COOKIE & PRIVACY POLICY

by visiting this website, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

COOKIE POLICY

my website uses cookies to improve your user experience. you can find out more about cookies, how i use them and how to control them below.

by using YOUST.art you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with this cookie policy.

if you do not consent to the use of these cookies please disable them following the instructions in this cookie policy below so that cookies from this website cannot be placed on your device.

what is a cookie?

don’t know what a cookie is? it’s a delicious treat, typically in form of a baked food that is small, flat and sweet. it usually contains flour, sugar, some type of oil or fat and in my fancy a whole lot of chocolate chips. okay, just kidding… cookies are small text files that, if you agree to their use, are placed on your machine. they contain information that is transferred to your hard drive.  

if you want to know more about cookies in general, you can look it up here.

what’s the matter with cookies?

some people are afraid of cookies because they believe one can find out if they (those people with the fear) visited a porn site the night before or are secretly interested in satanic new wave music. that’s why hardly anyone wants a website to store cookies.

but in fact, websites without cookies are barely working nowadays. and as long as only first-party cookies are used, it’s not possible to track the thing about the satanic new wave porn sites, don’t worry. my website also uses cookies – but only the “good” first-party cookies or at least as far as i am aware of.

all information collected is aggregated and therefore anonymous; it is only used to improve how the website works.

types of cookies

functional: these cookies are used to ensure you can correctly navigate my websites, play videos, or share pages via social media.

performance: these cookies are used to analyse trends, administer the website, track visitor movements and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. i use the information to compile reports and to help me improve my website. these cookies are anonymous and not linked to personally identifiable information, because i really don’t care about your satanic new wave porn obsession.

third party cookies: these cookies are used to third parties (such as google) to enable their services to work, for example google captcha on forms or google maps. some third parties use their cookies for advertising purposes. i have no control over these cookies and for this reason provide a link to the third party’s privacy policy, where you may have the option to opt-out of their data collection.

how to manage cookies

the good news: all recent versions of popular browsers give you a level of control over cookies. you can set your browser to accept or reject all, or certain, cookies. for instructions on how to manage cookies, for example how to clear and block cookies, please read the HELP section of your browser. please be aware that some areas of my website may not function after you have changed your cookie settings.

PRIVACY POLICY

article 12 of the EU data protection regulation (GDPR) requires me to explain to you “in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form [and] using clear and plain language” what is happening here on this website YOUST.art – and since i can not assume that you’ve been studying computer science, law or rocket engineering for five years, buckle up, because that’s what i’ll do right here.

first, i will not give away or sell any of the information you provide when using this website – this includes your name and email address – to anyone, ever, full stop, the end. it just ain’t happening. 

because i’m also a private person and i take the protection of your personal data very seriously.

data collection – what and why

the good news: the use of this website is possible without providing any personally relevant data. any provision of personal data (e.g. name or email address) occurs entirely on a voluntary basis. this data will not be provided to any third parties – or should it ever occur, never without your express approval.

this website is officially hosted by me. i have outsourced the hosting to a major european hosting provider. i have not (yet) closed a written data processing agreement with myself for this domain [youst.art], but i have internally verbally assured that i will always treat my hosting data very carefully.

further am i used wordpress.org to build my site. by default wordpress does not collect any personal data about visitors, and only collects the data shown on the user profile screen from registered users. however some of the plugins i’m using to offer you a better user experience may collect personal data. you can find the relevant information below.

google analytics

this website uses google analytics to help me understand how visitors use YOUST.art. the data collected by google is such as what browser or device has been used and, for example, identify whether they have visited my website before, what they have previously viewed or clicked on, and how they found me. the information is anonymous and only used for statistical purposes, and it helps me to analyse patterns of user activity and to develop a better user experience, such as optimising the content and offer the best possible information about my artwork. 

 
i only use google analytics with IP anonymisation activated. the mapping of data is therefore not possible. please see google analytics’ privacy policy and terms of service here. 

social networks facebook, instagram and youtube

my website links to my social media channels, such as facebook, instagram and youtube. the social media widgets are identifiable by a logo.

when you click on one of these links, the social network receives information that you have accessed the respective page from my website. if you are logged into the social network, the social network can assign the visit to your account.

if you do not want social networks to receive information about your visit to my website, please log off the social networks before visiting YOUST.art.

for information on the purpose and scope of data collection and how the data is processed and used by the social network, as well as your rights in this respect and setting options for protecting your privacy, please visit the privacy policy of the respective social network – and don’t be shocked, by signing up for any of these social networks you have already sold your soul and probably the one of your firstborn to the devil. 

please see facebook’s privacy policy here.

please see instagram’s privacy policy here.

please see youtube’s privacy policy here.

comments

you are welcome to comment on my blog here on YOUST.art.

however, please keep it civilised. comments will be monitored and they will be deleted if they:

◦ are sexist, homophobic, racist, or abusive or deemed otherwise offensive to me

◦ contain links to content that does not add anything of value

◦ advertise products or services

◦ exceed the number of for me bearable swear words. this number may vary from day to day.

◦ include spam

i will also block you from posting any further comments if you don’t abide by the above rules.

this comment policy is subject to change at any time. thank you for your understanding.

whatsoever, when you leave comments on YOUST.art the data shown in the comments form will be collected, and also your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection (at this point a warm Привет! to all the russian spam bots that try to use my comment sections to push their uncanny and probably illegal websites).

after all, for the name and the email address, you can work with pseudonyms – or just lie, that’s okay for me. with the IP address it gets a little harder – but hey, if it’s too private for you, use a proxy. love it or leave it.

and if you are using gravatar, an anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) is used to link you to your comment. after approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

please see gravatar’s privacy policy here.

contact forms

to make it easier for you to get in touch with me, i’m using the wpforms contact form plugin. when you submit a message through this form, it captures your name, email and message, so i can answer your request. you could work with pseudonyms and a fake email, but then i won’t be able to get back to you. so if you are uncomfortable with providing this information, don’t use this feature.

please see wpform’s privacy policy here.

e-mail communication

i display an email widget throughout my website. by clicking on it, you can send me a direct email.

if you send me an e-mail, you have to live with the fact that i receive data from you. i will then be able to see your e-mail address, possibly also your IP address and if i make a real effort and manually evaluate the X-header of your e-mail, i might even be able to see what your computer is called from which you have send the message. this is neither magic nor hacking, but an internet standard.

anyone who can read is able to access this data. this is due to technical standards – and has been so for many years. if you send me your data unsolicited, you can assume that i will protect your e-mail as well or bad as all my other e-mails. if at any time you think that i should delete your unsolicited sent e-mail, you may ask me politely – but i won’t promise anything.

again, if you can not live with it, don’t send me an e-mail.

newsletter

you can sign up for my very own newsletter.

i use the third party provider, mailchimp, to deliver my electronic newsletter. i gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help me monitor and improve my newsletter.

by subscribing to my newsletter with content about my artwork, you have issued the following declaration of consent: “yes, i want to subscribe to the email newsletter offered by YOUST artwork.” and you agree to the receiving and the procedures described.

for the registration of my newsletter i use the so-called double opt-in procedure, that means, after signing up for it on my website, you’ll receive an e-mail asking you to confirm your registration. this confirmation is necessary so nobody can register with your email without your knowledge.

for legal requirements, the registration for the newsletter will be logged in order to prove the registration process. this includes the storage of the login and the confirmation time, as well as the IP address. further, the changes to your data stored with mailchimp will be logged.

to subscribe to the newsletter, please enter your email as well as your first and last name. this information is only used to personalise the newsletter because i think it looks a lot neater like that.

mailchimp then uses this above bespoke information such as email and name to send and evaluate the newsletters on my behalf, but never to write you directly or to pass them on to third parties

please see mailchimp’s privacy policy here.

in order to measure the performance of my newsletter they contain a tracking so that i can tell how much traffic those emails send to my site. i can also track, at an individual level, whether the user has opened and clicked on the email. i rarely use the latter information at a personal level, rather i use it to understand open and click rates on my emails to try and improve them. sometimes i do use the personal information e.g. to re-email people who didn’t click the first time.

if you don’t want any your email activity tracked then you should not sign up/unsubscribe from my newsletter.

of course you can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the end of each newsletter.

data protection queries

for any questions regarding the collection, processing or use of your personal data, or if you require information, want to update or delete data, or to revoke a given consent, please drop me a line via

privacy@youst.art.

final provision

everybody is going nuts about the GDPR, so please take the words of EU justice commissioner věra jourová, who is responsible for introducing the regulation, into account, who said “the GDPR is based on common sense”. please use yours before sending me any legal letters for missing, incomplete or insufficiently imbued aspects of the GDPR – as i am just a small artist who wants to display her artwork and really, really doesn’t care about your satanic new wave porn obsession…

many thanks.

last updated on june 5^th 2018

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