Who we are

Rattastic Discussions is a fun, informative and educational space “for rat lovers to come together!”

Our website address is: rattastic-discussions.co.uk

Terms and definitions

This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) describes how Rattastic Discussions, and our affiliated services (outlined in more detail in our Terms of Use), (“Rattastic Discussions”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) collect, use, and share your Personal Information, as well as providing an explanation of the data rights you may have in regards to that Personal Information.

This Privacy Policy refers to all users of Rattastic Discussions, including unregistered visitors and registered users (collectively “Users”, “you”, or “your”) and to all Rattastic Discussions services, including our website (caitlinwalburn.wixsite.com/ratchat and any of its subdomains, the “Website”), blog (Blog, Adventures, Rattastic Crafts, Information, and any of its subdomains, the “Blog”), magazine (“Magazine”, “Rattastic Discussions Magazine”), social media (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Pinterest, collectively “Social Media”), and related services (collectively, the “Services”).

This Privacy Policy is not intended to override the terms of any contract you have with us, nor any rights you may have under other applicable data privacy laws.

Prior to accessing our Services, please read this policy and ensure that you fully understand our practises regarding your Personal Information.  If you read and fully understand our practises, and still remain opposed to them, you must immediately leave and discontinue all use of our Services.

​ If you have any questions or concerns regarding this policy, please contact us at [email protected]

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Rattastic Discussions receives, collects and stores any information you provide us with on our website, or in any other way.  

We also collect the following: 

  • Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which are used to connect your computer to the internet and allow information to be sent and received by the correct parties.
  • Email addresses
  • Computer and connection information
  • Login
  • Password
  • Computer and connection information
  • Purchase history

We also collect personally identifiable information including (but not necessarily limited to):

  • Name
  • Email
  • Communications
  • Comments
  • Feedback
  • Product reviews
  • Password
  • Payment details (including credit card information)
  • Personal profile

We may use software tools to ​collect and measure session information which includes (but is not limited to) the following:

  • Length of visits to certain pages
  • Page interaction information
  • Page response times
  • Methods used to browse away from certain pages

We collect such personal and non-personal information for the following reasons:

  • To provide users with the best experience possible
  • To provide and operate our services
  • To be able to contact our Visitors with general or personalised service-related and/or promotional notices
  • To gather statistical data which we may use to provide and improve our respective services 
  • To comply with the following regulations:
    • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)​
    • California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA)
    • Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
    • Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

GDPR is an EU regulation that serves as a framework for handling personal data from EU residents.

Rattastic Discussions may process information related to you, as outlined in this Privacy Policy and in our Terms of Use. 

Under GDPR regulations, you have several rights including, under certain circumstances, the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information
  • Request correction of your personal information
  • Request the erasure of your personal information
  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information
  • Request the transfer of your personal information
  • Object to processing of your personal information
  • Request to avoid automated decision-making

California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA)

CalOPPA is a Californian regulation that serves as a framework to protect the privacy rights and personal data of Californian residents.

The following are accessible elsewhere in this document, for your information:

  • What types of personal information we collect
  • Who we share personal information with
  • How you can review and make changes to your personal information

How you will know about changes taking place in our Privacy Policy

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

COPPA is a US regulation that serves as a way to regulate how websites gather information from children.

As stated in our Terms of Use, you must be of the legal age of majority in your jurisdiction, and possess the legal authority, right and freedom to use our website and other affiliated services.

You must also be at least 18 years of age to use our shop or to create an account.

Furthermore, you must be the required minimum age (stated by the service) to use any of our affiliated social media sites.

The following are accessible elsewhere in this document, for your information:

  • The types of personal information that are collected
  • How the personal information gets collected
  • How the personal information will be used once collected
  • How the personal information collected is shared

Rattastic Discussions has no ability to prevent any persons under 18 years of age from using our site. However, we strongly recommend parental supervision in such cases.

Furthermore, you must be a minimum of 18 years of age to use our shop or to create an account on our website.

Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)

PIPEDA is a Canadian regulation that serves as a framework to protect privacy rights of Canadian residents.

The following are accessible elsewhere in this document, for your information:

  • Who is responsible for personal information under our control (Rattastic Discussions)
  • What personal information is collected and the purpose for the personal information being collected
  • How you consent to your personal information being collected (and how you can change this at any time)
  • How to update your personal information
  • How your personal information in safeguarded
  • How to access your personal information

​ Furthermore, by visiting rattastic-discussions.co.uk website you accept and consent to the terms described in this policy.

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

When you use the contact form, Rattastic Discussions may collect, use and store the following information:

  • Name
  • Email address
  • Subject of email
  • Content of your message

Magazine

By sending Rattastic Discussions a submission for the magazine you agree that Rattastic Discussions can publish your submission in the magazine.

You can access the latest issue of the magazine on our homepage (rattastic-discussions.co.uk). Rattastic Discussions keeps a digital copy of all previous magazines. If you would like to access a past issue of Rattastic Discussions Magazine, please contact us using the contact page on our website.

Shop

Details on how we collect/store/process your personal information in regards to our shop can be found in ‘How we safeguard your information’.

Rattastic Discussions may record this information in a secure online document as well as having a hard copy of this information. This information, excluding nonpersonal information (orders, dates, quantities, etc) which may be used for statistical and tax purposes, will be destroyed after a period of 6 months from the date of your order, unless in the case where a return or refund is requested or issued. In the case of return and refunds, please refer to our Returns and Refunds page for more details. Furthermore, in the case of returns and refunds, personal information will be destroyed 6 months after the return/refund has been issued, or in the case that the issue has been otherwise resolved.

Cookies

This website uses cookies. A cookie is a small file which is placed in your computer’s hard drive.  They are used to improve user experience on websites by helping to personalise it to the user’s settings. If you want to read about what cookies are, you can at All About Cookies.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. 

The following links may be helpful if you’d like to decline cookies. (Note: this may prevent you from taking full advantage of 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, 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.

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.

Analytics

Google analytics tracks information and reports on website traffic.

To opt out of google analytics click here.

Who we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

Rattastic Discussions is hosted on the WordPress.org platform. WordPress.org provides us with the platform where we post our content. This content is hosted with Bluehost. To read about how WordPress.org and Bluehost stores your data, please refer to their privacy policies.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment 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.

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.

How we safeguard your information

Information that you provide to Rattastic Discussions will be held on our website. As our website is hosted on the WordPress.org platform and hosted by BlueHost, your data may be stored through WordPress.org and Bluehost data storage, databases and the general WordPress.org and Bluehost applications.

Furthermore, information received by Rattastic Discussions may be recorded in a secure online document. This information includes (but is not limited to) the following:

  • Submissions for the magazine
  • Comments on blog posts (for example, comments with suggestions)
  • Emails received by us

In addition to this, if you make a purchase at our shop (be it on the website, or via one or all of our social media accounts), Rattastic Discussions may record your personal information in a secure online document, as well as having a hard copy of this information. The following is the information that Rattastic Discussions may record in regard to you if you choose to make a purchase at our shop:

  • Your name
  • Your email address
  • Your address
  • Details about the product(s) you have purchased
  • Any extra instructions/requests you may have

Rattastic Discussions may also collect payment details (including credit card information). Rattastic Discussions uses PayPal to process transactions. We recommend you read their privacy policy (which can be found here), before making a purchase at our shop.

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.

How do we communicate with our site visitors?

We may contact you to notify you regarding any of the following:

  • To poll your opinion through surveys or questionnaires
  • To send updates about Rattastic Discussions
  • For any other way that is necessary to contact you  

For these purposes we may contact you via email.

Links to external websites

This website may contain external links. Once you have used these links to leave rattastic-discussions.co.uk, Rattastic Discussions does not have control over that other website. For that reason, Rattastic Discussions cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information you provide on the new website. You should therefore be cautious and make sure to read the privacy policy on the website in question.

Public display of personal information

The following are instances where your personal information may be displayed publicly:

  • If you comment on our blog
  • In the magazine
  • On your personal profile with us

In the above instances, the following information may be displayed:

  • Your name
  • Your rat’s name
  • Your photo (or a photo of your pet)
  • Your public profile information
  • Anything else you choose to include (e.g. in a blog comment or in a magazine submission)

By commenting on a blog post, submitting something to the magazine, or by creating a personal profile with us, you agree to the above personal information being put on public display, as well as with the rest of this Privacy Policy.

Banned Users

If you have been found to break our Code of Conduct, Rattastic Discussions may keep a record of your details (Name, email, login details for our accounts). If you would like to withdraw your consent for this, please see ‘How can you withdraw your consent?’ below.

How can you withdraw your consent?

If you don’t want us to process your data anymore, please contact us at [email protected]

Links to privacy policies that may be of interest

Rattastic Discussions recommends that you refer to, and make sure you understand and agree with, the following privacy policies:

Privacy Policy Updates

Rattastic Discussions may amend and/or update this privacy policy at any time. Changes will be published here and will take effect immediately. It is your responsibility to check this page regularly to ensure you are happy with any changes.

(Effective for all users from February 6th 2021)