Disclosures

The Birch Cottage is a personal blog written and edited by Pamela Baker. I may occasionally have guest contributors who write for this blog. This blog resides at http://www.thebirchcottage.com.

Disclosure Policy

In compliance with the Endorsement Guide of the Federal Trade Commission {FTC} and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU), it’s important that we disclose the following to our readers:

• The content of our blog is a source of income for us and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses.
• We will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that we have, in fact, used and that we feel will be beneficial to our readers.
• Products provided to us by our advertising partners for our review are given to us free of charge with no cost to ourselves. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way.
• You can trust us. We will always give our genuine opinion about a product or service whether or not we are partnering with the service provider and/or receiving payment to do so.
• Our number one priority is accuracy and fairness to our readers, and we would never compromise the truth just to make a buck. Ever.
• Mentions of associated products/services/businesses within the content of our blog may or may not be noted as an affiliate in every reference.

We hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity and strive to deliver interesting, helpful, and encouraging content while generating a small profit to compensate us for our time, research, and ideas. We love and appreciate our readers and make it our goal to be up front and honest with every post we write.

Privacy Policy

Our blog does not share personal information with third parties nor do we store any information about your visit to this blog other than to analyze and optimize your content and reading experience through the use of cookies. Ever.

To turn off the use of cookies, locate your specific browser setting.  You can also visit the following sites to help you understand the use of cookies and your options.

• How Google uses cookies:  http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads/
• How to Opt out of the use of cookies:  http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/#completed
• How to know your choices:
  http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

We are not responsible for republished content from this blog on other blogs or websites without our permission.

This privacy policy is subject to change without notice and was last updated on May 24, 2018. If you have any questions feel free to contact us at pam {at} thebirchcottage {dot} com.

What we collect

We may collect the following information:

• contact information including email address
• demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests
• other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers

What we do with the information we gather

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with  better service, and in particular for the following reasons:

• We may use the information to improve our products and services.
• We may periodically send promotional emails about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided.  
• From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. We may contact you by email, phone, fax or mail. We may use the information to customize the website according to your interests.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

How we use cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyze web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyze data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Controlling your personal information

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information by contacting us at any time. 

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.

Sharing Policy

Obviously, I blog because I feel like I have something valuable to share with my readers. Unless otherwise noted, all photographs, recipes and projects are my own. If you’d like to share content from The Birch Cottage blog, please follow the Sharing Policy:

Sharing Images

You may share one image from The Birch Cottage with appropriate credit and a link to the original post. Please do not share more than one image from a post without explicit permission. To obtain permission, please feel free to email me at pam {at} thebirchcottage {dot} com.

Sharing Content

If you want to modify a recipe from this site, please do so with appropriate credit  and a link back to the original post. If you want to republish a recipe from this site, please re-write it in your own words and link back to the original post for the ingredient list.

One image or photo with a link to the original post may be used, providing that full appropriate credit is given to The Birch Cottage and a link to the original post.

You may not use more than one image, photo or a post in its entirety without direct written permission from The Birch Cottage. Please do NOT crop, edit, remove or add watermarks to The Birch Cottage photos.

You may contact The Birch Cottage via email at pam {at} thebirchcottage {dot} com.

Comment Policy

My mom used to say, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” This doesn’t mean you can’t use constructive criticism, but was does harsh criticism or negativity really gain anyone? To be quite honest, women sometimes are the quickest to put someone else down. We, on the other hand, are better than that. We’re all here to inspire one another and to share genuine thoughts. Please be kind. Use your nice words or else I’ll have to resort to telling Dad!

Affiliate Information

Amazon Affiliate

The Birch Cottage is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Other Affiliate Advertising

We also use other 3rd party services for affiliate type links.  This all means that if you click on my links that direct you to a product or service, I may receive a small commission for referring that sale.  This comes at absolutely no extra cost to you, and allows me to keep this blog going and being able to share content for free.

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.1)

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at All About Cookies.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

• IP Address
• Operating System type
• Operating System version
• Device Type
• Language of the website
• Web browser type
• Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit National Advertising Initiative opt out page. You may also visit Digital Advertising Alliance website and Network Advertising Initiative website to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at Digital Advertising Alliance’s AppChoices app to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please visit Mediavine Partners.