Privacy & Cookies Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://thewincentral.com. We are based out of India. We provide Microsoft and competitors related news, reviews and discussion forums. For any more information please write to us at [email protected]. For us, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by thewincentral.com and how it is used.

Cookies:

Cookies are small pieces of data, stored in text files, that are stored on your computer or other device when websites are loaded in a browser. They are widely used to “remember” you and your preferences, either for a single visit (through a “session cookie”) or for multiple repeat visits (using a “persistent cookie”). They ensure a consistent and efficient experience for visitors, and perform essential functions such as allowing users to register and remain logged in. Cookies may be set by the site that you are visiting (known as “first party cookies”), or by third parties, such as those who serve content or provide advertising or analytics services on the website (“third party cookies”). Read more about cookies here.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.

Any personal information you provide to us including and similar to your name, address, telephone number and e-mail address will not be released, sold, or rented to any entities or individuals outside of thewincentral.com.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Log files

Though, you can access our Web site home page and browse our site without disclosing your personal data. But, like many other Web sites, thewincentral.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends to administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information, IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Activity

This feature only records activities of a site’s registered users, and the retention duration of activity data will depend on the site’s plan and activity type.

Data Used: To deliver this functionality and record activities around site management, the following information is captured: user email address, user role, user login, user display name, WordPress.com and local user IDs, the activity to be recorded, the WordPress.com-connected site ID of the site on which the activity takes place, the site’s Jetpack version, and the timestamp of the activity. Some activities may also include the actor’s IP address (login attempts, for example) and user agent.

Activity Tracked: Login attempts/actions, post and page update and publish actions, comment/pingback submission and management actions, plugin and theme management actions, widget updates, user management actions, and the modification of other various site settings and options. Retention duration of activity data depends on the site’s plan and activity type. See the complete list of currently-recorded activities (along with retention information).

Data Synced (?): Successful and failed login attempts, which will include the actor’s IP address and user agent.

Ads

Google and WordPress, as third party vendors, uses cookies to serve ads on your site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy and for WordPress Ads by going to WordPress Cookie Policy page.

We allow third-party ad technology providers connected to Google Adsense (List of ad technology providers) and WordPress to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

Data Used: The following information (made available from the visitor’s browser) is collected and sent to Automattic’s Demand Partners: IP address, geographical data (derived from the IP address), user agent, operating system, device type, unique user ID (randomly generated identifier), current URL, and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) interest category. Log data (IP address, geographical data, user agent, operating system, device type) is stored for 30 days. The unique user ID is stored in cookies and is retained for 1 year.

Activity Tracked: Ad impressions, video-related events (i.e. pause, mute, 100% plays, etc.) or errors, and ad click events. Various cookies are used for the following purposes: delivering targeted advertisements to specific visitors, storing user identifiers, and collecting anonymous ad platform stats.

Carousel

Image views are only recorded if the site owner, has explicitly enabled image view stats tracking for this feature via the jetpack_enable_carousel_stats filter.

Data Used: If image view tracking is enabled, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Image views.

Comment Likes

This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: In order to process a comment like, the following information is used: WordPress.com user ID/username (you must be logged in to use this feature), the local site-specific user ID (if the user is signed in to the site on which the like occurred), and a true/false data point that tells us if the user liked a specific comment. If you perform a like action from one of our mobile apps, some additional information is used to track the activity: IP address, user agent, timestamp of event, blog ID, browser language, country code, and device info.

Activity Tracked: Comment likes.

Contact Form

Data Used: If Akismet is enabled on the site, the contact form submission data — IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (also owned by Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. The actual submission data is stored in the database of the site on which it was submitted and is emailed directly to the owner of the form (i.e. the site author who published the page on which the contact form resides). This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message.

Data Synced (?): Post and post meta data associated with a user’s contact form submission. If Akismet is enabled on the site, the IP address and user agent originally submitted with the comment are synced, as well, as they are stored in post meta.

Google Analytics
This feature is only available to sites on the Premium and Professional plans.

Data Used: Please refer to the appropriate Google Analytics documentation for the specific type of data it collects. For sites running WooCommerce (also owned by Automattic) and this feature simultaneously and having all purchase tracking explicitly enabled, purchase events will send Google Analytics the following information: order number, product id and name, product category, total cost, and quantity of items purchased. Google Analytics does offer IP anonymization, which can be enabled by the site owner.

Activity Tracked: This feature sends page view events (and potentially video play events) over to Google Analytics for consumption. For sites running WooCommerce-powered stores, some additional events are also sent to Google Analytics: shopping cart additions and removals, product listing views and clicks, product detail views, and purchases. Tracking for each specific WooCommerce event needs to be enabled by the site owner.

Gravatar Hovercards
Data Used: This feature will send a hash of the user’s email address (if logged in to the site or WordPress.com — or if they submitted a comment on the site using their email address that is attached to an active Gravatar profile) to the Gravatar service (also owned by Automattic) in order to retrieve their profile image.

Infinite Scroll
Data Used: In order to record page views via WordPress.com Stats (which must be enabled for page view tracking here to work) with additional loads, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Page views will be tracked with each additional load (i.e. when you scroll down to the bottom of the page and a new set of posts loads automatically). If the site owner has enabled Google Analytics to work with this feature, a page view event will also be sent to the appropriate Google Analytics account with each additional load.

Jetpack Comments
Data Used: Commenter’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided via the comment form), timestamp, and IP address. Additionally, a jetpack.wordpress.com IFrame receives the following data: WordPress.com blog ID attached to the site, ID of the post on which the comment is being submitted, commenter’s local user ID (if available), commenter’s local username (if available), commenter’s site URL (if available), MD5 hash of the commenter’s email address (if available), and the comment content. If Akismet (also owned by Automattic) is enabled on the site, the following information is sent to the service for the sole purpose of spam checking: commenter’s name, email address, site URL, IP address, and user agent.

Activity Tracked: The comment author’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided during the comment submission) are stored in cookies. Learn more about these cookies.

Data Synced (?): All data and metadata (see above) associated with comments. This includes the status of the comment and, if Akismet is enabled on the site, whether or not it was classified as spam by Akismet.

Likes
This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: In order to process a post like action, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID (on which the post was liked), post ID (of the post that was liked), user agent, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Post likes.

Protect
Data Used: In order to check login activity and potentially block fraudulent attempts, the following information is used: attempting user’s IP address, attempting user’s email address/username (i.e. according to the value they were attempting to use during the login process), and all IP-related HTTP headers attached to the attempting user.

Activity Tracked: Failed login attempts (these include IP address and user agent). We also set a cookie (jpp_math_pass) for 1 day to remember if/when a user has successfully completed a math captcha to prove that they’re a real human. Learn more about this cookie.

Data Synced (?): Failed login attempts, which contain the user’s IP address, attempted username or email address, and user agent information.

Search
This feature is only available to sites on the Professional plan.

Data Used: Any of the visitor-chosen search filters and query data in order to process a search request on the WordPress.com servers.

Sharing
Data Used: When sharing content via email (this option is only available if Akismet is active on the site), the following information is used: sharing party’s name and email address (if the user is logged in, this information will be pulled directly from their account), IP address (for spam checking), user agent (for spam checking), and email body/content. This content will be sent to Akismet (also owned by Automattic) so that a spam check can be performed. Additionally, if reCAPTCHA (by Google) is enabled by the site owner, the sharing party’s IP address will be shared with that service. You can find Google’s privacy policy here.

Subscriptions
Data Used: To initiate and process subscriptions, the following information is used: subscriber’s email address and the ID of the post or comment (depending on the specific subscription being processed). In the event of a new subscription being initiated, we also collect some basic server data, including all of the subscribing user’s HTTP request headers, the IP address from which the subscribing user is viewing the page, and the URI which was given in order to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI). This server data used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam.

Activity Tracked: Functionality cookies are set for a duration of 347 days to remember a visitor’s blog and post subscription choices if, in fact, they have an active subscription.

How long we retain your data

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.

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 we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.