Privacy Policy

We’re committed to protecting your privacy and using technology that gives you an effective and safe online experience. It’s important to us that you feel confident and safe using our site and services, so this page details all the ways in which we collect data, and how it’s used. If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy you can contact us at any time by sending an e-mail at hello@ruxi.photo.

Our website is https://www.ruxi.photo 

We do not collect your personal information with the intent of sharing or selling it to third parties. Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, improving the user experience, providing customer service, and for sharing updates about new photography content that is available on the website.  The data we collect takes two primary forms: Anonymous usage data, and personally-identifying information. We will not obtain personally-identifying information about you when you visit our site unless you choose to provide this information to us within a form on the web page, such as a contact form, comment form, newsletter signup form or online store purchase form. We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.

• 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. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
• Comments and the associated data may require manual approval by one of our employees or site owners.
• If you leave a comment on the site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies so we can recognize you as a commenter and pre-fill this information for you next time. The check box to opt-in to this is located in the comment section of a post. These cookies will persist for one year.
• Published content and comments are stored indefinitely unless deletion/removal is requested by the original author.
• 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.
• If you choose to receive follow-up emails when someone adds a further comment to the post that you just commented on, your email address will be used for the purposes of sending you a notification that someone has added additional commentary.

• We use Google/G Suite to process all internal email and communication with customers and website visitors. This means that if you contact us through the contact form on the site, it will be sent to use through a G-Mail account. Any reply from us will also come through G-Mail’s servers. Google’s privacy policy is available here.
• When visitors use a contact form to send a communication to site owners or administrators, we collect the data shown in the contact form and also the visitor’s IP address to assist with spam prevention. All data from the contact form is stored indefinitely in Google’s G-Suite archives unless deletion/removal is requested by the original author.
• Contact forms also include an opt-in to join our email newsletter. As required under EU law, you must manually opt-in to receive the email newsletter. If you do not opt-in to the email newsletter, your contact details will never be used for anything other than direct communication about the question/query that you submitted in the contact form.

If you have a user account with this website, we check login activity to potentially block fraudulent attempts.

• The following information is used: attempting user’s IP address, attempting user’s email address/username (i.e. according to the value they were attempting to use during the login process), and all IP-related HTTP headers attached to the attempting user.
• In addition to this, the following activity is tracked:Failed login attempts (these include IP address and user agent). We also set a cookie (jpp_math_pass) for 1 day to remember if/when a user has successfully completed a math captcha to prove that they’re a real human. Learn more about this cookie.

• We may use Google’s AdSense platform to display banner advertising on the site. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to our users based on previous visits to our site and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt-out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google Ad and Content Network privacy policy. You can read their privacy policy here.
• Advertising companies who serve ads when you visit the Site may use information about your visits to the Site and other websites that are contained in web cookies in order to provide advertisements about goods and services that are most likely to be useful and interesting to you.

We are committed to keeping your e-mail address confidential. We do not sell, rent, or lease our subscription lists to third parties, and we will not provide your personal information to any third party individual at any time unless strictly compelled to do so by law.

• We use email marketing to communicate with customers and potential customers from time to time. All email lists and campaigns are “opt-in” meaning we will not send you these sorts of emails unless you indicated that you wish to receive them during signup or other interactions on our website.
• We may send you “system” emails, such as password reset requests or payment notifications/receipts even if you have not opted-in to email marketing lists.
• All marketing emails sent by us will include an unsubscribe link in the footer of the email. Emails sent to you may also include standard tracking, including open and click activities.
• We use MailChimp for our email marketing. Mailchimp’s privacy policy is found here.

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. We use cookies on our site to help identify and track visitors, their usage of our services, and their website access preferences. Cookies allow us to develop a better user experience on the website by understanding how it is being used. Visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using our websites, with the drawback that certain features may not function properly without the aid of cookies. These settings are usually found in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your internet browser. In order to understand these settings, the following links may be helpful. Otherwise you should use the ‘Help’ option in your internet browser for more details.

• Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
• Cookie settings in Firefox
• Cookie settings in Chrome
• Cookie settings in Safari

If you wish to withdraw your consent at any time, you will need to delete your cookies using your internet browser settings.

First party cookies are used to ensure proper functionality of the website.

• 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, 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.
• If you add a product to a shopping cart on the site, we track that with a cookie so that your cart stays up to date if you continue to browse other pages on the website.

Security cookies help identify and prevent security risks to the Website. These cookies are used to authenticate users and protect user data from unauthorized collection, and usage by unknown parties.

Management cookies are used to maintain your identity, and the session (your time) on the Website so that you are not logged off unexpectedly, and any information you enter is retained from page to page. These cookies cannot be turned off individually, but you can disable all cookies in your browser, which is configured by reviewing your browsers instructions and settings.

We use cookies to track how you interact with email newsletter popups and sign-up forms. We use these cookies to give the user a better browsing experience by preventing the showing of multiple identical popups after you have already opted-in to our newsletter, and preventing repeated showing of the same pop up after it has already been closed. We also use this to tailor content to people who have already subscribed to our newsletter.

We use Google Analytics for tracking visitors and aggregating information about the traffic to our websites. For this purpose, Google LLC cookies are used for the Google Analytics service. The collected information is completely anonymous and does not allow your identification. We track the pages you have visited and the time you spend on them, as well as how you transition from page to page within the site and what device you are using to browse. This helps us develop better content in the future by understanding what it is that people are most interested in. The Google Analytics privacy policy can be found here. You can learn more about how to opt-out of tracking in Google Analytics here. Detailed information on how the cookie information is used can be found here.

We use The Newsletter Plugin mailing system. As a result, Rocket Science Group cookies are used in connection for the MailChimp service. Typically these are used to track the pages that a user browses to after they have clicked a link to the site from our newsletter. This helps us to determine the types of content that are most popular with readers, and to generate a better browsing experience. It also allows us to determine is a newsletter subscriber makes a purchase from the online store after reading the email newsletter. This helps us to create more relevant products for our readers, and also allows us to tailor marketing to subscribers to make it more relevant to them. For example, if a subscriber has already purchased a specific product, this allows us to exclude that subscriber from any future marketing of that product, thus improving their experience. The Newsletter Plugin’s privacy policy can be viewed here.

Third-party cookies may be placed on your computer when you visit the Site by companies that run certain services we employ to maintain the Website, extend functionality, or are required for analytical purposes. These cookies allow the third parties to gather and track certain information about you, and your movements within the Website. These cookies can be manually disabled in your browser, which is configured by reviewing your browsers instructions mentioned above.
In addition to cookies, we may use web beacons, pixel tags, and other tracking technologies on the Site to help customize the Site and improve your experience. A “web beacon” or “pixel tag” is a tiny object or image embedded in a web page or email. They are used to track the number of users who have visited particular pages and viewed emails, and acquire other statistical data. They collect only a limited set of data, such as a cookie number, time and date of page or email view, and a description of the page or email on which they reside. Web beacons and pixel tags cannot be declined. However, you can limit their use by controlling the cookies that interact with them.

• Credit card payments are processed externally using Stripe, therefore it is necessary to communicate your payment information to them using SSL. You can view their privacy policy here.
• We use MailChimp to provide our email newsletter services. When a visitor decides to subscribe to our newsletter, it is necessary to send MailChimp the information that is provided in the signup form, as well as their IP address so that geographic location can be determined. You can view their privacy policy here.
• We use the accounting service 17hats to store legally required information about web orders. This information includes the name and address of the customer, which is required to determine taxation. 17hats’s privacy policy is here.  
• Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service called Akismet. They collect commenter IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself. Collection of this information is necessary to prevent spam commenting. Their privacy policy can be found here.
• Analytics are handled by a third party, Google, which may transfer information outside the European Union, EEA, or Switzerland, to the United States. Google holds user and event data for 26 months.
• When the contact form is used on the website, the information submitted in the form is sent to site administrators via Google’s G-Mail service. Google’s privacy policy can be found here.

If you upload images to the website in a form, comment field or as a guest post, 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 that appear publicly on the website.

Like many other websites, we make use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyse trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. Log Data can also help our security service detect new threats, identify malicious third parties, and provide more robust security protection for visitors and customers.

• Website hosting is provided by Creation Station who store the server log files in Switzerland. Their privacy policy can be found here.
• We also use CloudFlare to accelerate page loading and provide security services. Their privacy policy can be found here.

Below you can find a summary of how long your data is retained. You can contact us at any time if you would like to get a copy of your stored data, or if you would like to have it removed.

• Comments: 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 they fall outside our automated moderation rules.
• Contact form submissions: All data from the contact forms is stored indefinitely unless deletion/removal is requested by the original author. This is because people sometimes wish to return to the same conversation about a specific photography question that they might have asked me in the past, perhaps after putting my suggestions into practice. Due to email volume, it’s not possible to remember these individual conversations without retention of the original contact.
• Registered Accounts: If you have created an account on this website for the purposes of submitting content, or purchasing a product from the online store, we store this profile information indefinitely, as well as your purchase history so that we can we can process customer service requests efficiently and so that you can access your digital downloads through your 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.
• Email newsletter: If you have opted in to our email newsletter, all information provided during the opt-in process, as well as your IP address is stored indefinitely for the purposes of sending you the newsletter. IP addresses are used so that we can send newsletters that are more relevant. For example, if we are holding a local event, we will not email you about this event if you live a long way from it, or in a different country. This keeps email communications with you more relevant. All email communications contain an unsubscribe button, and a button that allows you to edit your email preferences to alter ow often you receive the newsletter.

If you have an account on this site, have signed up to our email newsletter 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.

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.

• This site contains embedded content from Vimeo. Their privacy policy can be found here.
• This site contains embedded content from YouTube: Their privacy policy can be found here.
• This site contains embedded content from Twitter: Their privacy policy can be found here.
• This site contains embedded content from Instagram: Their privacy policy can be found here.
• This site contains embedded content from Wistia: Their privacy policy can be found here.
• This site contains embedded content from Amazon: Their privacy policy can be found here.
• This site contains embedded content from B&H Photo: Their privacy policy can be found here.

Within the content on this website we will often link to other 3rd party websites where you can get further information about a specific topic, or where you can purchase a specific product. These 3rd party sites have their own independent privacy policies. We, therefore, have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites.

Our Website includes social media sharing features, such as the Facebook Like button, Twitter tweet button, Pinterest Pin button and others. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our sites, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy and other policies of the companies providing them.

We do not receive any data about you from third parties.

Our website uses SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology to encrypt data passing to and from the server. This ensures that your personal data is safe. Credit card transactions are processed through a gateway provider and are not stored or processed on our servers. Daily security scans are also performed on our website to look for malicious code that could pose a security threat and incoming traffic is routed through CloudFlare who provide additional security service to block malicious third-parties.

Should any event occur where customer data has been lost, stolen, or potentially compromised, our policy is to alert our customers via email no later than 48 hours of our team becoming aware of the event. We will also report such incident to any required data protection authority. We will work closely with any customers affected to determine next steps such as any end-user notifications, needed patches, and how to avoid any similar event in the future.

We do not use automatic decision-making or profiling.

In compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, all email sent from our organization will clearly state who the email is from and provide clear information on how to contact the sender. In addition, all email messages will also contain an unsubscribe button to remove yourself from our mailing list.

We believe it is important to provide added protection for children online. We encourage parents and guardians to spend time online with their children to observe, participate in and/or monitor and guide their online activity. Ruxi.photo does not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13 year old and we do not specifically market to children under the age of 13 years old.