Privacy Policy for Tourism Currents
Can we get some privacy here?! Adjustable blinds, 1905, American homes & gardens book (courtesy Flickr Commons)
Hi, thanks for being here, we are happy to talk about our privacy policy for Tourism Currents, and about keeping your data as safe as possible.
Who we are
We are Leslie McLellan in Whitefish, Montana, USA and Sheila Scarborough in Round Rock, Texas, USA … the Tourism Currents team.
Our business address is:
Tourism Currents, LLC
402 West Palm Valley Blvd, Suite A, #134
Round Rock, TX 78664
Here is how we handle privacy issues on this website, https://www.tourismcurrents.com (which is hosted on SiteGround – here is the SiteGround privacy policy – and built using WordPress publishing software).
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on our site, such as at the bottom of a blog post or as a question in the comments of one of our lesson modules, 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 or Gravatar is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Visitor comments are checked by the Akismet automated spam detection service.
Media
If you upload images to this 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.
Contact forms and other ways to contact us
We use the Gravity Forms plugin for WordPress to collect first name, last name, and email address, plus the information you fill in about whatever you are contacting us about. Gravity Forms then sends your request to each of our personal email inboxes.
If you absolutely loathe Contact forms, the email address admin@tourismcurrents.com reaches both of us. We will again see your email address when your email is routed to each of our personal inboxes.
We normally do not ever delete any of this information, in case we need to refer to it in the future for follow-up and customer service.
We do not share this information with any other business or organization.
—->> We do not add your name to any of our email lists just because you contacted us, including when you give us a business card at on offline event. We think that’s super-obnoxious.
Our free downloads and newsletter sign-ups
When you pick one or all of our free downloads, you agree to be placed on our email newsletter list, which is hosted by MailChimp.
If you sign up for our newsletter on the regular newsletter signup page instead, it works the same way; your name is added to our email newsletter list hosted by MailChimp.
You can unsubscribe from our emails at any time – the Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of every email.
Here is Intuit’s privacy policy – they now own MailChimp.
—->> We have never, ever sold or given away our email lists to anyone or any other business, and we will not do so in the future.
If you buy our online course materials – “firewall” info
If you buy and are then enrolled in our online full course in social media for tourism (Full/self-paced or Full with Support/course plus consulting,) or you buy an individual lesson from the course, you will be sent email reminders from a MailChimp list, and you will be added to our DAP (Digital Access Pass) database, which is installed on this website.
DAP regulates who gets access to the online course section of our Tourism Currents site. It sends students login information; they can only see course materials if they are logged in.
Here is the Digital Access Pass privacy policy and terms of service.
We leave people in our DAP database indefinitely, because we guarantee that people will always have access to the course materials that they buy, and they need to be in the DAP database to log in.
If you buy our online course materials – ecommerce info
We use WooCommerce to handle the ecommerce and purchasing process for our online course materials. It manages our various Product pages, too.
Here is the WooCommerce privacy policy (note – Automattic, which owns WordPress, also owns WooCommerce.)
We keep WooCommerce data indefinitely so that we can track products and purchases over time, and issue refunds as needed.
Those few times that customers have used a paper check or government purchase order, we have deposited that money into our business checking account as well.
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.
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 here, 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 expires after 1 day.
We do have a Facebook Pixel on this website; we use it to gather data about site visitors that is helpful to us when we run ads on our Tourism Currents Facebook Page. It uses cookies. Here is the Facebook products cookies policy.
We also have a LinkedIn Pixel on this website; we use it to gather data about site visitors that is helpful to us when we run ads on our Tourism Currents LinkedIn Page. It uses cookies. Here is the LinkedIn cookies policy.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles and posts on this site include embedded content (e.g. YouTube 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
We use Google Analytics on this website.
It provides data about our website traffic that helps us understand how people find this site, what they are looking for when they find us, and what sort of content is popular with them. Google uses cookies and some activity tracking for it, and processes the personal data that is handled in their service.
Here is how Google uses that data – https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
If you want more privacy in your web browsing, use the Chrome browser’s “Incognito” mode – https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464
Who we share your data with
Other than the businesses and software already listed and discussed above – WordPress, Gravity Forms, MailChimp, WooCommerce, PayPal, DAP, etc. – we do not share your data with anyone.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment – for example, on a blog post, or as a question in the comments of one of our lesson modules – 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 (mostly in DAP, but occasionally in WordPress) 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.
Who to contact about privacy-specific information
If you have privacy-specific concerns, our Data Protection Officer is our co-founder, Sheila Scarborough.
You can reach her at sheila@tourismcurrents.com
How we protect your data
We use strong passwords and change them frequently, and we use the LastPass Security Challenge to test our passwords for strength.
This website is also protected with the Wordfence plugin and Sucuri monitoring.
What data breach procedures we have in place
We closely monitor this website and get email notifications if there are problems.
If we suspect that there has been any sort of data breach or compromise, we will gather as much information as we can, lock down the site as best we can to prevent further damage, and contact you within 24 hours.
Finally, thank you for your trust in us. We will do our very best to live up to that trust.
