Who we are
“We” or “our,” refers to Spencer C. Knox, MD’s personal website at the address: https://spencerknoxmd.com. Please see the ‘About‘ page for more on the author.
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, including the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. This is a standard process across many well-known websites.
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
End-users are unable to upload media to spencerknoxmd.com.
To better protect yourself while viewing external/unaffiliated websites, please note that if you upload images or videos to any app/service/website, you should avoid uploading media with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
Our website uses a standard contact form, which can be found on the Contact page. The purpose of this form is so that readers can freely query the website author. Basic information is requested by the form, including name, email, and other readily visible items. User-provided data is then sent to the website owner via an encrypted (secured) connection. Contact form information may be kept indefinitely, unless the named user requests the data to be removed. The data is not used for marketing or financial purposes.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our 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. By default, these cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, 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, we 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. The aforementioned time periods are the default setting.
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 (default setting).
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. Tweets, videos, images, articles, posts from other media formats, etc.). Embedded content from other (external) websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These external websites and/or services 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
Our website uses the Jetpack plug-in (Automattic) software to compile visitor data. The data available to the site owner is anonymous; no names or unique identifiers are linked to visitor data. Please view their privacy policy.
Who we share your data with
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet, and Jetpack, uses visitor data to provide insights (e.g. country of origin, number of unique visitors, number of page views). This provides the site owner with anonymous website visitor data. Other plug-ins that may collect data include Jetpack, Akismet anti-spam, SG Optimizer, UpdraftPlus (Backup/Restore), and Yoast SEO. The minimum number of plug-ins is employed as required for efficient operation of this website. Otherwise, your data is not knowingly nor is it intentionally shared with any other third parties.
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 this website (at this time this feature is disabled), 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. We collect information about visitors who comment on websites that use Akismet anti-spam service. The information typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).
Contact information
Please visit the Contact page to directly email the site owner.
Additional information
How we protect your data
We use SiteGround’s (our hosting provider) complementary SSL encryption services (https://) to ensure data sent to/from this website is encrypted. Let’s Encrypt Authority X3 issues the current certificate. Please refer to each of the aforementioned services for their privacy policy.
What third parties we receive data from
Jetpack, an Automattic plug-in, provides anonymous website visitor metrics.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
We do not perform any automated decision making or profiling.
Industry regulatory disclosure requirements
SpencerKnoxMD.com strives to maintain patient confidentiality at all levels. This website is HIPAA compliant. No real names, locations, or direct identifiers are used in any clinical vignette. Clinical scenarios are significantly altered so that indirect identifiers are eliminated.
All efforts to protect privacy of website readers and patients are made in ‘good faith.’ The content contained on SpencerKnoxMD.com is provided for educational purposes only.
Policy updated as of 5/25/2018