Who we are
Wordsmith Writing Coaches is an independent contractor based in Los Angeles, California, USA, serving clients locally and throughout the world.
Our website address is https://wordsmithwritingcoaches.com.
Our physical office address is 2716 S. Vermont Avenue #6, Los Angeles CA 90007. (We are on the second floor, at the north end of the building.)
We teach, tutor, write, coach, consult, critique, counsel, console, proofread, format, and encourage in order to help our academic clients excel and graduate, and help our author clients write well and publish wisely.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect 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 (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 will be visible to the public next to your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
The WordPress contact forms we use will collect only the same personal data that we collect in other ways: your name, phone number, email address, and introductory notes about how we can help you. None of this is collected through or sent to a data aggregator; we keep all of it to ourselves.
…and then there’s MailChimp: scroll down to Analytics to read more about that.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to save your name, email address, and website in the form of digital 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; they are automatically deleted when they expire.
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 (you!) 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We think about what you told us in your introductory notes and decide how we might help you. Then we follow up with you and see where things go from there. We don’t collect enough data, and we don’t store it in the right sort of way, to engage in data mining or fancy automated analytics. Each client receives individual attention and individually-tailored service; we don’t spend much time looking for patterns in our client information spreadsheet. No online analytics bot will see your personal information.
…and then there’s MailChimp…
If you got to our site by clicking a link in an email we sent to you via MailChimp, or if you offered us any contact information or indicated a preference on a form on our site that’s powered by MailChimp, they embedded a cookie, Google pixel, or a bit of JavaScript in your browser for that session, and used it in ways that are meant to be helpful to both you and us. In an aggregated sort of way, it may also benefit them, as well as anyone with whom MailChimp decides to share their anonymized, aggregated user data. I don’t have any control over this (except what MailChimp will give me), and you can read more about it here.
Who we share your data with
The only persons with whom we might share your personal contact information are Wordsmith Associates. These are talented, kind, carefully-vetted tutors, editors, script doctors and proofreaders, independent contractors whom we trust. When we think one of them would be a good fit for your needs, we will give them your contact information and ask them to follow up with you. Again, no online analytics bot will see the personal information we collect with our WordPress forms on this site, or which we accumulate through our personal acquaintance with you.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment on our blog, 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.
What rights you have over your data
If you have left comments on this site, or have signed up to receive information from us, 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. Your contact information may be sent to a Wordsmith Associate so that they can help you. We may use an online file backup and recovery service, in the future: the spreadsheet containing your personal information would be one of those files backed up.
Your contact information
When you express interest in receiving information from us, we will ask for your phone number and your email address. These are saved in a custom spreadsheet on a secure hard drive at the Wordsmith offices. When you ask us to stop sending you email or texts, we will add a prominent “DNP” tag to your contact info, but we normally do not delete it unless you ask us to do so. When you do ask, we will of course comply! Please note that if we delete all your contact info and your name, we will have no record of you at all in our spreadsheet, and if your name and contact info come up again (in a raffle or a giveaway or a response to an advertisement), you will be treated like a new person whom we’ve never met, who happens to have a familiar name… if we use your new contact info to contact you again, please don’t be offended, just ask us again to remove you from our database, and we will do so (again).
Additional information
How we protect your data
Your name and contact information, and any notes we may have taken during our introduction to you, are all saved in a simple customized spreadsheet on a secure hard drive at the Wordsmith offices. This hard drive may soon be backed up to a secure, encrypted online data backup website, with servers located God-knows-where. Whichever online backup service we choose, it will definitely provide end-to-end encryption during data upload and download, and open-code industry-leading encryption algorithms, not any of those privately-developed buggy algorithms that wind up leaking like sieves.
What data breach procedures we have in place
If by some diabolical miracle there is a data breach—a physical break-in at our office, for instance— we will post about it on the Wordsmith Writing Coaches Facebook page within 24 hours, and Share that post on several personal Facebook accounts as well (Nic Nelson and Kathryn Nelson at the very least, and every Wordsmith Associate will be asked to Share it on their own social media platforms, but they will do so at their own discretion, as they are independent contractors).
What third parties we receive data from
No one. We aren’t that sophisticated.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
None. We really aren’t that sophisticated.
Industry regulatory disclosure requirements
We are not aware of any regulations that govern the independent publishing or private education industries. We do our best to follow general best-practices, though. If you have any questions or concerns about how we handle your personal information, please feel free to ask. For the record, we will never rent it or sell it to any other person or entity, and we will never intentionally spam you… although if a friend of yours gives us your email or phone number and tells us how excited you would be to hear from us, we will graciously reach out to you, just once, to see if that rumor is true. If we don’t hear back from you, your personal contact information will be marked “DNP” (Do Not Promote), which will act as an inoculation against hearing from us again, until you actively reach out to us and give us permission (usually via double opt-in) to communicate with you.