Privacy Policy

Please note! I am committed to adhering to the GDPR and have revised website policies in order to meet their requirements (May 25th, 2018).

Who I am;

I am Charlie, and my website has been located at the address of “howchina.cn” since 2015. Known as “How China”, I cover topics on China, and the rest of Asia.

Purpose of collected personal data;

This website is using Matomo, an Open Source, self-hosted software for collecting anonymous usage statistics for this website.

The data is used to analyse the behaviour of website visitors, to identify potential pitfalls like not found pages, search engine indexing issues and to find out which contents are the most visited.

Once the data (number of visitors reaching a not found page, viewing only one page, etc.) is processed, Matomo generates reports for website owners to take action, for example, changing the layout of the pages, publishing fresh content… etc.

Matomo and this website data is hosted in the United States.

Matomo is processing the following data;

  • Cookies
  • Anonymized IP-address by removing the last 2 bytes (so 198.51.0.0 instead of 198.51.100.54)
  • Pseudo-anonymized Location of the user (generated from the anonymized IP-address)
  • Date and time
  • Title of the page being viewed
  • URL of the page being viewed
  • URL of the page that was viewed prior to the current page (if the page allows it)
  • Screen resolution
  • Time in local timezone
  • Files that were clicked and downloaded
  • Link clicks to an outside domain
  • Pages generation time
  • Country, region, city (low resolution based on IP-address
  • Main Language of the browser
  • User Agent of the browser

Comments;

When visitors leave comments on the site I 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: “automattic.com/privacy/”. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms;

Additionally this website provides a contact form which allows you to send me a direct messages and allows me to answer it directly to your email address.

Indirect data collection;

If you are using this site, the visit is logged by the host of this website (DigitalOcean). This log contains your IP-Address which allows you to be identified indirectly via your internet service provider. The collection of this data is a legal obligation and required for security. You cannot oppose it and the data is at no time used for other purposes.

Webfonts — This website is using Fonts from Google Fonts which get fetched from Google Servers when loading this website.

Basis for legitimate interest;

Processing your personal data such as cookies is helping me identify what is working and what is not on my website. For example, it helps me identify if the way I am communicating is engaging or not and how I can organize the structure of the website better.

By processing your personal data, you can profit from a website which is getting better and better. Without the data, I would not be able to provide you the service I am currently offering to you. Your data will be used only to improve the user experience on the website and help you find the information you are looking for.

Rights over your data;

As Matomo is processing personal data on legitimate interests, you can exercise the following rights:

(1) Right of access and data portability:

You can ask me at any time to access your data.

(2) Right to erasure and rectification:

You can ask me at any time to delete all the data I am processing about you.

(3) Right to object and restrict processing:

You can object to data tracking by enabling Do Not Track in your browser.

How to contact me;

You can reach me through my contact form at: “howchina.cn/contact/” and I will get back to you as soon as humanly possible.

This privacy policy was last updated: May 25th, 2018.

Text copied and edited with permission from Matomo.org (source).