Who We Are
This privacy policy will explain how your Personally Identifiable Information is being used on Circuit Basics (https://www.circuitbasics.com). Please read it carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect, or otherwise handle your Personally Identifiable Information in accordance with our website. We have recently updated this Privacy Policy in order to comply with the GDPR. To learn more about GDPR and how it affects your rights to personal data protection, please see this website.
What Personal Data We Collect and Why We Collect It
By using Circuit Basics, we may collect some personal data about you. That information may include your name, email address, IP address, the type of browser you use (your user agent), and others. We collect this information with your legal consent in order to provide the services necessary to operate Circuit Basics. The table below explains which Personally Identifiable Information we collect:
| Service | Data Collected |
|---|---|
| Statistics | IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, and country code |
| Anti-Spam | IP address, user agent, referrer, site URL, name, username, email address, and comment content |
| Downloadable PDFs | Name, IP address, timestamp, and email address |
| Comments | Commenter’s name, email address, submission date/time, IP address, comment content, ID of the post on which the comment is being submitted, and MD5 hash of the commenter’s email address (if available) |
| Social Sharing | Depends on the social media site you share to |
| Security | Search queries, date and time of the request, referral URL, IP address, MAC address, device make, model and operating system version, mobile network information, internet service provider, browser type and language, country and time zone, geographic location through GPS, beacons and similar technology, and metadata stored on the device |
| Subscriptions | Email address, ID of the post or comment (if subscribing via comment), HTTP request headers, IP address, and URI given to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI) |
| Advertisements | Web request, IP address, browser type, computer or device type, browser language, the date and time of your request, device sensor data, location, search queries, websites and apps you use and your activity on them, demographics, and page context |
| Contact Form | Name, IP address, timestamp, user agent, email address, site URL, and message |
| Affiliate Marketing | IP address, login, e-mail, password, browser type, version, and time zone, browser plug-ins, operating system and platform, purchase history, the URL clickstream, date and time, cookie number, and products viewed or searched for |
The services above are third parties that store your personal information. Please see their Privacy Policies (linked below) for more detailed information about how they use your Personally Identifiable Information.
The use of your Personally Identifiable Information, provided by you on the legal basis of consent is needed for various services including website housekeeping, advertising, marketing, and communications with you via email.
We will never sell any of your Personally Identifiable Information, or any other information about you, to any third parties.
Comments
We offer readers the ability to post comments on our content. This allows readers to help each other solve problems and give them tips on troubleshooting the various projects on Circuit Basics.
When you post a comment, we store the commenter’s name, email address, IP address, and date/time the comment was posted. Additionally, a jetpack.wordpress.com IFrame receives the following data: WordPress.com blog ID attached to the site, ID of the post on which the comment is being submitted, commenter’s local user ID (if available), commenter’s local username (if available), commenter’s site URL (if available), MD5 hash of the commenter’s email address (if available), and the comment content. In addition, this information may be stored by Automattic, the company that provides the service we use to offer our commenting system. To learn more about how Automattic handles your Personally Identifiable Information, please check their Privacy Policy.
Since Akismet is enabled on the site, the commenter’s name, email address, site URL, IP address, and user agent is sent to Akismet for the sole purpose of spam checking. In addition, this information may be stored by Automattic, the company that owns Akismet. To learn more about how Automattic handles your Personally Identifiable Information, please check their Privacy Policy.
Contact Form
We offer a contact form so that readers can contact us with questions about our content, or inquiries about sponsorship and advertising opportunities.
When you send us a message through our contact form, we store your name, IP address, timestamp, user agent, email address, site URL, and message. In addition, this information may be stored by Automattic, the company that provides the service we use to offer our contact form. To learn more about how Automattic handles your Personally Identifiable Information, please check their Privacy Policy.
Blog Subscriptions
Circuit Basics has a blog subscription service in place. Every time we publish a new article, subscribers will receive an email with a short excerpt of the post and a link to the post on Circuit Basics.
To initiate and process subscriptions, the following information is used: subscriber’s email address and the ID of the post or comment (depending on the specific subscription being processed). In the event of a new subscription being initiated, we also collect some basic server data, including all of the subscribing user’s HTTP request headers, the IP address from which the subscribing user is viewing the page, and the URI which was given in order to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI). This server data is used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam. In addition, this information may be stored by Automattic, the company that provides the service we use to offer our contact form. To learn more about how Automattic handles your Personally Identifiable Information, please check their Privacy Policy.
Website Analytics
We use a third-party service to provide us with statistics on how people use Circuit Basics. This allows us to produce more of the content that our readers consider interesting and engaging.
In order to track visitors and engagement with our site, we collect and store visitor’s post and page views, IP address, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, outbound link clicks, search engine terms, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. We also use stats logs containing visitor’s IP addresses and WordPress.com usernames (if available).
We can see how many views a particular post gets, but we cannot see which specific users viewed that post. This information may be stored by Automattic, the company that provides the service we use for website analytics. Information is retained by Automattic for 28 days and are used for the sole purpose of powering this feature. To learn more about how Automattic handles your Personally Identifiable Information, please check their Privacy Policy.
To opt-out of analytics tracking, please request to do so via our Contact Us page.
Social Sharing
We use a social media sharing service that allows you to share our articles on your social media accounts. Currently we offer sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, and Reddit. When you share content from Circuit Basics on one of those sites, your data is handled differently depending on which site you share our content on. Each social media site handles Personally Identifiable Information differently. For more information about how these sites handle your data, please visit the Privacy Policies of those sites:
Downloads
On some of our pages, we offer the option to download .pdf files that contain summaries of the content of our tutorials. In order to download the .pdf files, we need to collect some information so that we can email the file to you. In order to provide this service, we collect your name, IP address, email address, and a timestamp of the request.
Website Security
Security is of paramount concern at Circuit Basics. In order to keep your personal information, and our website safe from abuse, we use a trusted third-party service to provide web security on Circuit Basics. In order to ensure a safe and secure website, this third-party collects and stores information about your search queries, date and time of the request, referral URL, IP address, MAC address, device make, model, and operating system version, mobile network information, internet service provider, browser type and language, country and time zone, geographic location through GPS, beacons, and similar technology, and metadata stored on your device.
To learn more about the information stored by this service, please visit this page.
Advertisements
We display advertisements from third-parties to support the cost of running our site. These third parties include Google Adsense, Media.net, and various individual companies that wish to place image ads on our site. Google Adsense displays personalized ads based on certain personal information, including web request, IP address, browser type, computer or device type, browser language, the date and time of your request, device sensor data, location, search queries, websites and apps you use and your activity on them, demographics, and page context.
You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. Alternatively, you can opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting www.aboutads.info.
To learn more about the data stored by these companies, please visit the Privacy Policies of each site:
Affiliate Programs
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
We use the Amazon Associates program to offer you a way to purchase products that are relevant to the projects and tutorials we publish. When you purchase a product on Amazon through one of the links on our site, we receive a small commission on your purchase. The commission does not make the product you buy more expensive, the commission is paid by Amazon.
Amazon.com collects some information when you click an Amazon Associates link on our site. This may include your IP address, login details, e-mail address, password, browser type, version, and time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, purchase history, the URL clickstream to, through, and from Amazon, including date and time, cookie number, and products you viewed or searched for.
To learn more about how Amazon collects and stores your Personally Identifiable Information, please see their Privacy Policy.
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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Our videos are hosted on YouTube. For information about privacy on YouTube, please visit their Privacy Policy.
Downloads
We offer downloadable PDF files on our site. In order to send the PDF files to you, we use a third party service that collects your name and email address, then automatically sends the file to the email address you provided. In addition to your name and email address, the third party service may also collect and store your name, IP address, timestamp, email address. For more information about how your Personally Identifiable Information is handled in relation to downloading files via email, please see the following Privacy Policy.
Cookies
We use cookies to provide some of the services available on Circuit Basics. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow it to) that enables the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. For instance, 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.
Cookies may be set by the site that you are visiting (known as ‘first party cookies’), or by third parties, such as those who serve content or provide advertising or analytics services on the website (‘third party cookies’).
Both websites and HTML e-mails may also contain other tracking technologies such as ‘web beacons’, or ‘pixels’. These are typically small transparent images that provide us with statistics, for similar purposes as cookies. They are often used in conjunction with cookies, though they are not stored on your computer in the same way. As a result, if you disable cookies, the web beacons may still load, but their functionality will be restricted.
We use cookies to:
- Keep track of advertisements
- Compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interactions in order to offer better site experiences and tools in the future
The Cookies We Use
We use cookies to keep track of advertisements, and to collect data about site traffic and site interactions. We do this to offer a better site experience, and to help improve the site.
Advertising
Advertising allows us to provide you with the content of Circuit Basics free of charge. Cookies help to make advertising more effective. Without cookies, it’s harder for an advertiser to reach its audience, or to know how many ads were shown and how many clicks they received. The Google Ads we display on Circuit Basics use cookies to stop you from seeing the same ad over and over again, to detect and stop click fraud, and to show ads that are likely to be more relevant (such as ads based on websites you have visited).
Google stores a record of the ads we serve in thier logs. These server logs typically include your web request, IP address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. This data is stored for a number of reasons, the most important of which are to improve Google’s services and to maintain the security of Google’s systems. Google anonymizes this log data by removing part of the IP address (after 9 months) and cookie information (after 18 months).
The cookies may be set from a few different domains, including google.com, doubleclick.net, googlesyndication.com, or googleadservices.com, or the domain of our partners’ sites. In addition, Google may use cookies for ad measurement and reporting services. For more information about the types of cookies used by Google and thier partners, see their Cookie Policy.
Comments
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. The comment author’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided during the comment submission) are stored in cookies. These cookies will last for one year. To learn more about these cookies, see this page.
Blog Subscriptions
For subscriptions to the Circuit Basics blog, functionality cookies are set for a duration of 347 days to remember a visitor’s blog and post subscription choices if, in fact, they have an active subscription. For more information about these cookies, see this page.
Analytics
The service we use to track website views on Circuit Basics uses cookies to track how many times you have visited the site, how long you spend on the site, or what pages you visit. To learn more about these cookies, see this page.
Security
The website security service we use to protect our site uses several cookies to determine if someone is a human or bot, and to identify repeat visitors.
Affiliate Programs
Amazon may also use browser data such as cookies, Flash cookies (also known as Flash Local Shared Objects) for fraud prevention and other purposes. During some visits Amazon may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.
How to Disable Cookies
You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being downloaded, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser settings. Each browser is a little different, so look at your browser’s Help menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies.
If you disable cookies, some site features may be disabled and some of our services may not function properly.
You can use Ads Settings to manage the cookies that Google uses to serve the ads you see and opt out of Ads Personalization. However, even if you opt out of Ads Personalization, you may still see ads based on factors such as your general location derived from your IP address, your browser type, and your search terms.
Who We Share Your Data With
We may transfer (but not sell) your personally identifiable information to third parties, including website hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety. Below is a table of the third parties we share your data with, along with links to thier privacy policies:
| Third Party | Privacy Notice |
|---|---|
| Jetpack | https://jetpack.com/support/privacy/ |
| Akismet Anti-Spam | https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/ |
| Active Campaign | https://www.activecampaign.com/tos/ |
| Wordfence | https://www.wordfence.com/help/general-data-protection-regulation/ |
| Google AdSense | https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites?gl=uk |
| Media.net | https://control.media.net/faqs/search?q=gdpr |
| Amazon | https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468496 |
| Bluehost | https://www.endurance.com/privacy/privacy |
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.
If you send us a message through our contact form, the message, its metadata, and any information you enter on the form are also retained indefinitely. This is so we can keep track of our conversations with you and make sure we’ve answered your questions properly.
Data collected by the third party services mentioned above are retained according to their own policies.
What Rights You Have Over Your Data
If you have left comments on Circuit Basics, 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.
If you want to remove any of your Personally Identifiable Information collected and stored by Circuit Basics, please request a personal data removal via our Contact Form.
If you want to remove any of the Personally Identifiable Information that is collected and stored by a third party service used by Circuit Basics, please request a personal data removal via our Contact Form and we will contact the relevant third parties to request a removal of your personal data from their servers.
Where We Send Your Data
Circuit Basics is located in the United States, and for that reason all data on our website is transferred to the United States. Personal Data collected from you may also be transferred to a third party, which may be outside your country of residence. To see where your data processed by third parties is sent, please visit one of the Privacy Policies of the third parties mentioned in this Privacy Policy.
How to Get in Touch with Us
For questions or concerns about your Personally Identifiable Information on Circuit Basics, or to delete or change any of the information we (or the third party services we use) store about you, please feel free to send us a message through our Contact Form.
How We Protect Your Data
Our website is scanned on a regular basis for security holes and known vulnerabilities in order to make your visit to our site as safe as possible.
We use regular malware scanning, website application firewalls (WAFs), brute force login protection, and other best practices to safeguard your Personally Identifiable Information.
We do not use an SSL certificate, because the information we collect about you is not sensitive enough to warrant the use of one. In the cases where we request your email address, the third party services we use have SSL certificates and other advanced data protection systems to protect your Personally Identifiable Information.
What Data Breach Procedures We Have in Place
In the event of a data breach that compromises your Personally Identifiable Information that is stored on Circuit Basics, we will contact you via email (if available) within 72 hours after we discover the breach. We will also notify you via an in-site notification within 72 hours after the time we discover any breach of personal data.
Third Party Links
Occasionally, we include or offer third party products or services on our website. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites. Please contact us via our Contact Form for any concerns you have about our third party services or websites we link to.
What Third Parties We Receive Data From
We may receive information about you from third parties. For example, we are able to view statistics about website traffic, clicks on affiliate links, how many times a post has been shared on social media and which social media site it was shared on, and analytics on the performance of the advertisements we place on the site. This data is accessed from the third party websites and services mentioned in this privacy policy.
COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)
When it comes to the collection of personal information from children under 13, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) puts parents in control. The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, enforces the COPPA Rule, which spells out what operators of websites and online services must do to protect children’s privacy and safety online. We do not specifically market to children under 13, but if you have any concerns about any of the content on Circuit Basics or about our Privacy Policy, please contact us through our Contact Us page.
