Privacy Policy

Home Privacy Policy

Effective Date: 15 December, 2022

The information we gather when you use BlogAstral websites, services, mobile applications, goods, and content (collectively, “Services”) is described in this policy. It also contains details on how we collect, utilise, transfer, and discard the data. We don’t only want to follow the law on privacy. To gain your trust, that is.

Information We Collect & How We Use It

Ads don’t generate income for BlogAstral. As a result, we don’t collect data to market to you. BlogAstral tracks data in order to optimise the performance of its offering. Basic product elements like enabling our metered paywall to function as intended as well as important features like tailoring the content you view to what we believe you’ll find interesting are included in this. Consequently, we gather information about your interactions with our network in order to provide you with the best experience possible when using BlogAstral. You actively tell us some of this information (such as your email address, which we use to track your account or communicate with you). Additional data that we get is dependent on your usage of BlogAstral, including the pages you read (including how much of each page you view and for how long) and the features you utilise (like highlights, follows, and applause). This data consists of the history of those transactions, your IP address, specifics about your device (such as the model or browser), and referral data (how you got to a particular page).

We use this information to:

offer, evaluate, enhance, publicise, and customise the services
combating spam and other types of abuse
create overall, non-identifying data about how users interact with the Services.

We may obtain, store, and subsequently change information related to your third-party account, such as your friend or follower lists, when you register for a BlogAstral account and log in using a third-party service (such as Twitter, Facebook, Apple, or Google). We will never post something through one of your third-party accounts without getting your explicit consent.

Information Disclosure

BlogAstral will never give your personal information to a third party in order to deliver or enable third-party advertising to you. We won’t provide third parties any information about you.

Depending on the situation, we may share your account information with third parties, such as: (1) with your permission; (2) to a service provider or partner who complies with our data protection standards; (3) with academic or non-profit researchers using aggregation, anonymization, or pseudonymization; (4) when we have a good faith belief that doing so is required by law, such as in response to a subpoena or other legal process; and (5) when we reasonably believe that doing so will help protect someone from harm that is about to happen.

Unless we are compelled by law to do otherwise or we have reason to believe that doing so may put others in danger or lead to illegal activity, if we are going to share your information in response to legal process, we’ll give you notice so you can contest it (for example, by asking the court to get involved). Any unlawful requests from the government for information about our service users will be met with our objection.

Public Data

Your BlogAstral user profile page, public interactions (like claps or highlights), and post pages may be indexed by search engines, making it possible for users to locate these pages while looking for you on websites like Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing. Additionally, users may post links to your material on social media websites like Facebook or Twitter.

Data Storage

BlogAstral obtains the hardware, software, networking, storage, and other relevant technology we require from outside vendors and hosting partners like Amazon. We keep server logs and event logs, respectively. You give BlogAstral permission to transfer, keep, and use your information in India and any other country where we do business by using the Services.

Third-Party Embeds

You may notice that BlogAstral does not hold all of the stuff you see there. These “embeds” are hosted by a third party and appear to be a component of a BlogAstral page because they are embedded there. For instance: films from YouTube or Vimeo, gifs from Imgur or Giphy, audio from SoundCloud, tweets from Twitter, code snippets from GitHub, or documents from Scribd that are included in a BlogAstral article. These files transmit data to the hosted site as though you were accessing it directly (for example, when you load a BlogAstral post page with a YouTube video embedded in it, that video appears because of a pointer to files hosted by YouTube, and in turn YouTube receives data about your activity, such as your IP address and how much of the video you watch).

BlogAstral has no control over the information that third parties gather in situations like these or what they choose to do with it. Therefore, the BlogAstral’s third-party embeds are not covered by this Privacy Policy. They are protected by the third-party service’s privacy policy (for example, YouTube’s privacy policy would apply if you see a YouTube video embedded in a BlogAstral post and it uses data about your interactions with the video).

Some embeds could require you to fill up a form with personal information, like your email address, once you click on a link in a BlogAstral post. Bad actors are actively discouraged from using the BlogAstral. We have no idea what a third party might do with your information if you decide to provide it to them in this manner. Their acts are not protected by this Privacy Policy, as previously stated. Therefore, if you encounter embedded forms on BlogAstral that ask for your email address or any other sensitive information, please use caution. Make sure you are aware of the recipient of your information and what they intend to do with it. We advise against providing your email address or any other private information to a third party via an embedded form.

You are not permitted to integrate a form that allows users to submit their personal information when publishing on the BlogAstral. You must direct visitors to an offsite page that accepts such submissions from users, and that page’s design must be sufficiently different from BlogAstral to prevent user confusion over the destination of their personal data. If you don’t comply, BlogAstral may take other steps to restrict or disable your account or disable the post.

Tracking & Cookies

When you come back to our Services, we can recognise you thanks to browser cookies and other similar technology. We use them in a variety of ways, including to log you in, remember your choices (including your default language), assess the efficiency of emails, enable the operation of our paywall and metre, and customise content and other services. The core operation of Medium would not be possible without cookies because our metered paywall depends on them.

You are not tracked online by BlogAstral. We solely keep track of your exchanges within the BlogAstral network (which encompasses https://blogastral.com and custom domains hosted by BlogAstral).

Some third-party services, such Google Analytics, that we employ to deliver the Service might send their own cookies to your browser. This privacy statement only applies to BlogAstral’s use of cookies; it does not apply to cookie use by other parties.

Modifying or Deleting Your Personal Information

You can access, edit, export, or remove your personal information here if you have a BlogAstral account.

We might keep a few temporary residual copies of information to guard against malicious or unintentional destruction (generally several weeks). Your content and information, however, won’t be retrievable if you remove your account. When required to do so by law, BlogAstral may keep copies of your information longer than this time frame.

Data Security

For the protection of data sent to and from our website, HTTPS/TLS encryption is used. We cannot, however, guarantee security because no data transmission over the Internet is 100% safe. You use the Service at your own risk, and you are in charge of taking all necessary precautions to keep your account secure.

Business Transfers

In the event that your information is transferred or is subject to a different privacy policy as a result of a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, reorganisation, or sale of assets involving us, we will give you advance notice so you can choose not to participate in the new policy by deactivating your account before it is transferred.

Email from BlogAstral

We may occasionally email you regarding your account, changes to our services, or new rules. You cannot unsubscribe from this category of “transactional” emails (unless you delete your account). However, you can choose not to receive non-administrative communications like digests, newsletters, and activity notifications by visiting the Settings page for your account.

We may obtain information about how you engage with emails received from BlogAstral (for example, whether you open the email or click on a certain link within it).

You won’t receive an email from us requesting your password or other account details. Please forward any such emails to us at withblogastral@gmail.com

so we can look into them if you get them.

Changes to this Policy

BlogAstral may amend this Policy from time to time. If there are any substantial changes, we’ll let you know. The policy will always be available here, and we will keep old versions of the policy archived.

Questions

We welcome feedback about this policy at withblogastral@gmail.com

Data Protection Statement for European Union Users

Description of Processing Activity

BlogAstral gathers and keeps track of personal data from its readers in order to personalise their reading experience and make content distribution possible. The data it shares with its service providers is little.

Purposes of Processing

Offering, evaluating, promoting, and enhancing the Services
Obtain information about the services’ usage
offer a specialized reading experience
Publish and disseminate user-generated content Make paid material accessible Authors are paid through a partnership programe for specific content Fight spam, fraud, and other service abuse

Legal Bases

BlogAstral must comply with its legal obligations to users as outlined in our Terms of Service and to Members as outlined in our Membership Terms of Service, which is why it gathers and maintains personal information about its users in order to deliver the Services.

BlogAstral furthers its legitimate interests by gathering the bare minimum of information about users who have logged off in order to deliver the Services described above and to make sure that new users utilizing the free member preview do not read more than their allotted number of free articles per month before having to subscribe to continue. Due to our minimal user data collection for these objectives and complete transparency regarding these operations, these legitimate interests are neither outweighed by (nor do they breach) our users’ privacy interests.

BlogAstral performs contractual responsibilities to users who use the Services to post content on websites hosted by BlogAstral when it collects and keeps personal data regarding non-users mentioned in user-generated content. When this occurs, the users who created the user-generated material that contains the personal information of third parties are in charge of that content. In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation’s rights of the data subject, as well as rights of expression and access to information, BlogAstral will take into account relevant complaints.

Public Nature of Personal Data

Users who are logged in can choose to participate publicly with the Services by liking or commenting on posts, underlying specific passages in posts, following other user accounts, sharing links on associated social media accounts, or posting their own content. Such personal data is processed on the assumption that it has been blatantly made public by the user in cases where it may reveal special category protected data. The following provides more details on possible effects of such processing. Do not establish an account or use these Services features if you disagree with this public usage.

Your BlogAstral user profile page, public interactions (such claps or highlights), and post pages may all be indexed by search engines. Additionally, users may post links to your material on social media websites like Facebook or Twitter.

Categories of Personal Data Collected

Logged out users:

Reading history
IP address
Browser information
DNT status

Logged in users:

Username
Display name
Bio
Avatar image
Email address (non-public)
Session activity (security)
Linked social media accounts (optional)
IP address
Browser information
Reading history (on BlogAstral network only)
Network interactions (recommends, follows, etc.)
Posts, responses, or series published by user

Members:

Billing information and history

Partner authors:

Bank account for payments
Business information, if applicable

Categories of Recipients

Hosting, Storage, & Other Infrastructure
Security
Analytics
Communication & Support
Payment Processors

Use of Algorithms to Personalise User Experience

BlogAstral gathers and keeps track of personal information from its readers in order to personalise their reading experience by presenting material that is based on their stated preferences and interests (including through their reading history and network interactions). Because it has no implications for users’ legal standing or other equally important interests, this does not qualify as automated decision-making under the GDPR. BlogAstral may utilise algorithms as part of its content moderation process in order to combat and prevent spam, fraud, and other types of abuse.

Potential Consequences of Processing

Users have the option to make certain personal information about themselves public and available to others on BlogAstral through their profile and network interactions by creating and using an account. In some circumstances, this may be special category protected data that has been blatantly made public by the user.

BlogAstral entries are public by nature, thus it’s feasible for third parties to gather personally identifying information from them through reading, deduction, additional research, or automated extraction and analysis.

Users are free to create an account using either their own name and information or a chosen alias. Users have the option to utilise the service without sharing data or interacting on the network. However, you are not permitted to use the Services if you do not concur with and accept the risks of such usage.

Cross-border Transfers

India is where BlogAstral is hosted. You give BlogAstral permission to transfer, keep, and use your information in India and any other country where we do business by using the Services. Your data is contractually protected at least to the same extent as described in this statement when it is provided to our processors.

Retention

For as long as you have an account, BlogAstral keeps the personal information related to it. You can always delete your account if you want to remove your personal information from it. Deleted account profile pages will immediately produce an error 404 “file not found” page and will become unrecoverable in our system after fourteen days. Depending on the procedures followed by those search engines, over which BlogAstral may have little or no control, it may take a few more days for your personal information to be removed from their databases.

Since BlogAstral only has minimally secure access to those data as required to provide the Services, you will need to delete your payment or billing information with your payment provider.

Rights of Data Subjects

You can request an export of your personal data from the Settings page if you register for a BlogAstral account at any time.
From the Settings page, as well as the Customise Your Interests page to update your interests, you can make changes to information related to your account.
Your personal information will be totally erased after 14 days if you delete your account, which you may do at any time through the Settings page (except to the extent Medium is prevented by law from deleting your information).
You can object to the use of your personal information at any time by sending an email to withblogastral@gmail.com
If your complaint concerns the alleged abuse of your personal information by a third party, that post or account may be suspended in accordance with applicable legislation, the public interest, our contractual duties, and other users’ rights of expression and information access.
According to EU law, you have the right to file a complaint with the designated Supervisory Authority of your EU member state regarding the processing of your personal data by BlogAstral.

Subject Access Requests

We only process Subject Access Requests and account deletion requests from the account holder for security and account ownership verification purposes. Third-party service requests cannot be fulfilled by us.

By logging into your account and going to https://blogastral.com, you can use the self-service download tool and account termination procedure.

Contact Information

Contact us at withblogastral@gmail.com if you have any inquiries regarding this privacy statement. Please use this form to get in touch with BlogAstral if you have such a question: https://blogastral.com/contact-us