Stamp Collecting Blog - the premier resource for exclusive stamp information and news
Koulutus ja konsultointipalvelu KK Mediat (later Service Provider or We or Us or Our), is committed to respecting Your (later You or User or Subscriber) personal information and protecting the privacy of all individuals who use stampcollectingblog.com (later on Service). This page outlines how We collect and handle information you provide with us and our partners when visiting and using the Service.
By continuing to access and use the Service, it shall be construed that you have read and agreed to the terms of this Privacy Policy.
We may periodically update this Policy. We’ll notify you about significant changes to it. The most current version of the policy will always accessible on this page. This policy has been updated in April 2018.
Table of contents
1) General information
2) What information about you and your visits we collect?
3) What information is available to third parties?
4) How we and our partners use cookies?
5) Why we collect information about You and Your use of service?
6) How We Protect Your Privacy?
7) How to opt-out of data collecting or change my preferences?
8) Your rights and obligations
8) Questions about privacy? Contact us.
General information
In nutshell Our privacy policy can be summarized by three focus points:
- We collect some information about your usage of Service (a detailed list as well as opt-out options can be found below).
- Information is collected to keep the Service operational and develop it.
- Collected data can be accessed only by limited personnel (as required by law).
Please note that to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and EU GDPR for underaged, Service is available only to users who are at least 18 years old. If you are under 18, please do not use this Service.
Why we collect information about You and Your use of service?
We collect information for three purposes:
1) statistical purposes
2) maintenance purposes
3) functional purposes.
All collected information helps us to build and maintain a Service that functions smoothly on devices, services and locations that You and other readers use.
Example of statistical purpose. We track what kind of content appeals and engages with different user groups. Based on this information we can produce new content and services on topics that appeals to majority of readers.
Example of maintenance purpose. We track device and browser types used by our subscribers. If we notice that some specific device type or browser type has technical issues, we will try to fix the issue as well as reach out to all affected users.
Example of functional purpose. We track geographic location of our users. By knowing from which area you are from, we can sometimes serve some or all of our content from locations near you, making the content load faster or tailored for your location. For security reasons we also block access to service from some locations.
What information about you and your visits we collect?
We gather two types of information: (1) personally identifiable information that you supply voluntarily when you subscribe or enter certain other areas of our Service, and (2) aggregate tracking and site usage information that we gather automatically as you access our Web sites.
We collect following information about all visits through server log files:
- Client IP-address or DNS-address (this also gives us access to approximate location of user)
- Client User-Agent (ie.browser) string and other information related to it (such us operating system).
- Referral information (ie. where the user came from)
- Time and length of visit
- Requested files
For Premium subscribers we record their:
- Contact information (email and mailing address as received from PayPal and/or other payment processor)
- Purchase history (all receipts and their details must be archived on paper for period of 10 years before they can be destroyed permanently)
- Information of login attempts and failures
- Date of last visit
For trial subscribers we record their:
- Email address
- IP address used for login (in hashed format)
- Device fingerprint (in hashed format)
- List of accessed pages
- Information of login attempts and failures
- Date of last visit
When participating discussions we additionally record information about:
- your chosen alias/username
- your email address
- your website URL (optional)
- your message
If you subscribe to newsletter, we record information about your:
- email address
- the date you subscribed and confirmed your newsletter subscription (double opt-in)
- the date you cancelled your newsletter subscription (double opt-in)
- the date of last successful newsletter delivery and information of possible failures
Some of the collected data may be joined with other data to create aggregate (non-personally identifying) statistics, compilations, or other derivative works.
Depending on the type of information and its usage purpose, it has varying retention period. Some data such as subscription records are stored at least for 10 years (to comply with accounting legislation), whereas some (such as login attempts and failures) has lifespan of just few days. As general guidance, no data is retained longer than necessary.
What information is available to third parties?
Our accounting partner has access to limited Premium subscriber invoicing information (subscription date, sum paid, email, name and address). They are committed to keeping your data private and well-protected.
We may provide links to other sites and services in context of articles and discussions. When you click on such links, we usually pass on so called referrer information (containing the address of the page you were viewing) to target domain. This should never contain any personal data, but some parties may use the referer to profile your interests. Though we are not responsible for the content, security, or privacy practices employed by other sites, we try to make sure all linked sites contain family friendly content and are safe to use.
Some parts of our Service may include embeds (such as Youtube videos or FaceBook like buttons). When viewing a page containing embeds, the embed providers will receive so called referrer information (containing the address of the page you were viewing)n. This should never contain any personal data, but some parties may use the referer to profile your interests. You are advised to familiarize yourself with the privacy policy of below services, and if necessary opt-out of their data collecting.
How we and our partners use cookies?
Cookies are small text files that user-agents (i.e. browsers) use to by-pass and store information about user preferences, activity etc. temporarily. For example when you write your first comment, the Service sets a cookie that stores your chosen username and email into a cookie, so that you don’t need to type them again but they are automatically filled for you for next time. Also just about all services and features you rely on modern day web, such as logging in to a website, are based on use of cookies.
Two types of cookies are used on this website:
Session Cookies, which are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave the site. These are used mostly for functional purposes.
Persistent Cookies, which remain in the cookie file of your browser for much longer (though how long will depend on the lifetime of the specific cookie). These are used for statistical, maintenance and functional purposes.
Our Service uses cookies only with registered users only.
How We Protect Your Privacy?
We generally follow accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. Your data will be treated in accordance with relevant European Union and Finland legal provisions.
Your personal information will not be disclosed to anyone outside of Service provider without your consent with following exceptions:
a) We may publish general statistics about the usage of website, such as the number of visitors per day/week/month; number of visitors by country etc.
b) We may share generalized information about site visitor patterns with partners or other parties in such a way that individual visitors can never be identified.
c) Our accounting partner has access to invoicing data. This contains no other personal data than customers invoicing details.
We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information if we believe in good faith that an applicable law, regulation, or legal process requires it, or when we believe disclosure is necessary to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of another user.
To ensure the security and confidentiality of data that we collect, our networks are protected by firewall, anti-virus and password protection. Also some of your sensitive information is stored as hashes only.
We use encryption (HTTPS/TLS) to protect data transmitted to and from our site. However, no data transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, so we can’t guarantee full security. You use the Service at your own risk, and you’re responsible for taking reasonable measures to secure your account.
We will use reasonable efforts to comply with this Privacy Policy and will take prompt corrective action when we learn of any failure to comply with it.
How to opt-out of data collecting or change my personal preferences?
1) If you do not wish to send IP-address or other client information, you are advised to seek and use third party anonymizer service or plugin to mask some or all of your browser sent data. However, please acknowledge that in such scenario you may be denied access to all or some parts of our service in order to protect the security of Service and other users.
If you do not wish to accept cookies, you will find detailed instructions for disabling cookies within your browsers Help section.
If you prevent the use of first party cookies, some or all parts of this Service may become unusable.
If you are registered users, you may set some preferences using “My Account” option on the top bar of the site. If you wish to deactivate your SCB subscription, please contact us.
Your rights and obligations
You have the legal right to request once a year what information is held about You, and correct any inaccuracies. Please be prepared to provide at least one proof identify when making the request on My Account page.
You have the legal right to ask complete removal of all Personal data from our public records. However, some information (such as anonymous device hashes) may be retained in our Service to enforce our Terms of Service and/or comply with legal requirements (such as invoicing records).
You have an obligation to keep your information up-to-date and accurate. Failure to provide accurate information gives us right the right terminate all or parts of your subscription and services.
You have an obligation to provide us correct information. Any attempt to provide fraudulent information is subject for criminal investigation and will be reported (as required by governing law).
Questions about privacy?
If you have any questions or comments about this privacy policy, please contact Us using the contact form available.
Alternatively you can mail Us:
Koulutus- ja konsultointipalvelu KK Mediat
Lintulahdenaukio 8A 51
FI-00500 HELSINKI
Finland, Europe
We are Finnish based registered business established in year 2002, business ID: 1740352-7, EU VAT number: FI17403527.
Article categories
- Generally speaking about stamps, philately and collecting
- Learn the basics of stamp collecting - advice on how to get started
- How to preserve and build a stamp collection
- Philatelic knowledge base
- Stamp forgeries, philatelic fakes and other counterfeits
- Stamp collecting software (inventory programs and databases, online stamp catalogs etc)
- Straight talk about stamp values (both catalog and real world)
- Back of book stamps and other unusual stamp-like items
- EFO-stamps: errors, freaks and oddities on postage stamps
- Q & A - Ask anything about stamps and collecting
- Article index by country and topic
- SCB's Digital Perforation Gauge