We take your personal data and privacy very seriously at The Sonic Stadium. This Privacy Policy outlines all of the ways in which we may collect and store a user’s personal information, who we may share it with and the reasons why we do so.
This Privacy Policy may change from time to time – whenever it does, we will ask for you to re-read and agree to the Policy. By agreeing and continuing to browse The Sonic Stadium, you agree to be bound by this Policy.
The Privacy Policy on this page applies to your use of The Sonic Stadium website only. We have a separate Privacy Policy in place for users of the SSMB (Sonic Stadium Message Board), which you can read here.
This Privacy Policy was last updated 26 July 2018, where we added a paragraph relating to ‘Social Media Shares’ under ‘Additional Information’.
Who We Are
The Sonic Stadium is a fan-site dedicated to news and reviews focusing on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. We are based in the United Kingdom and serve an international audience. Our staff is made up exclusively of volunteer enthusiast writers. Our website address is: http://www.sonicstadium.org, and users can contact us via our group email address at contact@sonicstadium.org.
What Personal Data We Collect, and Why We Collect It
COMMENTS
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 anonymised 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.
MEDIA
If you upload images to the website, 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 on the website.
COOKIES
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.
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. This includes embedded content from social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.
These external 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.
ANALYTICS
We use Google Analytics to track the number of visitors that come to our website. No personally identifiable data is gathered by default, and your consent is required to activate the Google Analytics beacon before we track your visit.
THIRD-PARTY ADVERTISING
We have contracted with third parties to monitor certain pages for the purpose of advertising products and services on this website. When you visit these pages, information is collected by these third parties (not by The Sonic Stadium) using cookies, web beacons and/or other monitoring technologies.
These technologies report traffic, statistics and “click-throughs” of adverts. No personally-identifiable information is collected by these third parties.
Advertising on The Sonic Stadium is currently disabled, effective May 25 2018, while we revise and investigate the data gathering implications. We will update this Privacy Policy when we are comfortable to re-instate whilst safeguarding your data.
Who We Share Your Data With
The Sonic Stadium only collects user data in order to improve the visitor experience on-site. These improvements range from convenience (keeping you logged in so you may easily make multiple comments on the website), to recommending content based on the news stories you have visited most frequently.
No personal information gathered on The Sonic Stadium will be sold, rented or leased to any third parties.
Third parties that collect your (non-personally identifiable) data via use of this website – be it social media platforms from embedded content, or cookies created by third-party advertising partners – may have policies in place that allow them to share that data with other parties. Throughout our own Privacy Policy, we have identified and linked to the individual Privacy Policies of the relevant third parties; we recommend you read these for more information.
How Long We Retain Your Data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide 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.
What Rights You Have Over Your Data
If you have an account on this site, 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.
Where We Send Your Data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. This detection service is operated by Automattic, the producer of a WordPress plugins called Jetpack and Akismet. Cookies relating to comments, mobile theme, and comment/post subscription may be sent to Automattic for screening purposes – which may end up on servers based outside the EU.
No personally identifiable data is ever transmitted externally – including to Automattic. You can see exactly what kind of information is handled by Automattic by going to their Cookie Policy page (click here) and reading the “Visitors to Sites with Jetpack installed” section.
Requesting Your Data
You may request an audit of your data that we hold on our servers by reaching out to us at contact@sonicstadium.org – please make sure you clearly mention ‘GDPR‘ in your Subject header. Once we verify your identity, you will be sent a list of information we have gathered – mostly comments you might have posted. You can then elect to either amend the information in some way, or delete the data (comments will not be deleted, but will be anonymised)
Additional Information
AFFILIATE ADVERTISING
The Sonic Stadium is a participant in the Amazon EU, US, Canada, China and Japan Associates Programmes, affiliate advertising programmes designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, Amazon.es, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.cn and Amazon.jp.
We have similar arrangements with the following organisations: eBay, Play-Asia, CDJapan, Forbidden Planet, and various other companies through Digital Window and TradeDoubler.
Affiliate Advertising is currently disabled, effective May 25 2018, while we revise and investigate the data gathering implications. We will update this Privacy Policy when we are comfortable to re-instate whilst safeguarding your data.
SOCIAL MEDIA SHARE COUNTS
This website contains a plugin called MashShare, which allows visitors to share interesting posts they find on The Sonic Stadium with their friends and followers on various social media networks. Part of this plugin involves tracking the total number of shares for each individual post – this information is gathered by a third party service called SharedCount (privacy policy can be found here), and is not collected or stored by The Sonic Stadium. SharedCount gathers its data from user activity on the following social networks: Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon. Please refer to the privacy policies and data sharing agreements of these social media platforms to amend or request further information.