Privacy Policy for EastCoastHorses.com

Last Revised June 2, 2018

The privacy of our website visitors is very important to us, and we are committed to safeguarding it. Before submitting your personal information to our Site, please read this Privacy Policy carefully. It is designed to assist you in understanding how we collect, use, and disclose personal information that we obtain through your use of our Site.

By accessing and using our Site, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy and our Use of Cookies (below) and are also agreeing to comply with our Terms of Use.

About General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The General Data Protection Regulation, or simply GDPR, is a pivotal piece of legislation that became active in May of 2018 that is aimed at providing citizens of the European Union greater control over their personal data protection and privacy.

As we may receive visits from members of the EU, we are working to make enhancements to our processes and documentation to support compliance with the GDPR. Please read our current position and commitment to GDPR compliance.

About East Coast Equine Inc.

Our company is East Coast Equine Inc. and we are based in Williamston, North Carolina, USA. Our website address is: https://eastcoasthorses.com and our website name is “East Coast Horses” or “EastCoastHorses” and herein referred also as  “we” or “us”. Our website platform is WordPress, running the GeneratePress theme.

Our Site features editorial articles about horse farms, businesses, equine professionals and equestrian life. We post equine-related news articles and stories, and feature a free Business Directory which you may easily join to promote your U.S. horse-related business in your state and city/town, or you can search for equine services and businesses in your area. We have outgoing links to our affiliate partners’ websites for horse tack and equipment. We feature our annual Sunnyside Open Horse Show on our website, with the latest news and information for exhibitors, with access to show bills, rulebooks, entry forms, vendor information and more, either by email request or instant download. We do not collect any money or fees through our website for any services.

Data Protection Principles

We follow the following data protection principles:

  • We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it. We always consider your rights before using your personal data.
  • Our use of your personal data is limited to the purpose for which your data was gathered.
  • We only gather and use the minimal amount of personal data required for any purpose.
  • Use of your personal data is limited with a time period. We will not store your personal data for longer than needed.
  • We will do our best to ensure the accuracy of data.
  • We will do our best to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data.

What Is Personal Data?

Your personal data, or personally identifiable information, covers a variety of data types including:

  • Name
  • Farm or business name
  • Email Addresses
  • Postal addresses
  • Telephone number
  • Unsubscribe confirmation URLs that contain email and/or names
  • IP Addresses

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our services, to communicate with you, or to make our services better.

Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to any third party services that have a separate privacy policy. We explain this further below.

Why We Need Your Data

We collect information about you only if you request information from us, and only to fulfill your request,  For example, if you fill out a Subscribe to Our Blog form, our Contact form, a Featured Farm Request Form, a Request for Show Program, Rule Book and Forms by U.S. Mail Form, or a Business Directory Listing Form, we use your personal information to contact you directly, mail you requested documents, process your listing, and manage your account.

On certain occasions, only if you specifically agree or opt-in, we may email you about other products, services, and information we think may be of interest to you. We may also contact you directly to follow up on the service and user experience we provide. We use your information collected from the website to personalize your repeat visits to our website. If ‘East Coast Equine Inc.” (website eastcoasthorses.com) is ever sold to another company your contact information will be passed on to this new party.  You are able to remove your contact information at any time.

We will take cautionary measure to ensure we do not collect any personal data from you we do not need in order to provide and oversee the above services to you.

Information You Provide To Us

This might be your e-mail address, name, physical address where to send you requested information – mainly information that is necessary for delivering you a product/service or to enhance your customer experience with us. This information includes:

  • Contact forms: We collect information in communications with you (when you fill in and submit a contact form or via telephone) about how we may contact you directly in order to assist you in your specific request. We use the Contact Form 7 plug-on for contact forms and request forms.
  • Requests from Horse Show Exhibitors, Sponsors, Vendors and other horse show participants: We collect contact information and physical mailing address information from our horse show exhibitors, sponsors, and event vendors so we are able to fulfill their request for specific information, documentation and entry forms / sponsorship forms / vendor applications regarding our horse shows and events – and for no other reason.
  • Featured Farm Request Form: We collect contact and other personal information from interested parties regarding featured articles about their horse farm, equine business or equestrian center. Your personal information is used only for the intended purpose of your featured farm listing.
  • Business Directory Listing: We collect name, contact, location, and other personal information from interested parties who wish to voluntarily list their equestrian business in our East Coast Horses Farm and Business Directory. We use Business Directory Plugin for our business directory signup form and listings. Business Directory Plugin has announced it is updating their technology to allow site owners (such as East Coast Equine Inc.) additional functionality to comply with data subjects’ requests, to become more in compliance with GDPR. Beyond that, Business Directory Plugin’s data resides entirely on our server and site, so the control of that data remains with us (East Coast Equine Inc.)
  • Email Subscription: We collect information, such as your email address, that you enter in order to set up subscriptions to our emails notifying you of our latest posts and/or newsletters. We use MailChimp to manage our email subscription lists.
  • Content Information: Depending on the Services you use, you may also provide us with information about you in draft and published content (such as for your Featured Farm or Business Directory information). For example, if we write a blog post that includes biographic information about you that you have shared with us for that purpose, we will have that information, and so will anyone with access to the Internet if you agree that we publish the post publicly. This might be obvious to you…but it’s not to everyone!
  • Comments: We currently do not allow visitors to comment on posts on our site; therefore we do not collect personal data associated with visitors’ comments. If we do at some future time enable comments, the following will happen: when you leave a comment on a post, your name, email address, and website information (if applicable) are stored in a browser cookie. This cookie allows WordPress to automatically fill in your user information in the comment form on your next visit. We use the latest version of WordPress (GDPR compliant) where the comment form will show a comment privacy opt-in checkbox. Our theme (GeneratePress) will allow the default WordPress checkbox for comments, and the form should automatically provide this checkbox.
  • Media: If you upload images to the website, you may want to avoid uploading images with embedded location data, including EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) and GPS (Global Positioning System). This is because other visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Information We Collect Automatically

This includes information that is automatically stored by cookies and other session tools. For example, your IP address. When you use our services or look at the contents of our website, your activities may be logged. This information is used to improve our website and improve your customer experience.

Who we share your data with

We do not share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products and services, or protect our rights.

We do not share your Personal Data with strangers. Personal Data about you is in some cases stored on secured third-party servers (such as MailChimp) in order to either make providing the service to you possible or to enhance your customer experience.

Our data processing third-party partners:

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to measure and store user and event data retention. Personal data collected are cookies and usage data. All personal user and event data is set to automatically expire 26 months after the date it was collected. This complies with the new GDPR data retention settings to be effective May 25, 2018.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense collects cookies and usage data.  Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to your website or other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to our website users based on their visit to our site and/or other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Ads Settings. (Alternatively, users may opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting www.aboutads.info.)

MailChimp

We use this service to send you email on behalf of East Coast Equine Inc. only. We do not share your email address and you will never receive email from a third party. We use MailChimp to collect, store, and manage Email subscriptions and campaigns, and to ensure that affirmative consent by our subscribers is “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” and is compliant under GDPR, including the assurance that our subscribers may always unsubscribe/opt-out from receiving emails. Read MailChimp’s privacy policy here.

We only work with third party partners who are able to ensure adequate level of protection to your personal data. We disclose your personal data to third parties or public officials when we are legally obliged to do so. Only if you agree, we may pass on your personal information to third parties so that they may offer you their products and services, or if there are other legal grounds for it.

Use of Cookies

Our website uses cookies. Cookies are files created by websites that you visit; websites put cookies on your computer or device to store information about your preferences. Cookies can improve your browsing experience by allowing sites to keep you signed in, remember your site preferences and give you locally relevant content. However, some cookies may put your privacy at risk by tracking sites that you visit.

There are two types of cookies:

  • First-party cookies are created by the website you visit, and only the website which issued the first party cookies can read them. (The website is shown in the address bar.)
  • Third-party cookies are created by websites other than the website you are visiting. These sites own some of the content (like ads or images) that you see on the web page you visit.

Cookies may also be either “persistent” cookies or “session” (temporary) cookies. A persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date. A session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies. We use both session and persistent cookies on our website.

  • The cookies that we use on our website, and the purposes for which they are used, are set out below:
    1. we use Google Analytics on our website to recognize a computer when a user visits the website / track users as they navigate the website / improve the website’s usability / analyze the use of the website / administer the website / prevent fraud and improve the security of the website / personalize the website for each user.
    2. We use Google AdSense Advertising on our website. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it to serve advertisements which may be of particular interest to specific users based on previous visits to our site and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt-out of the use of the advertising cookie by visiting the Google Ad and Content Network privacy policy. We also provide the following help regarding cookies:

Useful links for browsers to manage cookies:

Note: Deleting or blocking cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content. An example is YouTube video. Embedded content from other websites behaves in the 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Affiliate Partners

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to the websites of our affiliate partners.  If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. We only partner with third-party affiliates that we trust and know, so we encourage you to review our affiliate website’s privacy policies and customer service information, before you submit any personal data to these websites.

You can find a list of our affiliates on our disclosure and advertising page.

How long we retain your data

East Coast Equine Inc. will retain your personal data only for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you products or services, and as necessary to comply with our obligations.

For users that register on our website with our Business Directory, we 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.

Email / Blog subscribers’ information is retained by MailChimp in East Coast Equine Inc.’s MailChimp account.

How You Can Correct or Remove Information

We provide this privacy policy as a statement to you of our commitment to protect your personal information.

If you have submitted personal information through our website and would like that information deleted from our records or would like to update or correct that information, please do so by notifying us via our Contact page, or send an email to staff@eastcoasthorses.com with the subject line “Erase My Data” in the comment box. Please include the email address of the account and the first and last name of the account owner.  We may contact you for clarifications as part of this process. Please note that the erasure of your data is permanent.

How we protect your data

We do our best to keep your Personal Data safe.  We use safe protocols for communication and transferring data (HTTPS). We monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks.

Even though we try our best we cannot guarantee the security of information. However, we promise to notify suitable authorities of data breaches. We will also notify you if there is a threat to your rights or interests. We will do everything we reasonably can to prevent security breaches and to assist authorities should any breaches occur.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

The safety of children is important to us. Consequently, we operate our site in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and will not knowingly or intentionally collect or use personal information from anyone under 13 years of age without parental consent. If you are under 13 and wish to provide personal information, ask a parent or guardian for assistance. EastCoastHorses.com (East Coast Equine Inc.) cannot prohibit minors from visiting our Site and must rely on parents and guardians to decide which materials are appropriate for children under 13.

How to Contact Us

Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you:

Email: staff@eastcoasthorses.com

Write to us at:

East Coast Equine Inc.
1074 Holly Springs Loop Rd.
Williamston, NC 27892

Call us at: (252) 799-0334

Agreeing to Terms

If you do not agree to East Coast Equine Inc.’s (website: EastCoastHorses.com) Privacy Policy as posted here on this website, please do not use this site or any services offered by this site.

Your use of this site indicates acceptance of this privacy policy and our use of cookies.