Privacy Policy - A Well Seasoned Kitchen

MLC Publishing, LLC d/b/a A Well-Seasoned Kitchen (“we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to protecting your privacy. We encourage you to carefully review this Privacy Policy. By accessing or using the Services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and consent to the collection and use of information as discussed in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, do not access the Services or provide your information to us.

1. What This Policy Covers

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use our seasonedkitchen.com website (the “Site”). Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our Site and other products and services collectively as “Services.” Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

2. Information We Collect

We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources.

A. Information You Provide to Us

We collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

Follower and Subscriber Information: When you sign up for our newsletter, we collect the sign-up information, which typically includes an email address.
Site Comments: When you leave a comment on our Site, including product feedback, product reviews, comments and other input, we collect the comment, and other information that you provide along with the comment, such as your name and email address.
Survey Responses: When you complete a poll, quiz, or other type of survey, we collect your responses to those surveys, and other information that that is required for the poll/quiz/survey response, like an e-mail address.
Customer Service Inquiries. If you make a customer service inquiry, we collect information to identify the status of your order, such as name, phone number, email address, and order information.
Other Information Entered on the Site: We may also collect other information that you enter on the Site–such as a contact form submission or a search query.
Inquiries via Social Media. If you contact us via social media, including without limitation, Facebook and Twitter, we will have access to your social media handle and other information you post, and we may use that information to respond to your inquiry.
Information You Provide us in Person or via Email: We may collect information that you provide us when we meet you in person or when you email us—such as when you ask for more information, ask us to sign you up for our newsletter, or purchase a product from us.
Register for a Contest, Sweepstakes or Other Promotion. For example, you may provide your first and last name, phone number and home address and we may be legally obligated to disclose this information if you win.

B. Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Technical Data from a Visitor’s Computer or Other Device: We collect the information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available about visitors to a website, such as the IP address, browser type, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We may also collect information about your device and device capabilities, information about your device operating system, browser identifier, referring URL, and language selection. If you call us, we may automatically collect the phone number you have used.
Visitor Interactions: We collect information about your interactions with our Site, including time and date of visit, content viewed, referring URL, referring search terms, links clicked.
Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from the IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, tally how many people visit our Site from certain geographic regions. We may also use your location to provide advertisements, offers and notices that are relevant to your geographic location and conduct analytics to improve the Services. Location information may be combined with other data.
Akismet Commenter Information: We collect information about who comments on the Site. The information we collect includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, name, username, email address, the user’s comment, and the date and time of the comment.
Survey Response Information: We collect information if you respond to a survey. The information that we collect typically includes IP address, browser type, operating system, user agent, and the web page last visited.
Information from Cookies and Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that our Site stores on your computer, and that your browser provides to our Site each time you return. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code that may be placed on our Site or in emails we send you. We and our Site host, WordPress and its parent company, Automattic, use cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help identify and track visitors and Site usage, to deliver targeted advertising on our Services and other web properties, to provide, manage and administer the Services, to understand user behavior, to target and measure the effectiveness of advertisements, to send follow-up emails and advertising after visits to the Site, to help diagnose problems, to recognize repeat visitors, to track and analyze usage behavior, to facilitate your access to and use of the Services, to optimize and tailor the Services to you and other future visitors to the Site, to determine whether an email we have sent you or a webpage has been viewed, and to store your information when you make a comment on the Site, including your name and email address, at your option so you do not have to reenter it the next time you comment. We may use local shared objects (LSOs) such as Flash Cookies and local storage, such as HTML5 Local Storage, to enhance user experience. Local storage is similar to browser cookies but can store data more complex than simple text. By itself, local storage cannot do anything to or with the data stored on your device. Like cookies, local storage can only access personal data that you have provided on the Services. We may use session cookies during the time of your visit on the Site that may be deleted when you exit, depending on your browser, and we also use more permanent cookies so we can recognize you if you return to the Site. Information that we collect via the data collection technologies described in this section may be linked to other information about you and may be personal data. Your browser, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari, may allow you to manage your cookies and local storage. Because each browser is a little different, we encourage you to check your browsers’ “Help” feature to learn how to block cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, and how to disable existing cookies. Please note, however, that without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of all the Services and some parts of the Services may not function properly.

You can find more information about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org. For more information about our Site host’s use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how visitors can control the use of cookies, please see the Cookie Policy of WordPress and its parent company, Automattic.

C. Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available. You may also choose to participate in a third-party application or feature (such as one of our pages on Facebook or Twitter or another social platform or website) through which you allow us to collect (or the third party to share) information about you, including personal information.

We may also supplement the information we collect about you through the Services with outside records from third parties in order to enhance our ability to serve you, to tailor our content to you, to advertise to you, and to offer you opportunities to purchase products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. We may combine the information we receive from these third parties with information we collect through the Services and/or offline. In those cases, we will continue to apply this Privacy Policy to any online personal information received pursuant to this Privacy Policy, unless we have disclosed otherwise.

We may also get information, such as a mailing address, from third party services about individuals who are not yet our users, which we may use, for example, for marketing and advertising purposes like postcards and other mailers advertising our services.

3. How and Why We Use Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

To provide our Services–for example, to send you information or materials you request, process an order, deliver a product you have purchased, or charge you for a product;
To further develop and improve our Services–for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy;
To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
To provide loyalty programs, giveaways, contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional events that we offer to our customers;
To recognize repeat visitors;
To format content for your device type and browser;
To conduct market research, invite you to join focus groups, and participate in surveys and studies;
To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition–for example, we may analyze how many individuals purchased a product after receiving a marketing message or the features used by those who continue to use our Services after a certain length of time;
To monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect our rights and property and those of others, which may result in us declining a transaction or the use of our Services;
To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers and promotions offered by us and others we think will be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on our company and our products; and
To personalize your experience using our Services, provide content recommendations (for example, through our “More Recipes You Might Like” service), target our marketing messages to groups of our users, and serve relevant advertisements.

We may also use and share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify any individual. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services.

4. Sharing Information

A. How We Share Information

We do not sell our users’ private personal information. We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below:

Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our employees and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our employees and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to help us provide our Services, to process the information on our behalf, to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you. They may use information for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. The vendors may use certain technological measures and third-party databases and services to engage in digital fingerprinting. This technology passively collects information about your device to develop a digital identifier for your device, which is then stored on your device to identify the device in various online transactions. This information is combined with other information regarding your use of the Services and third-party databases. The device data that is collected by our vendors may be maintained to create a history and reputation of a particular device to help reduce online fraud and recognize your device in connection with the Services and advertising. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like website service providers, website hosting services, and the website software platform that helps us provide the Site to you, including WordPress and its parent company, Automattic; payment providers that process your credit and debit card information; fraud prevention services that allow us to analyze fraudulent payment transactions; postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you; customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you; those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns); those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers), including Google Analytics and Hotjar; and companies that make products available on our Site). We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them. You can find out more about how WordPress and its parent company, Automattic, collects and uses data from our Site and your options at https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/ and https://automattic.com/cookies/. You can find out more about Google Analytics and your options regarding their use of your data at http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html and www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/. You can find out more about Hotjar and your options regarding their use of your data at https://www.hotjar.com/legal/compliance/opt-out and you can opt out of collection of data by Hotjar at https://www.hotjar.com/legal/compliance/opt-out.
Joint Marketing: If we offer a joint promotion, sweepstakes or contest with one or more partners, we may provide your personal information to the partners. Any use or sharing of your personal information by a partner will be subject to the partner’s privacy policy.
Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, warrant, court order, or other governmental request or to otherwise comply with law.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect our property or rights or those of third parties or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, reorganization, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that we go out of business or enter bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so, such as the social media services that are connected to our Site.
Aggregated or De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, and we may share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.

B. Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like your public profile, posts, feedback, product reviews, and other content that you make public on the Site, are all available to others. As part of this input you may be asked to provide information such as your name, state, province or other personal information. By providing us this information, you agree that all of this information may be stored by us and posted on the Services to share the benefit of this information with other users, we may combine this information with information from your order history, including city and state, and we may use and share this information. However, we may choose not to use the information you submit. You will not be notified if your information will or will not be used. You understand that personal information you post in public areas of our Services (including social media) can be read, collected, or used by other users of the Services, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. You are encouraged to exercise caution when posting personal information about yourself in public areas.

C. How Long We Keep Information

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

5. Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we have put in place physical, electronic and managerial procedures intended to protect your data. Of course, we cannot guarantee that your communications with the Services will never be unlawfully intercepted or that your personal data will never be unlawfully accessed by third parties. Any transmission of information is at your own risk.

6. Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

Limit the Information that You Provide: You can choose not to provide certain information to us, such as transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services–for example, retail purchases–may not be accessible.
Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like legal notices and those about your account or purchases.
Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, we do not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using our Site, with the drawback that certain features of our Site may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

7. Your Access to and Control Over Information

If you wish to update, correct or otherwise have access to your personal information in our records, please contact us. We will not be responsible for modifying or removing personal information from the database of any third party to whom we were authorized to disclose your personal information prior to processing your request. Please note that any personal information that we have copied may remain in back-up storage for some period of time after your request and we may need to retain personal information when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations, such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

We may request certain personal information for the purposes of verifying the identity of the individual seeking access to his or her personal information records.

You can also opt-out of future information collection from the Services by ceasing use of the Services.

8. International Transfer

The Services are hosted on servers inside and outside the United States. If you are located in the European Union or elsewhere outside of the United States, information that we collect (including through cookies) will be processed and stored in the United States, a jurisdiction in which the data protection and privacy laws may not offer the same level of protection as those in the country where you reside or are a citizen. By using our Services and providing information to use, you consent to the transfer to and processing of information in the United States.

9. Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies or web beacons) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. In general, any electronic image viewed as part of a web page, including a banner ad, may contain a pixel tag. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to your interests. Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on the Services or to display advertising based upon your web browsing activity may also use Flash cookies or HTML5 to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5. To manage Flash cookies, please click here. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by us and does not cover the collection of information by any third party advertisers or analytics providers.

For more information about the advertising networks’ technologies and how they use the information collected by the technologies on the Services and your options not to accept cookies placed by some advertising networks on the Services, visit the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) at www.networkadvertising.org/optout to change your consumer preferences with respect to certain online ads and to obtain further information about third party advertising networks. The opt-out described above is device- or browser-specific and may not work on all devices. If you choose to opt-out through the mechanism in this section, you still may see advertisements but the advertisements from NAI participants will not be based on your interests.

A. Retargeting Ads

From time to time, the Website may engage in remarketing efforts with third-party companies, such as Google, Pinterest, Facebook, or Instagram, in order to market the Website. These companies use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to the Website. This means, after visiting the Website, you may see an ad for our services. However, your personally identifiable information is not used by any remarketing service other than to present you offers from the Website. We use the following third-party service providers for remarketing:

Facebook: Opt-out of Facebook remarketing here
Google: Opt-out of Google remarketing here
Pinterest: Opt-out of Pinterest remarketing here

B. Newsletters

On the Website, you may subscribe to our newsletter, which may be used for advertising purposes. All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels. The pixel is embedded in emails and allows 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. Also, this allows the Website to adapt the content of future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behavior will not be passed on to third parties.

10. Links from the Services

The Services may contain links to third party websites or services that are not controlled by us. In some cases, you may navigate to pages of other websites that are framed with elements of the Services such as in the header or footer. In that case, the URL will identify the site you are visiting. These links are made available to you as a convenience, and you agree to use these links at your own risk. These other sites and services are not bound by our privacy policy, and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such third-party websites or services. If you disclose your information to others in connection with your use of our Services, you are subject to the privacy policies that they apply. The privacy policies of other organizations may differ from ours, for example, with respect to the level of security, use of cookies, and collection, use and disclosure of personal data. If you would like information on any other party’s privacy policy, you should contact that party directly, and we encourage you to do so.

Some of the Services allow users to interface with other websites or services, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. Your use of those other sites and services is subject to the privacy policies of those sites and services, and not this Privacy Policy.

Some of the Services use third party operating systems, platforms, communication services, devices, and software elements (such as mobile device operating systems, wireless services, mobile phone and tablet devices), and some of the Services are provided by third party distributors, device makers, device operators, platform operators, and communication services. We do not control these third-party entities, products and services, and they may collect, use, process, transmit and disclose your information. For example, these third-party entities, products and services may gather information from the Services in a manner that overrides your settings and preferences in the Services. As we do not control of these third-parties’ data handling practices, we recommend that you review their privacy policies, terms of use and license agreements (if any).

11. Children

Our Services are not intended for children, and we will not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 16. We encourage parents to talk to their children about their use of the Internet and the information they disclose online. If we learn that we have collected the personal information of a child under 16 without verifiable consent, then we will use reasonable efforts to delete the child’s information from our databases. If you become aware that we have collected personal data from a child without parental consent, please contact us promptly.

If you are a California resident under age 18 and are a registered user of any of the Services, then you may request that we remove any submissions that you publicly posted on or in the Services. To request removal of a submission, please contact us and send a detailed description of the specific submission. We reserve the right to request that you provide information that will enable us to confirm that the submission that you want removed was created and posted by you. We will make a good faith effort to delete or remove your submission from public view as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note, however, that your request that we delete your submission does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of your submission. Your submission may remain on backup media, cached or otherwise retained by us for administrative or legal purposes or your submission may remain publicly available if you or someone else has forwarded or re-posted your submission on another website or service prior to its deletion. We may be required by law to not remove or allow removal of your submission.

12. GDPR – Rights Related to your Personal Information

If you are within the European Union, you are entitled to certain information and have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). Throughout this policy, we have disclosed what information we collect and how it is used. Under GDPR, you also have the following rights:

Right to Opt-out – You may opt-out of future email communications by following the unsubscribe links in our emails. You may also contact us at the email below to be removed from our mailing list.
Right to Access – You may access the personal information we have about you by submitting a request.
Right to Amend – You may contact us to amend or update your personal information.
Right to Be Forgotten – In certain situations, you may request that we erase or forget your personal data.

You may exercise any of these rights by emailing lee@seasonedkitchen.com

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for record keeping purposes or to complete transactions, or when required by law. Unless you exercise such rights, we reserve the right to retain your data.

13. Your California Privacy Rights

Pursuant to Section 1798.83–84 of the California Civil Code, residents of California have the right to request from a business, with whom the California resident has an established business relationship, what types of personal information, if any, the business shares with third parties for direct marketing purposes by such third party and the identities of the third parties with whom the business has shared such information in the immediately preceding calendar year. To access this information, please contact us.

14. Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, we may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be posted on the Site. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to this Privacy Policy. If you have registered with the Service, we may also provide you with email notification of such material changes. Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

15. How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned above, please contact us.

Last updated: September 1, 2022