This page serves as the Privacy Policy for the current website, Dennisspan.com. A Privacy Policy is mandatory from the 25th of May 2018 in accordance to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This law is designed to accomplish two main things:
- Unify the current data protection privacy laws throughout the EU, and
- Enhance the rights of citizens of the EU to protect their personal information.
The goal of this Privacy Policy is to inform, you, the visitor of this website, which personal data is collected by this website, how it is used and/or shared and the level of control that you have over this data.
Who we are
This website, Dennisspan.com, is run by me, Dennis Span, an IT aficionado interested in the end-user computing (EUC) part of the IT industry. The purpose of this website/blog is to share information related to EUC topics, with a large focus on the Citrix™ product suite and the automation of those products. Automation, and especially PowerShell™, is an integral part of this blog; you will find many code-snippet as well as complete PowerShell scripts for you to use.
The content on this website is for free. There is no need for users to register themselves before being allowed to download content. No personal data is being shared with third-parties. This website does generate a small amount of money based on advertising using Google AdSense. This money is used to cover the costs of running this website, for example, the hosting costs for my provider and the annual fees for some of the plugins I use.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Data is collected on this website in the following ways.
Content (within a blog post)
When you, the visitor, send me, Dennis Span, remarks or suggestions to add to one of the articles on my website, your name as well as a link to your Twitter™ handle may be added. Before doing this, you are always asked for your explicit approval via e-mail. In case you do not want your name and Twitter™ handle displayed, the suggested content will be added without referring from whom it originated.
Furthermore, 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.
Cookies
A cookie is a small piece of text sent to your browser by a website that you visit. In general, it helps the website to remember information about your visit, like your preferred language and other settings. That can make your next visit easier and the site more useful to you. Cookies play an important role. Without them, using the web would be a much more frustrating experience.
When you launch this website for the first time, a cookie notification is displayed which you have to accept. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings on your browser.
When you launch this website, Dennisspan.com, the following plugins will place cookies on your local computer:
- Cookie Notice:
- cookie_notice_accepted – this cookie prevents the cookie notification bar from appearing each time you visit Dennisspan.com (after having accepted the cookie notice).
- Social Media and Share Icons (Ultimate Social Media):
- __atuvc – this cookie enables visitors to share content with a range of networking and sharing platforms. It stores an updated page share count.
- __atuvs – this cookie enables visitors to share content with a range of networking and sharing platforms.
- Google Analytics:
- _ga – This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports.
- _gat – this cookie is used to throttle the request rate, limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites.
- _gid – this is a relatively new cookie and as of spring 2017 no information is available from Google™. It stores and updates a unique value for each page visited.
- Google AdSense
- WordPress comments:
- PHPSESSID – this cookie is a general purpose identifier used to maintain user session variables. It is a randomly generated number. This cookie is automatically created when you post a comment.
- comment_author_%Number% – this cookie stores the name of the author of the comment. Please be aware that it is not required to enter your name to post a comment!
- comment_author_email_%Number% – this cookie stores the e-mail address entered with the comment. Please be aware that it is not required to enter your e-mail address to post a comment!
- comment_author_url_%Number% – this cookie stores the website entered with the comment. Please be aware that it is not required to enter your website to post a comment!
- jetpack_comments_subscribe_%Number% – this cookie is generated when you tick the box “Notify me of follow-up comments by email” at the end of a comment.
The expiration time of each of these cookies is listed in the section How long do we retain your data \ Cookies.
Comments
When you leave a comment and you voluntarily choose to enter your name, e-mail address or website (or all three) at the end of a blog post, this information is collected.
Please be aware that entering your name, e-mail address or website when posting a comment is NOT required for you to be able to post a comment!
When visitors leave comments on this website also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string are collected to help spam detection, independent of whether you choose to enter your e-mail address or not.
Furthermore, an anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) is provided to the Gravatar™ service to see if you are using it. For more information, please see the Gravatar™ service privacy policy. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Contact form
When you send me, Dennis Span, an e-mail using the form on the About page, your e-mail address is collected on the mail server of my provider.
Analytics
This website uses Google Analytics™ to track the usage of this website. This information is used in a purely informative way so I, Dennis Span, can monitor the growth of my website, so I can see which posts/articles visitors find most interesting and how long visitors stay on one particular page.
This website uses Google AddSense™ to generate income from advertisements.
Google Analytics™ is NOT connected to any other service Google™ may provide, such as AddWords™, AddSense™, Exchange™ or more. For more information, please read Google Analytics’s Privacy Policy.
How long we retain your data
Contents (within a blog post)
Additional content you offer for any of the articles on this website will be retained indefinitely, unless the article in question is deleted or its contents is updated. Content provided by you, the visitor, may be removed due to new technological features making the current content obsolete.
Cookies
The retention time of the cookies used on this website is as follows:
- Cookie Notice:
- cookie_notice_accepted – one year (after cookie acceptance)
- Social Media and Share Icons (Ultimate Social Media):
- __atuvc – one year and one month
- __atuvs – thirty minutes
- Google Analytics:
- _ga – two years (the amount of time is customizable by the owner of the Google Analytics account, which is me, Dennis Span).
- _gat – one minute
- _gid – one minute
- WordPress comments:
- PHPSESSID – when the browser session ends
- comment_author_%Number% – three minutes
- comment_author_email_%Number% – three minutes
- comment_author_url_%Number% – three minutes
- jetpack_comments_subscribe_%Number% – three minutes
The purpose of each of these cookies is listed in the section What personal data we collect and why we collect it \ Cookies.
Comments
When you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This makes it easier do deal with any follow-up comments, but more importantly, your comments offer interesting thoughts to the article in question and other visitors should be allowed to read these thoughts and perhaps be inspired to add their own comments.
Contact form
E-mails sent using the form on the About page are stored on the mail server of my provider indefinitely.
Analytics
Google Analytics™ data is retained indefinitely. This allows me, Dennis Span, the owner of this website, an historical overview of how this website grows over time.
What rights you have over your data
If you have left comments on this website, 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.
In case you would like to receive an overview of all personal data collected on this website, please fill out the following form.
In case you would like to get all of your personal data erased, please fill out the following form:
When you request your personal data to be erased, the following is deleted:
- All information stored in the database of this website. This includes all comments posted by you that include your e-mail address. This does NOT include any comments you posted anonymously (= comments you posted WITHOUT specifying your e-mail address).
- Any e-mails you sent to my e-mail address using the form on the About page.
Where we send your data
As explained above, this website sends analytic data to Google Analytics™ and a connection is made to the Gravatar service when you post a comment including your e-mail address. Also, visitor comments are checked by an automated spam detection service (Akismet Anti-Spam). No other data is sent.
This website is hosted in Europe (Munich, Germany).
How we protect your data
Your data is securely stored in the database of this website. An administrator can only access this website using Two-Factor Authentication. Any e-mails you send me through the contact form on the About page are securely stored on the mail server of my provider.
How to contact us
I hope that the information in this Privacy Policy was clear and concise. More importantly, I hope that the information removes any doubts you may have concerning the abuse or ill-management of your personal data. In case you do have further questions, please send me, Dennis Span, an e-mail using the form on the About page.
Thank you for visiting this website.
Kind regards,
Dennis Span
