold about you.
- Note: This does not include data we are legally or securely obligated to keep for administrative purposes.
Where Your Data Goes
To keep our community clean, visitor comments are checked through an automated spam detection service.
Additional Information
- Data Protection: We use standard security measures to protect the integrity of our sites and your shared information.
- Breach Procedures: In the unlikely event of a data “rockslide” (breach), we have protocols in place to notify our users and secure the perimeter as quickly as possible.
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