Privacy Notice

Last updated: June 19, 2023.

IrishCycle.com is committed to protecting your privacy mainly by limiting the data collected where possible.

This Privacy Notice policy applies to IrishCycle.com sites (IrishCycle.com and CyclingForAll.ie) and governs data collection and usage. By using IrishCycle.com website/s, you consent to the data practices described in this policy.

About IrishCycle.com

IrishCycle.com — with its main address as https://irishcycle.com — is a website focused mainly on providing journalistically-produced content such as news, opinion and feature articles.

This website is mainly run by Cian Ginty, who you can contact at cian.ginty@gmail.com or by post at Cian Ginty, Killala Road, Ballina, Co Mayo, Ireland.

This website is mainly concerned with the journalistic coverage of cycling in Ireland, thus, we may rely on the data processing and freedom of expression and information protection section of the Data Protection Act 2018 or broader Irish and European law.

Collection of your Personal Information

IrishCycle.com collects personally identifiable information for the following reasons and mainly on an opt-in basis. We have also tried to explain how we collect data which may or may not be personal (ie search terms).

There is a large number of references to WordPress, this is because this website is proudly built using WordPress and it manages the systems to run the website. WordPress’s parent company Automattic and some services are offered by sub-divisions such as Akismet, which deals with anti-spam measures on comments and contact forms.

You can find Automattic’s privacy policy here (this applies to WordPress, Gravatar, and Akismet), Automattic’s Privacy Notice for Visitors to Our Users’ Sites here, and a note on privacy with Akismet here.

Statistics and other analytical data

Statistical and other analytical information about your computer hardware, software and internet connection is automatically collected when visiting IrishCycle.com. This information can include your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring website addresses.

IrishCycle.com keeps track of the articles, websites and pages our customers visit within our website in order to determine what services are most frequently used and articles read.

The 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. This website’s owner and editors do not have access to any of this information via this feature. For example, a site owner can see that a specific post has 285 views, but he/she cannot see which specific users/accounts viewed that post. Stats logs — containing visitor IP addresses and WordPress.com usernames (if available) — are retained by Automattic for 28 days and are used for the sole purpose of powering this feature.

What’s tracked includes post and page views, video plays, outbound link clicks, referring URLs and search engine terms, and country. When this module is enabled, Jetpack also tracks performance on each page load that includes the Javascript file used for tracking stats. This is exclusively for aggregate performance tracking across Jetpack sites in order to make sure that our plugin and code is not causing performance issues. This includes the tracking of page load times and resource loading duration (image files, Javascript files, CSS files, etc.).

Commenting under articles and pages

Data such as your email address, name, and IP address are collected for the purposes of commenting under articles and pages on this website. A secondary use is to block spam or block users who post against IrishCycle.com’s Comments Policy or legal requirements.

This service is offered via WordPress.com and checked for anti-spam reasons by the WordPress-provided Akismet system. This means your data including name, email address and IP is sent to those trusted services.

Commenter’s name, email address, site URL (if provided via the comment form), timestamp, and IP address. 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. Akismet (also owned by Automattic) is enabled on this site, and the following information is sent to the service for the sole purpose of spam checking: commenter’s name, email address, site URL, IP address, and user agent.

That’s actively tracked for comments including the comment author’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided during the comment submission) are stored in cookies. The data includes All data and metadata (see above) associated with comments. This includes the status of the comment and, if Akismet is enabled on the site, whether or not it was classified as spam by Akismet.

Users commenting must also agree to this website’s comment policy and action will likely be taken to block or ban commenters who are abusive, disruptive or break the comment policy or the law. In extreme cases, details will be shared with law enforcement.

Email and WordPress subscriptions

IrishCycle.com uses and/or points users towards WordPress’ Jetpack for embedded email subscriptions; and Google’s Feedburner for linked email subscriptions and for RSS services. These services are offered by the named providers and offer automated unsubscribe processes.

The data used includes initiating and processing 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 the case of WordPress subscribers, 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.

Contact and other forms

Akismet is enabled on the site for comment and the contact form submission data — IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (also owned by WordPress owners Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. The actual submission data is stored in the database of this site and is emailed directly to the admins of this website. This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and the message.

Contact or other forms which mention reCAPTCHA — a service provided by Google to confirm users to sites are human and not bots — are subject to agreeing to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Competitions

Occasionally IrishCycle.com runs competitions (such as the previous #shopbybike competitions). We generally look for images and content generated to be posted publicly to social media and it will be likely reposted on this website. General details (ie name/s and general location) of the winners of competitions be posted publicly and, if you win, you will be contacted for details such as your postal address if required to send you a prize/s. Such details will also be shared with relevant competition sponsors where required, ie them posting you a prize/s.

Links and linked buttons

IrishCycle.com encourages you to review the privacy statements of websites you choose to link to through IrishCycle.com so that you can understand how those websites collect, use and share your information. IrishCycle.com is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on websites or services you click on via links or buttons.

Sharing by email buttons or links

When you choose to share content via email, the following information is used: sharing party’s name and email address (if the user is logged in, this information will be pulled directly from their account), IP address (for spam checking), user agent (for spam checking), and email body/content. This content will be sent to Akismet (also owned by Automattic) so that a spam check can be performed. Additionally, if reCAPTCHA (by Google) activates, the sharing party’s IP address will be shared with that service and the use is subject to agreeing to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Gravatar Hovercards

This feature is only used if you are a user of Gravatar / WordPress. If you are, it will send a hash of your email address (if logged in to this site or WordPress.com — or you submit a comment on this site using your email address that is attached to an active Gravatar profile) to the Gravatar service (also owned by Automattic) in order to retrieve your profile image for use with your comment.

WordPress likes

This is for registered WordPress users only: In order to process a comment likes, the following information is used: WordPress.com user ID/username (you must be logged in to use this feature), the local site-specific user ID (if the user is signed in to the site on which the like occurred), and a true/false data point that tells us if the user liked a specific comment. If you perform a like action from one of the WordPress mobile apps, some additional information is used to track the activity: IP address, user agent, timestamp of event, blog ID, browser language, country code, and device info.

WordPress notifications

This feature is only accessible to registered users of the site who are logged in to WordPress.com when using this site. Data used include IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, and country code. Some visitor-related information or activity may be sent to the site owner via this feature. This may include email address, WordPress.com username, site URL, email address, comment content, follow actions, etc. This process also tracks sending notifications (i.e. when we send a notification to a particular user), opening notifications (i.e. when a user opens a notification that they receive), performing an action from within the notification panel (e.g. liking a comment or marking a comment as spam), and clicking on any link from within the notification panel/interface.

Disclosing information publicly

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through any IrishCycle.com comment system or public message boards systems or public social media channel, this information may be collected and used by others. Once your post a comment (for example, under an article) it will be viewable to anybody or search engines which access this website.

Requirements by law or to protect from damage

IrishCycle.com will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on IrishCycle.com or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of IrishCycle.com; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of IrishCycle.com, or the public.

Payments

Payments are processed by Stripe directly (and, if you previously signed up on KoFi.com, by Stripe via KoFi.com). With the use of subscribe buttons or links, you are transferred to Stripe. Because payments are processed by Stripe, we recommend reviewing its privacy and other policies.

Cookies

As default, IrishCycle.com currently does not use cookies for viewing this website. However, in limited cases, cookies may be issued by third-party providers if you choose to save settings, click ‘remember me’ when commenting when this website needs to confirm you are a human or a bot, and/or subscribe via your WordPress account as noted above.

Search

The search form included in this site sends any of the visitor-chosen search filters and query data in order to process a search request on the WordPress.com servers.

Data location

This website’s domain name and servers, including databases, are hosted by GoDaddy — within GoDaddy hosting settings, we have this manually switched to European serves and this is recorded as being based in Frankfurt in Germany, ie within the EU.

Emails sent to us are via the above-mentioned servers or directly to our Gmail account. Gmail has servers in Europe, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium, but at the time of writing this it is unclear if our account is hosted within these EU countries or elsewhere.

WordPress and its parent and sister companies are hosted in the EU and the United States.

Stripe transfers data to countries it operates in including the United States.

Security of your personal information

IrishCycle.com takes all reasonable steps to secure your personal information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure and secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorised access, use or disclosure.

Your rights with removing or updating your information

If at any point you believe the information we process on you is incorrect you can request to see this information and have it corrected or deleted. If you wish to raise a complaint about how we have handled your personal data, you can contact us to have the matter investigated — cian.ginty@gmail.com.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission.

Changes to this statement

IrishCycle.com will occasionally update this privacy notice to reflect service changes, legal changes, compliance with existing changes and/or feedback from website readers or users. IrishCycle.com encourages you to periodically review this notice to be informed of how your data is being processed.

Contact information

Cian Ginty at cian.ginty@gmail.com or by post at Cian Ginty, Killala Road, Ballina, Co Mayo, Ireland.

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