At CoffeeMuses.com, we believe in the value of a good conversation and the sanctity of a private moment. Whether you’re here for a deep dive into Appalachian culture or a quiet morning reflection over coffee, we want you to feel as secure here as you would on your own front porch.
Transparency is the foundation of trust. Below is the breakdown of how we handle your information.
Who We Are
Our website address is: https://coffeemuses.com. This site is a corner of the digital woods dedicated to storytelling, reflection, and community.
The Information We Collect (And Why)
Comments
When you pull up a chair and leave a comment, we collect the data shown in the comments form. To keep the “digital porch” free of bots and bad actors, we also record your IP address and browser user agent string to assist in spam detection.
An anonymized string (a “hash”) created from your email address may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you’re using it. Once your comment is approved, your profile picture is visible to the public alongside your words. You can find the Gravatar service privacy policy here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.
Media
If you’re sharing photos with the community, we recommend avoiding images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Just as you might not give out your home coordinates to a stranger, remember that visitors to the site can download and extract location data from images hosted here.
Cookies: Making Things Easier
We use cookies to make your return visits smoother:
- Convenience: If you leave a comment, you can opt-in to saving your name, email, and website. This way, you don’t have to fill in your details every time you want to join the conversation. These cookies last for one year.
- Login Sessions: If you have an account, we use a temporary cookie to see if your browser accepts them (it contains no personal data and vanishes when you close your browser). When you log in, we set up cookies to save your login info and screen preferences.
- Login cookies last two days.
- Screen options last one year.
- If you select “Remember Me”, you’ll stay logged in for two weeks.
- Editors: If you edit or publish an article, a cookie is saved that simply indicates the post ID of the piece you just worked on. It expires after one day.
Content from Other Trails (Embedded Content)
Sometimes we feature videos, images, or articles from other sites. This embedded content behaves exactly as if you had visited that other website directly.
Please be aware that these external sites may collect data about you, use their own cookies, and monitor your interaction with that content—especially if you are logged into their platform (like YouTube or Instagram) while browsing here.
Managing Your Data
How long we keep your information
- Comments: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are kept indefinitely. We do this so we can recognize and approve follow-up comments automatically rather than holding them in a moderation queue.
- User Profiles: For those who register on our site, we store the personal information provided in their user profile. You have the right to see, edit, or delete your personal information at any time (the only thing you can’t change is your username).
Your Rights Over Your Data
If you have an account or have left comments, you are the boss of your data. You can request an exported file of the personal data we hold about you. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold.
Note: This does not include data we are required to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where Your Data Goes
To keep the conversation honest and clean, visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
