If you leave comments on our website, we collect the data displayed in the comment form as well as your IP address and the user agent string (which identifies your browser) to help us recognise spam.

An anonymised string (also known as a hash) can be created from your email address and sent to the Gravatar service to check whether you are using this service. You can find the Gravatar service's privacy policy here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. Once your comment has been approved, your profile picture will be publicly visible in the context of your comment.

As a registered user, you should avoid uploading photos with an EXIF GPS location to this website. Visitors to this website may download photos stored on the website and extract location information from them.

If you leave a comment on our website, this may mean that you agree to the storage of your name, e-mail address and website in cookies. This serves as a convenience function so that you do not have to enter this data again when you write another comment. These cookies are stored for one year.

If you have an account and log in to this website, we will set a temporary cookie to determine whether your browser accepts cookies. This cookie does not contain any personal data and is deleted when you close your browser.

When you log in, we set up some cookies to save your login information and display options. Login cookies remain active for two days, and cookies for display options remain active for one year. If you select the ‘Stay logged in’ option when you log in, your login will be maintained for a fortnight. When you log out of your account, the login cookies are deleted.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be stored in your browser. This cookie does not contain any personal data, but merely refers to the post ID of the article you have edited. This cookie expires after one day.

Posts on this website may contain embedded content, such as videos, images, posts, etc. Embedded content from other websites behaves in the same way as if the visitor had visited that other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking services and record your interaction with this embedded content, including your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to this website.

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

How long we store your data

Comments you post are stored indefinitely along with the metadata. This allows us to automatically recognise and approve follow-up comments instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users who register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profiles. All users can view, change or delete their personal information at any time (the user name cannot be changed). Website administrators can also view and change this information.

If you have an account on this website or have posted comments, you have the right to request an export of your personal data from us, including any data you have provided to us. In addition, you can request the deletion of all personal data that we have stored about you. Please note that this does not include data that we are required to keep for administrative, legal or security reasons.

Visitor comments could be analysed by an automated spam detection service.