Data privacy is important to us.  This page serves to inform and explain the policy of TurtlesTravel regarding data privacy measures. It is required by law, but equally importantly we want each member of our community and all visitors to this site to rest assured that this site is a safe space and in compliance with data protection regulations, such as Europe’s GDRP (General Data Protection Regulation).

This page was created from a template, but we have made our very best effort to be thorough and cover all the bases. We do not include any advertising on our page, nor do we have a subscription list set up, so any data we collect is purely statistics to track visitors and to keep the site safe.

Who we are

Our website address is: https://turtlestravel.com.

Our website is known as TurtlesTravel.

The site was created by Heather Tamara Loeber and Donny Loeber. We are the authors and managers of the site. You can find out more about us and this blog by visiting our About Us page.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

 We do not actively collect any personal data from users and site visitors. We do not serve any commercial purpose, and therefore never ask for private information such as credit card numbers, home addresses, or any other identification numbers. We do not retain any person information collected through contact forms. If a user chooses to sign-up to our email list, email addresses will only be used to send a notification when a new post is published. We may also share travel tips and updates. Emails collected through this site will never be shared or sold to third parties.

Comments

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: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms

Any information collected via contact form submissions is kept exclusively for use for customer service purposes, such as replying to questions or concerns. We do not use the information submitted through contact forms for marketing purposes, nor do we share or sell any information to third parties.

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.

We also use cookies to help us compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.  We may also use trusted third-party services that track this information on our behalf.

Embedded content from other websites

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 tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to monitor website traffic and associated metrics.

Data that is collected, processed, and stored using Google Analytics (“Google Analytics data”) is secure and kept confidential. This data is used to maintain and protect the Google Analytics service, to perform system critical operations, and in rare exceptions for legal reasons as described in Google’s privacy policy.

You can review here: the Privacy Policy for Google Analytics. That link also provides you the data controls for retention, deletion, and portability of your data that has been collected by Google Analytics.

Who we share your data with

We do not share any personal data with anyone or any third parties.

How long we retain your data

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 (if any), 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 left comments on our site, 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. We reserve the right to erase your comment data from our site. If the data has been erased, it will not be retrievable.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. We use  Askimet Anti-Spam for this purpose. You can view the Askimet terms of service here.

Additional information

How we protect your data

We implement and maintain reasonable and appropriate technical and organizational security measures to protect the personal data we process, from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, loss or destruction. Should a security breach occur that is likely to result in a risk to the data privacy of Users, we will inform the relevant Users and other affected parties, as well as relevant authorities when required by applicable data protection law, about the security breach as soon as reasonably possible.