Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice Regarding Automattic for Visitors to Our Site

Hi there! This Privacy Notice explains how The Learning Prism LLC. works with Automattic to process information about the visitors of our website in connection with the services we provide through WordPress.com, Jetpack (including WooCommerce Shipping & Tax), IntenseDebate, Crowdsignal.com, and Akismet. Read on!

Who’s Who and What This Privacy Notice Covers

Let’s talk first about who we are at The Learning Prism, LLC., what we do, and what this Privacy Notice covers.

We (the folks at The Learning Prism) are on a mission to make on-going personal and professional development more engaging and accessible. We hope you love our products and services — from our online courseware, printouts and worksheets, extension activities for personal access and recall, to the next great idea that we haven’t even thought of yet — as much as we love creating them. The following are some of our affiliates that help to make our site and company run smoothly:

Automattic are the folks behind a variety of products and services designed to allow anyone–from bloggers, to small business owners, and enterprises–to create, publish, and manage their own websites.
WordPress.com offers the design, features, and support to bring a website to life.
With Jetpack, website owners that host their websites elsewhere can connect those websites to features and tools available through WordPress.com and WooCommerce Shipping & Tax.
Akismet helps keep spam under control by filtering out spam comments–hundreds of millions, every day!

Visitors to our Site can read published content and interact with our Site through features such as comments, “likes,” poll/survey responses, and follows.

We put together this Privacy Notice to help our Users understand the information Automattic collects about our Site visitors (a/k/a our Users), and how that happens on our Site. Our Users are referred to the privacy policy on our Site that explains to our visitors how data is collected via our and how that information is used and disclosed.

This Privacy Notice does not apply to the information Automattic collects about The Learning Prism, LLC. and those who visit Automattic’s websites (like automattic.com, wordpress.com, jetpack.com, or akismet.com)–that’s covered in Automattic’s Privacy Policy.

Alright, with those introductions out of the way, let’s turn to how Automattic collects, uses, and shares information about visitors to our Site.

Information Automattic Collects About Visitors to Our Site

Automattic collects information about visitors to our Site in a few different ways–They collect certain information that visitors provide to our Site, They collect some information automatically, and They collect any information that we provide to Them about our visitors.

Information a Visitor Provides to a Site

We’ll start with information that visitors provide directly to our Site, which primarily happens when visitors type into a text field on a Site, like a comment field or a sign-up form. We also implement other ways to allow Site visitors to provide information directly through our Site.

Here are the most common ways in which a visitor directly provides information to our Site:

Follower and Subscriber Information: When a visitor signs up to follow or subscribe to a Site using Jetpack or WordPress.com, Automattic collects the sign-up information requested by the Site, which typically includes an email address.
Site Comments: When a visitor leaves a comment on a Site, Automattic collects that comment, and other information that the visitor provides along with the comment, such as the visitor’s name and email address.
Crowdsignal Survey Responses: When a visitor completes a poll, quiz, or other type of survey via Crowdsignal.com, Automattic collects the visitor’s responses to those surveys, and other information that the survey owner requires for a poll/quiz/survey response, like an e-mail address.
Order and Shipment Information: If a visitor orders something (hooray!) from a Site using our store and ecommerce features available through WordPress.com or Jetpack (including WooCommerce Shipping & Tax), Automattic may collect information to process that order, such as credit card and billing information, and an address for shipping the package along to the recipient and calculating applicable taxes. Automattic may also use this information for other purposes on behalf of The Learning Prism, LLC.–for example, to send marketing and other communications from The Learning Prism to our customers, and to provide our us with analytics information about our ecommerce site (e.g., the number of orders from particular geographic areas).
Other Information Entered on the Site: Automattic may also collect other information that a visitor enters on the Site–such as a contact form submission, a search query, or Site registration.

Information Automattic will Automatically Collect from our Site

Automattic also automatically collects some information about visitors to a Site. The information They automatically collect depends on which of Their services The Learning Prism uses. We’ve listed examples below:

Technical Data from a Visitor’s Computer and Etcetera: Automattic collects the information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available about visitors to a Site, such as the IP address, browser type, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information.
Visitor Interactions: Automattic collects information about a visitor’s interactions with our Site, including the “likes” and “ratings” left by visitors to our Site using WordPress.com or Jetpack.
Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of a visitor’s device from the IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, tally for The Learning Prism how many people visit our Site from certain geographic regions. If you’d like, you can read more about Automattic’s Site Stats feature for WordPress.com sites and Jetpack sites.
Akismet Commenter Information: Automattic collects information about visitors who comment on our Site that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information Automattic collects depends on how we sets up Akismet for our Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address…oh, and the comment itself, of course).
Crowdsignal Response Information: Automattic collects information about visitors who respond to a Crowdsignal survey. The information that we collect typically includes IP address, browser type, operating system, user agent, and the web page last visited.
Intense Debate Commenter Information: Automattic collects information about visitors who comment on our Site that use Their Intense Debate service. The information that Automattic collects depends on how we set up Intense Debate for the Site, but typically includes the IP address and account information on the Site, along with the comment.
Jetpack Site Activity: Automattic collects visitor activities related to the management of the Site, such as login attempts/actions and comment submission and management actions. For more information, please see the Jetpack Privacy Center.
Information from Cookies and Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a Site stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the Site each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on Sites. Automattic uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track visitors and Site usage, and to deliver targeted ads when ads are enabled or when ads are enabled on a Site through WordAds or Jetpack Ads (see the “Other Tools” section below for more details). For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how visitors can control the use of cookies, please see Automattic’s Cookie Policy.

Other Information Provided by The Learning Prism

Automattic also collects any other information that The Learning Prism provides to us about visitors to our Site. For example, we may upload a directory or other information about our Site visitors and customers to the “backend” administrative platform for managing the Site.

How Automattic Uses Our Visitor Information

Automattic uses information about our Site visitors in order to provide Services to us and our Site. We may use Automattic Services to, for example, create and manage our Site, sell products and services on our Site, flag and fight comments from spammers, and collect information through polls, quizzes and other surveys.

In addition to the above, Automattic uses some information about Site visitors who are also Their Users as described in Their Privacy Policy.

Automattic may also use and share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify any individual. For instance, They may publish aggregate statistics about the use of Their services.

How Automattic Shares Visitor Information

Automattic may share information collected about our Site visitors in the limited circumstances spelled out below:

Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: Automattic may disclose our Site visitor information to Their subsidiaries, Their employees, and individuals who are Their independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help Them provide Their services to The Learning Prism and our Site, or to process the information on Their behalf. Automattic requires Their subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Notice for information about visitors that Automattic shares with them.
Third Party Vendors: Automattic may share our Site visitor information with third party vendors who need to know this information in order to provide their services to us. This group includes vendors that help Them provide Their services to us and our Site. Automattic requires vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
Legal Requests: Automattic may disclose Site visitor information in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. For more information on how Automattic responds to requests for information, please see Their Legal Guidelines.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: Automattic may disclose our Site visitor information when They believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, The Learning Prism, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if They have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, They may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Automattic goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, our Site visitor information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Notice would continue to apply to our Site visitor information and the party receiving this information may continue to use this information, but only consistent with this Privacy Notice.
Information Shared Publicly: Information that visitors choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like visitor comments and “likes” are all available to others, including information about the visitor that is displayed in connection with a comment or “like” (such as a visitor’s WordPress.com username and Gravatar). Automattic provides a “firehose” stream of public data (including comments) from Sites to provide that data to firehose subscribers, who may view and analyze the content, but do not have rights to re-publish it publicly. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.

How Long Automattic Keeps Visitor Information

If Automattic is not legally required to keep it, They generally discard information about our Site visitors when no longer needed for the purposes for which They collect and use it on behalf of The Learning Prism — those purposes which are described in the “How We Use Visitor Information” section above.

For example, Automattic keeps the web server logs that record information about a visitor to The Learning Prism’s Site — such as the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system — for approximately 30 days. Automattic retains the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, investigate issues if something goes wrong on our Site.

As another example, when a Site visitor views our Site Automattic uses their IP address in order to update our Site Stats with information about their visit, like what country they are in. Automattic keeps that IP address for approximately 30 days to give Them time to calculate your monthly Site Stats and address any issues with those counts.

Other Tools

The Learning Prism Site may contain ads from third party ad networks and advertisers, and The Learning Prism may integrate other tools and services on our Site (such as Google Analytics and third party plugins). Please note that this Privacy Notice only covers the collection of information by Automattic, and does not cover the collection by any third party.

Ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about visitors’ use of a Site and across other websites and online services, such as a visitor’s IP address, web browser, mobile network information, pages viewed, time spent on pages, links clicked, and conversion information. This information may be used by those companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to visitor interests. For more information about how to manage and delete cookies, visit aboutcookies.org, and for more information on interest-based ads, including information about how visitors may be able to opt out of having their web browsing information used for behavioral advertising purposes, please visit aboutads.info/choices (US based) and youronlinechoices.eu (EU based).

Other Resources

You can read more about how Automattic products and services operate on the links at the top of this notice.

This Privacy Notice is available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. You can grab a copy of this Privacy Notice and other legal documents on GitHub.

And Automattic would love it if you follow Them on privacy.blog for more information about privacy and transparency at Automattic.

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