Privacy Policy | CatVerge

This policy describes what CatVerge actually does with your data. It is not a template — it describes what this site genuinely runs, and it leaves out the things that don't apply here.

CatVerge is at https://catverge.com.

The short version

CatVerge is a small site. It has no analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixels, and no affiliate links. Nobody is building a profile of you here.

The only personal data this site collects is what you type into it yourself — a comment, or an email you send me — plus the ordinary server records any website keeps.

Comments

If you leave a comment, the site collects what you put in the comment form: your name, your email address, your website if you enter one, and the comment itself. It also records your IP address and your browser's user agent string, which is standard WordPress behaviour and helps identify abuse.

Your comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely so that follow-up comments can be recognised and approved automatically. If you want a comment removed, ask — the "Your rights" section below explains how.

On spam filtering: many sites run comments through an automated spam-detection service. CatVerge does not currently use one. Comments are handled manually. If that changes, this page will be updated to name the service.

On avatars: when you comment, WordPress may send an anonymised string created from your email address — a hash — to the Gravatar service, to check whether you have an avatar there. Gravatar is operated by Automattic, and their privacy policy is at https://automattic.com/privacy/. After your comment is approved, your avatar is visible to the public alongside it.

Comment cookies: if you leave a comment, you may opt in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies, so you don't have to type them again next time. That is your choice via the checkbox on the form. Those cookies last about a year. If you don't tick it, they aren't set.

Email

If you email me at contact@catverge.com, I have your email address and whatever you chose to put in the message. I use it to reply to you and nothing else.

I don't add people who email me to a mailing list, and I don't pass your address to anyone.

What CatVerge does not do

Stated plainly, because on most sites these are the things that actually matter:

No analytics. There is no Google Analytics, and no other analytics or statistics package running on this site.
No advertising. No ad network, no ad cookies, no retargeting.
No tracking pixels, no social media trackers, no fingerprinting scripts.
No affiliate links. There are none on the site today — see the affiliate disclosure for the full position and what happens if that changes.
No selling or sharing of your data. Your data is not sold, rented, or handed to third parties for their own purposes. Ever.
No account required. You don't need to register to read anything here.

Cookies

CatVerge sets no tracking or advertising cookies.

The only cookies a normal visitor may encounter are the comment cookies described above, and then only if you choose them. Reading the site without commenting should set no cookies from CatVerge.

Administrative cookies exist for the site's own logged-in account — login and screen-preference cookies, and a cookie noting which post was just edited. Those apply to whoever runs the site, not to you as a reader.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content — a video, an image, or an embedded article from elsewhere.

Embedded content from another website behaves exactly as if you had visited that website directly. Those sites may collect data about you, set their own cookies, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content — including if you are logged in to them. That is their doing, under their policies, not mine.

Media

If you upload an image to this site, avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS), since visitors can download and extract that data.

Hosting and server logs

Like essentially every website, CatVerge runs on hosting infrastructure, and that infrastructure keeps access logs — IP address, the page requested, the time, and your browser's user agent — for security and for keeping the site running. These are generated by the hosting layer rather than by anything I added.

How long data is kept

Comments and their metadata: retained indefinitely, as described above, unless you ask for removal.
Emails you send me: kept as long as they're useful for the conversation, then deleted.
Server logs: retained according to the hosting provider's own retention schedule.

Your rights

You can ask me to:

Show you what personal data this site holds about you.
Export it to you as a file.
Erase it — including deleting your comments and the data attached to them.

Email me at contact@catverge.com. I don't require you to justify the request, and I don't charge for it. The only exception is data I'm obliged to keep for legal, administrative or security reasons.

If you are in the UK or the EU, these rights are yours under the GDPR regardless of what any website's policy says. This one simply intends to honour them without an argument.

Children

CatVerge is written for adults buying cat-care equipment. It is not directed at children, and it does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has submitted personal data here, email me at contact@catverge.com and I'll remove it.

Changes to this policy

If what this site does changes — a spam filter, analytics, affiliate links, anything that touches your data — this page gets updated at the same time, not afterwards. A privacy policy that describes a site as it used to be is worse than none, because it's a false promise rather than a missing one.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about data this site holds on you, go to contact@catverge.com.