Ballard Music Studio Privacy Policy

Effective 26 April 2019

 

Ballard Music Studio is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America. If you are in a non-USA location covered by the GDPR, you may access documentation of it at this link: https://gdpr-info.eu/.

 

Definitions

 

  • BMS — Ballard Music Studio, the company. Also “We,” “Our,” or “Us” in this privacy policy.
  • Owner — Jeffrey D. Ballard, the owner of Ballard Music Studio.
  • Cookie — a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a text file on your computer by your web browser while you are viewing or interacting with a website.
  • PII — Personally Identifiable Information. The PII collected by BMS can include name, email address, and telephone number. PII has a much broader definition, which can be found in National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S. Department of Commerce) Special Publication 800-122 Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) “Chapter 2: Introduction to PII.” This PDF is available at the following link: https://www.nist.gov/publications/guide-protecting-confidentiality-personally-identifiable-information-pii.

 

Changes to This Privacy Policy

 

We may update this Privacy Policy by posting a new version on our website.

 

Information We May Keep

 

  • If you are a current student of BMS, or have been within at least the last seven (7) tax years, your name, email address, telephone number, and mailing address will be retained for tax purposes.
  • If you have an outstanding balance with BMS, your name, email address, telephone number, and mailing address will be retained for business operating and collection purposes.
  • You and Owner are conversing about a question you asked, about taking lessons, or about other information relevant to the operation of this website or BMS, for effective communication purposes, your name and contact information will be retained.
  • You gave permission for Owner to keep your name and contact information. In this case, even if you are not a student, Owner may send you notices of events related to BMS.
  • You made a comment on a post and that comment was approved. See the sub-section “Commenting on Blog Posts.”
  • Anything required for the safety and security of the BMS website.
  • Anything that is required by law.

 

Information We Share

 

  • We do not share your PII with anyone unless required by law or with your consent.
  • Sometimes, with the consent of the photographer and the photographed, we may post an image of a person on the BMS website. For example, we may post a photo of a student in a lesson or recital.
  • We may share non-PII.

 

Your Rights

 

You have the right to request your PII be deleted at any time, to review PII that BMS has about you, and to update or correct your PII. You also have a right to not consent to the storage of your PII. If, at the time you contact BMS through this website, you do not give consent, or if you later withdraw consent, for storage of your PII and request that it be deleted, Owner will delete any record of your PII (including, but not limited to, name, email address, phone number, mailing address) within 30 days of the date you make the request, with limitations as shown in the “Information We May Keep” section, above.

 

Cookies

 

A web cookie, or simply cookie, is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a text file on your computer by your web browser while you are viewing or interacting with a website.

The BMS website uses cookies via WordPress. For information on WordPress cookies, follow this link: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/cookies/.

In order to track the number of visitors and other traffic to this site, several cookies are set and used by Google Analytics and are explained at this link: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage.

You can restrict the use of cookies in your browser. Information on this topic is available at this link: https://www.aboutcookies.org/.

 

Payment Information

 

BMS accepts credit cards using the Square service. BMS does not maintain or retain banking or credit card information. Square’s Terms of Service (including a link to its Privacy Policy) is available here: https://squareup.com/legal/general/. Square is not used on the BMS website.

 

Platforms and Software Used on the BMS Website

 

Website Hosting

Owner uses an SSL/https platform with a hosting company ICD Soft for this website. ICD Soft’s Privacy Policy is available at this link: https://www.icdsoft.com/privacy. In ICD Soft’s Privacy Policy are the terms “Provider,” “Customer,” and “Site Visitor.” A “Site Visitor” is anybody who visits a Customer’s website. “Customer” is BMS and “Site Visitor” is you. In ICD Soft’s Privacy policy, the pronoun “you” is directed toward customers of ICD Soft. In this case, that is BMS.

Backups of Owner’s Email

Your PII could be in Owner’s email. Owner’s email is stored in automatic daily backups. These automatic backups are deleted within seven (7) days. From time to time, Owner may make, or authorize, a manual backup. These are automatically deleted within three (3) days. Owner can specify that a manual backup of email be saved indefinitely or download a manual backup of email data. As of the date of this privacy policy, Owner has had no reason to do either.

Website Design and Development

The BMS website is designed and maintained using WordPress.org. WordPress.org’s Privacy Policy is available at this link: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/. It applies to users of WordPress.org, not to the users of the BMS website, but for transparency, we have placed this link here.

Security and Site Protection

We use security settings and plug-ins that may record partial-PII, including the IP addresses of human or robotic site visitors.

Forms

The BMS website uses the WPForms Lite plug-in (owned by WPForms, LLC) to obtain submitted (manually entered by you) information from website users. WPForms Lite does not use cookies, nor does the company WPForms, LLC, store any of your information.

When you enter data into forms on the BMS website, you are asked if you want to give consent for Owner to keep your contact information. Consent for storage of your contact information is not required for download of the PDF documents “Twelve Steps to Vocal Development” and “Fifteen Steps to Piano Proficiency,” nor is it required to use the main Contact form and get a response from Owner. If you do not give consent for storage of your submitted contact information, Owner will delete your PII within 30 days of the date you submit it with the exception of the conditions in the “Your Rights” section, above. See also “Information We May Keep” section for more details.

WPForms, LLC‘s privacy policy as it applies to users of its website is available at this link: https://wpforms.com/privacy-policy/.

Commenting on Blog Posts

The BMS website uses the WordPress commenting system on its blog posts. In order to comment on a blog post, you are required to enter a name and an email address so that it can be confirmed that you are not a “robot” or a spammer. Comments are saved within the WordPress commenting system and are viewable to Owner. This includes the name and email address you entered, as well as the IP address of where you were when you made the comment. The name you entered is visible on the post where you commented, but your email address and IP address are not.

Comments are screened via the Akismet Anti-Spam service by Automattic. The Askimet Privacy Policy is available at this link: https://akismet.com/privacy/. The Automattic Privacy Policy is available at this link: https://automattic.com/privacy/.

Social Media

The BMS website uses the Sassy Social Share plug-in by Heateor with the basic icons for social sharing. This enables site visitors to easily share pages and posts to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. No cookies are used, nor is PII stored, by Sassy Social Share or Heateor in the way the BMS website uses it. The Heateor Privacy Policy is available at this link: https://www.heateor.com/privacy/.

 

We have tried to make this privacy policy thorough, yet simple and straightforward. If you have any questions or need clarification, please contact Owner, Jeffrey Ballard, at his email address jdb@ballardmusicstudio.com.