Who we are
Just Go Exploring is a travel blog founded by Alex Tiffany.
Our website address is: https://justgoexploring.com
Contact email: alex@justgoexploring[dot]com
This site may collect some personal data from its users, depending on how users interact with the site. We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This Privacy Policy explains our practices and policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data that we receive.
By submitting personal data to us, you agree to us using your personal data as follows.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
We may collect certain personal data from certain users, depending on how those users interact with the site.
For example, you may voluntarily submit information to the website by leaving a comment, subscribing to a newsletter, or submitting a contact form. In each of these cases, we may collect personal information from you.
This information might include information that can be used to contact or identify you, such as your name, email address, password, IP address, usage and log data, and cookies.
This personal information is collected for various reasons. These include, but are not limited to:
- sending you newsletters and administrative communications from time to time,
- ensuring that the content on our site is presented in the most effective and convenient manner for you and your computer,
- creating your user account, identifying you as a user of the website, customizing the website for your account, and managing our user database,
- responding to your comments or inquiries,
- providing you with user support,
- interacting with external social networks and platforms,
- operating and maintaining the website, including monitoring and managing the site’s backend infrastructure and hosting,
- carrying out marketing and behavioural targeting (including display ads),
- displaying content from external platforms,
- tracking and measuring advertising on the website,
- carrying out other commercial affiliation, and
- protecting, investigating, and deterring against unauthorised or illegal activity.
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 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.
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.
Contact forms
If you use any of the contact forms on the website (e.g. on the “Contact Me” or “Personal Travel Planner” pages), we will collect the data included on that form, including your name, email address, and the content of your message.
This data is retained for customer service purposes.
Automatically-collected information
We may automatically collect certain information about you and the device with which you access our website. For example, when you use the site, we may log your IP address, operating system type, browser type, referring website, pages you viewed, and the dates/times when you accessed the website. We may also collect information about actions you take when using the site, such as links clicked.
Cookies
Cookies are small files that are stored on your browser. We may use both session cookies, which expire when you close your browser, and persistent cookies, which stay on your browser until deleted, to provide you with a more personalized experience on 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 visit our login page, 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 on the website, 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.
We may use third-party advertising companies to serve content and advertisements when you visit the website, which may use cookies.
From time to time, we may engage in marketing efforts with third-party companies, such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram, in order to market Just Go Exploring. These companies may use cookies to serve ads based on users’ prior visits to the website.
You may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies by using a corresponding setting of your internet browser. Browsers also typically allow you to delete at any time any cookies that have already been set. However, if users deactivate the setting of cookies, certain functions of our website may become unusable.
Newsletters
You have the option to voluntarily subscribe to our newsletter, which may be used for advertising purposes.
All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels, which are embedded in emails and allow an analysis of the success of online marketing campaigns. Because of these tracking pixels, we may see if and when you open an email and which links within the email you click.
This allows the website to adapt the content of future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behaviour is not passed on to third parties.
Sensitive personal information
You should never, at any time, submit sensitive personal information to the website. This includes information regarding your race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health information, sexual orientation, criminal background, trade union memberships, or your social security number.
Information relating to children
We do not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from or relating to children under the age of 16. If a parent or guardian believes that the website has personally identifiable information about a child under the age of 16 in its database, please contact us immediately and we will use our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.
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.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Who we share your data with
We may share your personal information with third parties when you explicitly authorize us to share such information.
Additionally, we may use third-party service providers to service various aspects of the website. Each third-party service provider’s use of your personal information is dictated by their respective privacy policies.
Just Go Exploring currently uses the following third-party service providers:
Google Analytics – this service tracks website usage and provides information such as referring websites and user actions on the website. Please refer to Google Analytics’ privacy policy for further information.
OptinMonster – this service is used for the purposes of lead generation, email updates, and newsletters. We store your name and email address for the purposes of delivering such communications. Please refer to OptinMonster’s privacy policy for further information.
Travelpayouts Emerald software tool – this service uses a web script to help get insight on the site’s analytics, including information about its users and their usage data. Please refer to Travelpayouts’ privacy policy for further information.
Stay22 “Let Me Allez” software tool – this service also uses a web script to help get insight on the site’s analytics, including information about its users and their usage data. Please refer to Stay22’s privacy policy for further information.
How long we retain your data
We process and store your personal data for as long as required by the purpose they have been collected for.
If you leave a comment or contact us via one of the website’s contact forms, the content 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, and/or for the purposes of customer service.
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, or sent us messages via one of the site’s contact forms, 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 your data is sent
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
We currently use the Akismet anti-spam service. This collects certain information about visitors who comment on the site, including the commenter’s 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).
Your personal data may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area.
By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.
Lawful basis of processing personal data under the GDPR
We may process personal data relating to users if any of the following applies: (a) users have given their consent for one or more specific purposes; (b) provision of data is necessary for the performance of an agreement with the user and/or for any pre-contractual obligations thereof; (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject; or (d) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party.
Your rights under the GDPR
Users based in the European Union have the following rights.
- Withdraw their consent at any time, where they have previously given their consent to the processing of their personal data.
- Object to processing of their data, if the processing is carried out on a legal basis other than consent.
- Learn if their data is being processed by us and obtain a copy of that data.
- Verify the accuracy of their data and ask for it to be updated or corrected.
- Restrict the processing of their data, under certain circumstances. In this case, we will not process their data for any purpose other than storing it.
- Have their personal data deleted or otherwise removed, under certain circumstances.
- Lodge a complaint before an appropriate data protection supervisory authority.
You can exercise the above rights by contacting us at alex@justgoexploring[dot]com or via our contact form.