Privacy Policy and Disclaimer

A glowing padlock over a dark blue background, containing bar graphs
A glowing padlock over a dark blue background, containing bar graphs

[Updated on September 23, 2023]

NOTE: The terms ‘website’, ‘site’ and ‘blog’ on this page refer collectively to all pages and posts on this website domain https://graphicreflections.org. Use of this website by visitors / users will be regarded as their acceptance of the terms of this Privacy Policy.

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Policy and Principle

Through this website / blog Graphic Reflections, Mr. Mayank Bhatnagar (website owner and moderator based in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India) wishes to engage in meaningful communication or dialogue with visitors and as a matter of policy and principle does not believe in collecting or using any personal data from visitors for personal gain, promotion or profit. This site does not collect any financial data nor does it feature any advertising. However, when visitors / users interact with the website, user data input is required for technical reasons — for the site to function effectively, users to be identified correctly and information to be exchanged smoothly — and it is used / collected as follows:

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Use of WordPress

This website uses WordPress software by Automattic Inc. as the core platform. 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. Automattic’s Privacy Notice explains in detail how visitor information is processed by WordPress.

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Use of Web Cookies

This website uses cookies to give visitors / users the best possible user experience. Visitors’ consent to use cookies is obtained when they first visit this site, via the cookie banner or notice that pops up at the bottom of the web page. Cookie information is stored in visitors’ web browsers and performs functions such as recognising them when they return and helping the moderator understand which sections of the site they find most interesting and useful.

When users visit the login page of this website, a temporary cookie is set to determine if their browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when they close their web browser.

When visitors leave a comment on this blog, they may opt-in to saving their name, email address and website details, which are stored in cookies. This functionality is for their convenience so that they do not have to fill in their details again when they leave another comment or participate in a comments thread. These cookies last for one year in their web browser unless deleted / cleared earlier by them.

Visitors / users can control the use of cookies by deleting stored cookies, disabling storage of cookies or selectively accepting certain cookies, via the Help, Preferences or Settings functions of their web browsers. This may, however, limit the functionality of this site. For visitors who are concerned about their privacy, it may be a good practice to clear cookies from their web browsers periodically (browsers can also be configured to automatically remove cookies). You can learn more about cookies at: www.internetcookies.org

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Comments

Kindly note: Comments on posts are currently disabled on this blog.

When visitors leave comment/s on this site / blog, data (including their e-mail ID) input in the comments form is collected along with the IP address and browser user agent string to help in spam detection. Visitors e-mail ID is used for user identification and for further communication basis the comment (if required), it is stored indefinitely in the back-end, kept private and is not visible publicly.

For users that register on this website, the personal information they provide is also stored 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.

An anonymised string created from user’s email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if he/she is using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of the comment, user’s profile picture is visible to the public in the context of the comment.

Once users’ comment/s are approved by the moderator, their name (as entered in the comments form) and website address (if they choose to share it) and the comment text is publicly visible in the Comments / Thoughts section under the relevant blog post. The full post area with comments can be seen by clicking on the title of the blog post. For example, clicking on the title of the post ‘A Kitten’s World’ will lead to the full post page: https://graphicreflections.org/a-kittens-world-infographic/ with comments visible at the bottom.

Approved and published comments (along with their metadata) remain on the website indefinitely which also helps to recognise and approve any follow-up comments by the same visitor / user automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

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Contact Form

When visitors use the Contact form and submit messages / queries on this site, the data submitted typically includes the visitor’s IP address, user agent and referrer, along with other information directly provided by the visitor such as their name, username, email address, site / social media page URL (optional) and the message itself. Messages and e-mail IDs submitted are not made public but read by the moderator only. E-mail IDs received through the contact form are used for visitor identification and for further communication if required, they are stored privately and indefinitely in the website back-end.

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E-mail Subscription

When visitors submit their e-mail id on this website for receiving blog post subscription e-mails in their mailbox, along with the e-mail ID, the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string information is also collected to help in spam detection. Their subscription request is first confirmed via an e-mail and only upon their confirmation do they start receiving subscription e-mails. Subscribers can also avail access to a subscription management page / dashboard on WordPress.com via which they can control their subscriptions to multiple websites or blogs that use WordPress (for which they will need or have to create a WordPress account). E-mail IDs submitted are kept private and an automated e-mail is sent out to subscribers every time a new blog post is published.

Every e-mail that arrives in the subscriber’s mailbox has ‘Unsubscribe’ and ‘Manage Subscription’ links. Subscribers e-mail IDs are retained in the blog back-end indefinitely or until they unsubscribe; the e-mail IDs are not publicly visible. This website does not add subscribers without first receiving their subscription request via the E-mail Subscription form.

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Post Likes

Kindly note: Post likes feature is currently disabled on this blog.

This feature — which allows users to click a ‘Like’ button on Post pages — is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com. In order to process a Like, the following information is used: WordPress.com user ID or username, 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 confirms if the user liked a specific post. If users perform a Like action from a WordPress mobile app, 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.

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Embedded Content From Other Websites

While the moderator will strive to post all content (e.g. text, images, videos, etc.) on the secure server of this website only, owing to unavoidable reasons, some articles and posts may include embedded content from other websites. Embedded content behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about visitors / viewers, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor and track their interaction with that embedded content specially if the visitor has an account with and is logged in to the other website/s.

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Where User Data is Sent

Visitor / user feedback via the contact form, e-mail IDs submitted and comments made on this site are checked through the popular and trusted automated spam detection service Akismet. Data submitted via the contact form typically includes the visitor’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and site / social media page URL (optional), along with other information directly provided by the visitor such as their name, email address, and the comment / message itself. Details of how user submitted data is processed by Akismet can be found on their Privacy page.

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How User Data is Protected

This website uses a TLS or SSL Certificate which ensures a secure connection between the user’s web browser and the server. It also uses industry standard security features to prevent unwanted intrusions with effective brute force attack protection, malware scanning and spam filtering.

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Your Rights Over Your Data

If you have commented on this site / blog, contacted the moderator using the Contact form or subscribed to blog post updates, you can request to receive information via e-mail of the personal data this site holds about you. You can also request that any personal data you have provided be erased from this website. This may not, however, include any data obliged to be stored for technical, administrative, legal, or security purposes. In this regard, please note that spam or comments not approved are usually immediately deleted. Kindly contact the moderator for any queries / requests regarding your data via the Contact form. For you data to be shared with you and / or deleted, please provide the e-mail ID you had used / submitted earlier on this site.

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The sole purpose of this website is to communicate / interact with visitors and it is thus important to understand which part/s of the world they come from and which pages or posts they access the most — for which this site uses cookie-based web analytics tools / services. Visitors’ consent to use these tools is obtained when they first visit this site, via the cookie banner or notice that pops up at the bottom of the web page. The following analytics tools are used on this website:

1. Bing Webmaster Tools — This service from Microsoft stores cookies and beacons on visitors web browsers. Beacons, also known as pixels, are small invisible graphics that can be used to detect if a web page has been accessed. With these tools, search results (for this website) can be optimised for best appearance in Bing search results. For more information on how Microsoft (including Bing services) collects user data, kindly see Microsoft Privacy Statement.

2. Google Analytics — This tool collects information and reports site usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. It uses IP address anonymization to respect visitors’ privacy. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘_ga’ cookie. Analytics reports are used to optimise this site for Google search. For more information, see Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites page. Google Analytics Privacy Document has more details about data collected by Google Analytics. Visitors can prevent Google from collecting their site usage data by installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

3. Jetpack Site Stats — This analytics feature is activated by default on all sites / blogs powered by WordPress (a part of Automattic Inc.) and provides visitor statistics to site owners / moderators. However, any piece of data explicitly identifying a specific user (IP address, WordPress.com ID, WordPress.com username, etc.) is not visible to the site owner via this feature. For example, site owners can see that a specific post has XX views, but they cannot see which specific users or 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 only for the purpose of powering the Stats feature. For more information about this feature, kindly see Jetpack Stats Support page. Automattic’s Privacy Notice contains detailed information about data collection from visitors by WordPress powered websites.

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Use of Log-based Analytics

AWStats — This free web analytics software — distributed under the GNU General Public License — does not use any cookies and instead evaluates log files that web servers create on the basis of visitor requests. While AWStats records data such as users IP addresses, geographical location, device type, operating system and web browser, this information does not personally identifies users. Unlike other web stats programs, AWstats does not transmit data to any external server.

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Use of Google Fonts

This website uses the typeface or font Albert Sans hosted at Google Fonts. This font is optimised for good legibility and readability on screens and when served by Google Fonts Web API, results in a fast and smooth user experience. The Google Fonts API is designed to limit the collection, storage, and use of end-user data. Use of the Google Fonts Web API is unauthenticated and it does not set or log cookies. Requests to the Google Fonts Web API are made to resource-specific domains, such as fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com. Font requests are separate from and don’t contain any credentials sent to google.com. For more information, kindly see the Privacy and Data Collection article on Google Fonts Support page.

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Updates to Privacy Policy

The moderator reserves the right to change or modify the Privacy Policy of this website at any time. Continued use of this site by users / visitors after any such updates shall constitute their consent to such changes.

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Contacting the Moderator

For any privacy related or other issues with this website, kindly contact the moderator via the Contact form.

Thank you!

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Disclaimer

This website has been provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis by Mr. Mayank Bhatnagar. No representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, are made as to the operation of the site, or the content provided here. You hereby expressly agree that your use of this site is at your sole risk. Mr. Mayank Bhatnagar reserves the right to modify, withdraw or delete any content on this website / blog, or change the features, functions, concept and scope of this site, at any time, at his sole discretion.

There is no scientific basis behind the content / graphics / photographs on this website, they are essentially artworks wherein the creator (Mr. Mayank Bhatnagar) has expressed his personal views / thoughts / feelings. Mr. Mayank Bhatnagar cannot be held liable for any loss, harm, damage or inconvenience — emotional, financial or physical — arising from the use of this website and / or the content published on it, even when it has been shared / published by others on other websites / blogs / documents / print material. Smooth or error and virus free functioning of this website and of the e-mails sent via this site cannot be guaranteed at all times.

The moderator of this website is not responsible for and has the right to edit or delete any comments posted or submitted by users / visitors.

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