Privacy Policy for Indie News Network

Last updated: August 25th, 2025

1. What We Collect

When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect:

• the data shown in the comments form (e.g., name, email, website),
• the visitor’s IP address,
• the browser user agent string—for spam detection.

An anonymized string (hash) of your email may be provided to the Gravatar service to check for a profile image. Gravatar’s privacy policy is here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. Once your comment is approved, your profile picture is publicly visible in the context of your comment.

2. Media

If you upload images, please avoid including embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors may download and extract any location data embedded in images.

3. Cookies

We use cookies in several situations:

• If you leave a comment, you may opt-in to save your name, email, and website in cookies for convenience. These cookies last for one year.
• On visiting the login page, a temporary cookie is set to check whether your browser accepts cookies—it contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
• When logging in, we set cookies to remember your login and screen display choices:
  • Login cookies last for two days.
  • Screen options cookies last for one year.
  • If “Remember Me” is selected, your login persists for two weeks.
• After logging out, login cookies are removed.

4. Embedded Content from Other Websites

Articles may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles). These behave as if you visited the source website—those sites may collect data about you, set cookies, embed third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction if you have an account and are logged in.

5. How We Share Your Data

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

6. How Long We Retain Your Data

• Comments and their metadata are retained indefinitely to recognize and approve follow-ups automatically.
• If you register on the site, we store personal information you provide in your user profile. You can view, edit, or delete your information at any time (except your username). Admins can also view and edit this data.

7. Your Rights

If you have an account or have left comments, you can request:

• a downloadable export of your personal data,
• request deletion of your personal data (excluding data we are legally required to retain).

8. Where Your Data Is Sent

All collected information is sent to WordFence for our security purposes. It is analyzed for potential spam, attacks and nefarious intent toward Indie News Now. All collected information is sent to and tracked by TWIPLA for our analytics purposes. Further information can be found at:

• https://www.wordfence.com/
• https://www.twipla.com/en

9. What the Wordfence Plugin Collects

The Wordfence Security plugin helps protect this website from malicious activity. In order to provide security services, Wordfence may collect the following information:

• IP Addresses – Used to detect malicious traffic, block attackers, and identify login attempts.
• Login Attempts – Tracks successful and failed login attempts (including username and IP) to protect accounts.
• Visitor Behavior – May log page requests, HTTP headers, user agent, and referrer to identify suspicious activity.
• GeoIP Location – Uses the visitor’s IP to estimate geographic location for security blocking and analysis.
• Cookies – Wordfence sets cookies to:
  • determine if a visitor is human or a bot,
  • allow logged-in users to bypass security restrictions,
  • check the visitor’s ability to log in securely.
• Firewall & Security Logs – Logs details about blocked attacks, malicious requests, or suspicious login activity.

This data is stored securely on our server and may be transmitted to Wordfence’s servers to improve security intelligence (for example, comparing malicious IPs against their global threat defense feed). Wordfence does not use this information for marketing or sell your data.

10. What the TWIPLA Plugin Collects

The TWIPLA plugin provides privacy-first website analytics. Depending on your privacy mode settings, it may collect the following:

• In Maximum Privacy Mode (default) – No IP addresses, fingerprinting, or page history. Tracking uses anonymized HTTP requests and viewport size via CSS. No personal identifiers are stored.
• In Light, Medium, or GDPR Privacy Modes – TWIPLA may collect:
  • Behavior data such as session recordings, heatmaps, click/scroll behavior, funnels, event tracking.
  • Device/browser info (e.g., operating system, viewport, resolution), location (like country, city, district), page visit histories depending on mode.
  • In Light mode: may record IP address, page history, device details via fingerprinting.
  • In Medium mode: may collect page history, device details, location, returning visitor details, but anonymizes or does not store IP addresses.
  • In GDPR Privacy mode: anonymizes IP addresses and paths; does not record visit time or pages viewed, but may track number of visits.
• Common features in all modes – TWIPLA offers website stats, UTM campaign tracking, traffic pattern analysis, device usage, incoming/outgoing traffic, competitor benchmarking, company reveal features.
• Data Storage – Data is stored in ISO 27001-certified data centers in Falkenstein, Germany. TWIPLA does not sell or transfer your data to third parties.

11. Combining Policies

This privacy policy covers both the data collected via our site (comments, media uploads, cookies, embedded content) and through the Wordfence and TWIPLA plugins as described above.

12. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this policy or your data, please contact us.