Privacy Policy

About this site

My name is Nalin A. Ratnayake, an engineer and independent science fiction author. My website address is: https://www.naratnayake.com. The sole purpose of this site and its services is to help me grow and connect with a creative community and to provide a platform for showcasing my written work. I don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than that, but what follows is the text required to be compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulations.

TL;DR: I will never knowingly permit external monetization or exploitation of my content or fanbase. The data collection used on this site is the minimum required to run the site itself and the email newsletter.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site, it collects 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.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on the 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 the 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, te site 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.

Nalin’s addendum: Unfortunately, what is described here is just how the internet works now. I recommend using a nonprofit browser like Firefox set to Privacy Mode and/or using VPN (or just using the Tor Browser) if the content of this section concerns you.

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.

Nalin’s addendum: Unfortunately, what is described here is just how the internet works now. I recommend using a nonprofit browser like Firefox set to Privacy Mode and/or using VPN (or just using the Tor Browser) if the content of this section concerns you.

With whom your data is shared

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email. Data are not sold or shared with anyone, except in the built-in ways outlined here to make the website work as intended. The sole purposes of collecting data are to facilitate site accounts, provide the capability to comment on content, and manage the email newsletter subscriber list.

How long your data are retained

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.

If you subscribe to the newsletter or other distribution list, we will retain the information you submit on registration and any interaction with the service until you choose to unsubscribe. Upon unsubscribing, we will delete your registration information from the database.

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 your data are sent

Visitor comments are checked through an automated spam detection service. The plugin we use for this purpose is Akismet.