This privacy policy will explain how I (Victor Semionov) use the personal data I collect from you when you use my website (photographerexplorer.com).
My website helps photographers connect with future clients.
Photographers can create listings, containing their business information and portfolio photographs.
Anyone can then find these listings, view their information and photographs, and contact the photographers.
Photographer information and portfolios are treated as non-confidential and are made publicly available.
You, as a photographer, may submit your personal information, instead of company information, and you may upload your personal photographs.
If you do so, please understand, that your data will not be private.
Topics:
What data do I collect?
I collect the following data:
- Profile information (your name and profile picture)
- Contact information (your email address(es), telephone number and website address)
- Security credentials (your account password and social media access tokens)
- Business information (name, description, location, email address, telephone number(s), website address, and social media links)
- Portfolio photographs
- Messages to other users
- Photographer recommendations
- Messages and feedback to me
- Testimonials to my services
- Abuse reports
- Search information (your searched locations and photographer names)
- Location information (your city, geographical coordinates, and address)
- Device information (your IP address, browser version, and operating system version)
- Access information (which pages you visit on my website, when you visit them, and from which pages you followed links to them)
- Cookie information
If you purchase a paid subscription, your payment information is securely collected by my reseller, Paddle.
I do not receive your payment information (credit card number, PayPal account, etc).
I do not track your location, but it may be recorded as a search location in technical tools like server logs, error reports, and performance data.
I use Google Analytics to collect information about which pages are visited and how my website is used.
Your personal data is anonymized, and cannot be used to identify you.
I have implemented Google reCAPTCHA on my website.
reCAPTCHA works by collecting hardware and software information, such as device and application data, and sending these data to Google for analysis.
Your use of reCAPTCHA is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
I use Hotjar in order to better understand my users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience.
Hotjar is a technology service that helps me better understand my users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables me to build and maintain my service with user feedback.
Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on my users’ behavior and their devices.
This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display my website.
Hotjar stores this information on my behalf in a pseudonymized user profile.
Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on my behalf.
For further details, please see the "about Hotjar" section of Hotjar’s support site.
How do I collect your data?
You directly provide me with most of the data I collect. I collect and process the data when you:
- Sign up for an account on my website, or update your account via the settings pages
- Create a photographer listing on my website, or update your listing via its pages
- Upload photographs to your listing
- Send a message to another user, or reply to a message
- Submit a photographer recommendation, via the recommendation form
- Send me a message or provide feedback, via the contact and feedback forms
- Submit an abuse report for a listing or conversation
- Search photographers on my website (I collect your search information)
- Use the Detect button to automatically fill your current location, when searching for photographers or creating a listing
- Send me an email
Additionally, when you use or view my website, I automatically collect your device information, access information, cookie information, and your city.
I may also receive your data indirectly from the following sources:
- Social media sites (Google and Facebook), when you use them to sign up for an account on my website, or log into an existing one
- My reseller (Paddle), when you purchase or manage a paid subscription
How will I use your data?
I collect your data so that I can:
- Allow you to search for photographers near your location
- Allow you to publish listings for your businesses and showcase your work
- Suggest popular photographers, located near you
- Enable you to communicate with other users and with me
- Enable you to recommend photographers and to receive recommendations
- Notify you when users send you messages and recommendations
- Manage your account, and send you important security and account-related emails
- Fulfil your subscription orders
- Display times and dates in your local timezone
- Protect you from unsolicited commercial messages (spam)
- Protect you from inappropriate user content and messages
- Protect your data and my website from unauthorized access and unlawful use
- Troubleshoot errors in my website and improve its performance
- Email you with special offers on products and services I think you might like
- Improve my website by understanding which of its parts are of greatest interest
Who will I share your data with?
Third parties
To provide my services and operate my business, I need to share your data with the following services:
Additionally, to comply with laws and regulations, I may need to share your data with the following entities:
- Accountant(s)
- Attorney(s)
- Financial, legal and government authorities, if required
Your contacts
When you message another user, I will share with them:
- Your name and profile picture
- Your message text
If you send the message as a guest (without registering and logging in), I will also share:
- Your email address
- Your telephone number
All website visitors
When you create a listing, I will display the following data publicly:
- Your name and profile picture
- Your business information
- Your portfolio photographs
When you recommend a photographer, I will display the following data publicly on the listing's page:
- Your name and profile picture
- Your website address
- Your recommendation text
When you send me a testimonial to my services, I will display the following data publicly on the home page:
- Your name and profile picture
- Your website address
- Your testimonial text
I do not share your email address(es) with other users or visitors.
However, if I need to display your name, and you have not provided it to me, I will instead use your account's username, which may be based on the first part of your email address (before the @ sign).
For example, if your email address is [email protected], and you have not provided your name, I will show jsmith to users you message.
To protect your privacy, I will warn you whenever this is about to happen.
How do I protect your data?
I shall take appropriate technical measures to protect your data.
I collect an adequate amount of personal data, relevant for carrying out my services and operating my website.
I receive and transmit your data over encrypted internet connections.
I share your data only with trusted third parties, who also respect the security of your personal information and process it in accordance with the law.
I do not allow access to your data by anyone else.
When your data is no longer necessary to me, I either delete it, or I anonymize it so it can no longer identify you.
How long do I keep your data?
In my database and storage
I will keep most of your data for as long as you have an account on my website.
This includes profile information, contact information, security credentials, business information, portfolio photographs, messages to other users, photographer recommendations, and testimonials to my services.
Once your account is closed, I will delete your information from my database and storage immediately.
If you send me messages or provide feedback (via the contact and feedback forms), I will retain your name and email address for up to two years.
Before this time period expires, I will anonymize your data to protect your privacy.
I will keep the message texts and feedback ratings for an indefinite period of time.
I do this for my future reference.
If you send messages to other users as a guest (without registering and logging in), I will retain your name, email address and telephone number for up to two years.
Before this time period expires, I will anonymize your data to protect your privacy.
I will keep the message texts for an indefinite period of time.
I do this for the other users' future reference.
If you submit abuse reports, I will keep their descriptions for an indefinite period of time.
I do this in order to protect users in the future, and to be able to investigate your reports even if you close your account before I have a chance to do look at them.
I keep your user account login history for 30 days, your viewed listings for 7 days, and your active sessions for 14 days.
This includes your IP address.
I may keep your data for longer periods of time, if I am required to do so by law, or if I pursue legal action against you.
For example, I may do this in case of financial fraud or other unlawful use of my website.
Finally, I make periodic backups of my database, which I keep for one year.
Therefore, I will continue storing, in the form of backup archives, all of your data, which was previously deleted from my database, for one additional year.
In my email
If you send me emails, I will keep them for an indefinite period of time.
I do this in order to be able to answer any future questions you may have.
Additionally, I keep an archive of the emails that the website sends to you.
This includes account and message notifications, and marketing messages.
I do this to better support you in case you have any problems with the website or your account, as well as to monitor the operation of the website and and the activity on it.
I keep these archived emails for up to a year.
Other data
Rejected email addresses are kept by Amazon Web Services for 14 days.
Server logs are kept in Papertrail for up to a year.
Error reporting data is kept in Sentry for up to 90 days.
All of these include mostly device information, access information, and email addresses, but may contain traces of other personal data.
Usage data in Google Analytics is kept for 26 months.
For up to date information about the retention of your data, collected by Paddle, Google reCAPTCHA, and Google Maps, please see their privacy policies:
Marketing
I would like to send you information about products and services of mine, that I think you might like.
If you have agreed to receive marketing messages, you may always opt out.
You have the right at any time to stop me from contacting you for marketing purposes.
If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, please disable newsletters and updates in your account settings.
What are your data protection rights?
I would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:
- The right to access - you have the right to request from me copies of your personal data. I may charge you a small fee for this service.
- The right to rectification - you have the right to request that I correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request from me to complete the information you believe is incomplete.
- The right to erasure - you have the right to request that I erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
- The right to restrict processing - you have the right to request that I restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
- The right to object to processing - you have the right to object to my processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
- The right to data portability - you have the right to request that I transfer the data that I have collected to another entity, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
- If you make a request, I have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact me by email at [email protected].
What are cookies?
Cookies are files, saved on your computer by websites that you visit.
The next time you visit a website, which saved cookies, your browser sends the cookies back to the website.
Cookies are commonly used to recognize returning visitors - without cookies, websites would not be able to log you in easily.
A common undesired use of cookies is to track your activity across different websites.
When you visit my website, I may collect information from you automatically through cookies.
For further information, visit allaboutcookies.org.
How do I use cookies?
I use cookies in a variety of ways, to improve your experience on my website, including:
- Keeping you signed in
- Saving your preferences
- Showing you the most popular photographers
- Protecting your account from unauthorized access
- Displaying messages when you perform actions
- Protecting my website from malicious traffic
- Understanding how my website is used
What types of cookies do I use?
There are a number of different types of cookies. However, I use the following:
-
Strictly necessary cookies - I use these cookies so that I can:
- recognize you on my website (the sessionid cookie)
- protect your account security (the csrftoken cookie)
- display messages in response to your actions (the messages cookie)
- serve randomly-ordered search results the same way each time you visit (the search_seed cookie)
- protect the security of my website (the Cloudflare cookies, whose names contain cf)
-
Preference cookies - I use these cookies to store your preferences and apply them each time you visit. Namely:
- your language preference (the language cookie)
-
Statistics cookies - I use these cookies to collect information about:
- the popularity of the photographers on my website (the visitor_id cookie)
-
Analytics cookies (the Google Analytics and Hotjar cookies, whose names begin with _g and _hj, respectively) - I use these cookies to collect information about which pages are visited and how my website is used.
Your personal data is anonymized or pseudonymized, and cannot be used to identify you.
How to manage cookies
You can setup your browser to not accept cookies, and remove existing cookies.
See the website, linked above, for instructions how to do this.
However, as a result, some of the features of my website would not function properly.
Privacy policies of other websites
My website contains links to other websites.
My privacy policy applies only to my website.
If you click on a link to another website, you should read their privacy policy.
Changes to my privacy policy
I keep my privacy policy under regular review and publish all updates on this web page.
This privacy policy was last updated on Nov 23, 2021.