Accessibility & Privacy Policy

Mailbox labeled "PRIVATE."

Affiliate disclosure

Hey Epiphora is a personal blog written and edited solely by me, Epiphora. I am often sent products in exchange for my honest and unbiased review. I always, without exception, present my true opinion in my reviews and posts. I do not allow pre-screening of my posts, and I will not be influenced by companies into presenting anything other than my opinion.

As a self-employed blogger, I am an affiliate for many sex toy companies, and I receive a percentage of commissions from purchases made through my affiliate links. I am occasionally (but not frequently) compensated monetarily for my posts. I also accept forms of paid advertising, such as banner images, which are placed in the sidebar. My advertising relationships do not influence anything I write on this blog.

Accessibility

I am committed to making my blog accessible and user friendly to everyone. My site theme was designed with accessibility in mind. If you are having difficulty viewing or navigating this site or notice any content, feature, or functionality that is not accessible to folks with disabilities, please contact me. I want to know!

Privacy

I value your privacy and right to control your information. I do not share your information with third parties. Read on for more about how your data is collected and used when you visit Hey Epiphora.

Hey Epiphora is secured by a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate through my host, DreamHost, which establishes a secure connection and encrypts your actions on my site. If a non-secure page is found, it is in error and I encourage you to contact me so I can fix it! The site uses Cloudflare as a content delivery network (CDN).

Hey Epiphora runs on the WordPress platform, which is always kept up-to-date as a security precaution. A few of my WordPress plugins, such as ThirstyAffiliates (with IP logging off) and Relevanssi, log basic information from website users such as search queries and clicks. As configured, they do not track personally-identifying data. My contact form plugin only sends me the information the user discloses directly in the form.

I use Google Analytics to monitor traffic data, with IP anonymization active. Remarketing, advertising reporting features, and data sharing settings are turned off, and data retention set at 14 months before user-level and event-level data is automatically deleted from Analytics’ servers.

Hey Epiphora utilizes affiliate links to track sales via cookies. All gathered information is stored on individual affiliate programs’ servers, not my own. These programs do not make customers’ personally-identifying data visible to me as an affiliate. A few of the programs log IP addresses, but I do not look at, keep, or use them for any purpose.

The comments section on Hey Epiphora runs on Disqus. Read more here about Disqus’ data sharing settings.

Email addresses and names (if specified) are collected by MailerLite when a user chooses to sign up for my email newsletter. Users may unsubscribe at any time from the footers of these emails, or I can unsubscribe them or delete them manually by request.

As a single-person operation, I also store some information locally. On a password-protected computer on a private, password-protected wifi network, I retain spreadsheet copies of newsletter/email subscribers and giveaway entrants from MailerLite and Gleam, in case I lose access to the original lists. These files, exported directly from the services mentioned, may contain IP addresses and/or geolocation data. However, these files are not used for any other purpose other than back-up — and are never shared.

Whenever I mention the name of a reader, such as in my giveaway wrap-up posts, I have confirmed their consent first.