Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://horrorfam.com

We’re a horror-focused blog and podcast. We keep things PG-13/family-friendly in the blog posts and podcast episodes, but folks are free to say/share what they want in the comments (but we encourage a friendly, safety-first atmosphere!).

HorrorFam.com is owned and run by Lauren Spear.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on HorrorFam.com 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 (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

If you upload images to HorrorFam.com, you should avoid uploading images 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

We use WPForms for our contact forms and article submission forms. We request users submit their email address so that we’ll have a way to write back to them. Other than having a way to reply to visitors’ messages, we don’t use/sell/share visitors’ email addresses.

Some contact forms may have an option for visitors’ to subscribe to our newsletter (sent using MailChimp). This is completely up to the visitor to subscribe and they will never be automatically subscribed to any list. To be extra sure that visitors didn’t accidentally opt-in, they’ll be sent an email via MailChimp to confirm that they do, indeed, want to hear from us.

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. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, 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’ll 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.

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.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may occasionally include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, social media feeds, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor 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 tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

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 HorrorFam.com, 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 also tell advertisers how many clicks their ad received (if any) in the timeframe their ad was posted on HorrorFam.com (this information is anonymous and purely traffic/click numbers, and does not reflect who clicked what/when).

Your contact information

We never share or sell visitors’ personal information to anyone at any time.

HorrorFam.com authors and forum members choose exactly what information they want to be shown in their author/forum profiles as they write/provide/edit that information themselves. By default, we keep authors/forum members’ personal information hidden — an encourage safety first! — but users are free to share what they want.

Additional information

What third parties we receive data from

We use Monster Insights/Google Analytics to receive information about our website’s traffic, traffic sources, keywords, and most popular content/pages. That sounds kinda scary and invasive, but it’s actually really basic and almost completely anonymous. Here’s what that looks like:

As shown in the photos above (screencapped March 2020), we can view how much traffic we’re getting to HorrorFam.com, how many people are new vs. returning readers, approximately which countries they came from, and which websites referred to us. We can’t see specifically who visited our website or their exact location.

Our Affiliates

In order to fund HorrorFam.com, we have several sponsors/affiliate brands that we recommend. If a visitor clicks on one of our affiliate links, they’ll be taken to the affiliate’s (third-party) website. Each affiliate/sponsor/website has their own tracking/analytics/privacy policies, not connected with HorrorFam.com. We label each and every affiliate link as an affiliate link so visitors are always aware what they’re getting themselves into.

Thus far, our affiliate brands are:

• JustWatch
• Audible
• Amazon Associates
• Moonglow Jewelry They no longer have an affiliate program and any old links no longer help us out.
• GlassesShop.com
• ARK Therapeutic

We also link to our merchandise on Redbubble and Society 6, our podcast on Podbean, our social media profiles, and our Patreon account. As with our affiliates/sponsors, these third-party websites have their own tracking methods and privacy policies.

Updates

This page was last updated October 2024. If/when any changes are made, we’ll update this space to reflect that information.

If you’re skeptical and think we forgot to update this page, feel free to give us a nudge — but, far more likely, nothing has changed. We love our website plugins, our affiliates/sponsors, and feel confident in our overall policies. We don’t anticipate needing to update this page very often. 🙂