Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 20, 2024

Welcome to duffel bag spouse travels!

Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting our website and showing interest in our travel guides. These guides focus on life in South Korea (and the world at large) as a military spouse and Black American woman who loves hiking and exploring cafes. This Privacy Policy outlines our practices regarding the collection, use, protection, and disclosure of Personal Data we gather from you through your interaction with our website and services.

When you use our services, you entrust us with your Personal Data. We are committed to protecting your data and respecting your privacy. This policy explains how we handle and safeguard your information and your rights in relation to that information.

By accessing our website, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices, please contact us at the provided channels.

GENERAL INFORMATION

What law applies?
In principle, we will only use your Personal Data in accordance with the applicable data protection laws, Illinois’s statutory and common law privacy and data protection principles, the UK’s Data Protection Act (“DPA”), and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

What is Personal Data?
Personal Data is any information relating to personal or material circumstances that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. This includes, for example, your name, date of birth, e-mail address, postal address, or telephone number as well as online identifiers such as your IP address.

What is processing?
“Processing” means any operation or set of operations which is performed upon Personal Data, whether or not by automatic means. The term is broad and covers virtually any handling of data.

Who is responsible for data processing?
The Data Controller is duffel bag spouse travels, Illinois, USA (“duffel bag spouse travels”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). If you have any questions about this policy or our data protection practices, please contact us using speterss365@gmail.com.

What are the legal bases of processing?
In accordance with the DPA and the GDPR, we have to have at least one of the following legal bases to process your Personal Data:

Consent – This is where we have asked you to provide explicit permission to process your data for a particular purpose.
Contract – This is where we process your information to fulfill a contractual arrangement we have made with you or reply to your messages, e-mails, posts, calls, etc.
Legitimate Interests – This is where we rely on our interests as a reason for processing, generally this is to provide you with the best products and service in the most secure and appropriate way. Of course, before relying on any of those legitimate interests we balance them against your interests and make sure they are compelling enough and will not cause any unwarranted harm.
Legal Obligation – This is where we have a statutory or other legal obligation to process the information, such as for archiving or the investigation of crime.

DATA WE COLLECT

Log data
When you access and use our website, we collect the Personal Data that your browser automatically transmits to our server. This is technically necessary for us to display our website and to ensure its stability and security. In this sense, we collect the following data:

IP address of the requesting computer
Date and time of access
Name and URL of the file accessed
Website from which the access was made (referrer URL)
Browser used and, if applicable, the operating system of your computer as well as the name of your access provider.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest.

Hosting
We use the hosting services of Hostinger International, Ltd for the purpose of hosting and displaying our website. Hostinger does so on the basis of processing on our behalf, and that also means that all data collected on our website is processed on Hostinger’s France based servers. The basis for processing is our legitimate interest, and the initiation and/or fulfillment of a contract.

Content Management System (CMS)
We use the Content Management System (CMS) of WordPress by Automattic Inc, to publish and maintain the created and edited content and texts on my website. This means that all content and texts submitted to my website is transferred to WordPress. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest.

Fonts
We use Google Fonts by Google LLC and Font Awesome of Fonticons Inc on our website to display external fonts. To enable the display of certain fonts on our website, a connection to a Google/Font Awesome server is established when our website is accessed. The connection to Google/Font Awesome established when you call up our website enables Google/Font Awesome to determine which website sent your request and to which IP address the display of the font is to be transmitted. This represents a legitimate interest.

Cookies
We use so-called cookies on our website. Cookies are pieces of information that are transmitted from our web server or third-party web servers to your web browser and stored there for later retrieval. Cookies may be small files or other types of information storage. There are different types of cookies:

Essential Cookies. Essential cookies are cookies to provide a correct and user-friendly website.
Non-essential Cookies. Non-essential Cookies are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyze your behavior on a website (“analytical” cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you (“advertising” cookies).

As set out in the UK’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (“PECR”) and the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive (“PECD”), we need to obtain consent for the use of Non-essential Cookies. For further information on the cookies we use, please refer to our Cookie Policy. The legal basis for processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.

Cookie consent
Our website uses a cookie consent tool to obtain your consent to the storage of cookies and to document this consent. When you enter our website, the following Personal Data is transferred to us:

Your consent(s) or revocation of your consent(s)
Your IP address
Information about your browser
Information about your device
Time of your visit to our website.

The basis for processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.

Economic analyses and market research
For business reasons, we analyze the data we have on web and server traffic patterns, website interactions, browsing behavior, etc. The analyses serve us alone and are not disclosed externally and processed using anonymous analyses with summarized and/or anonymized values. For this purpose we use Google Analytics, Snowplow Analytics Limited, and Jetpack by Automattic. The legal basis is our legitimate interest and your consent. For further information, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Links to other websites
Please note that if you use a link from our website to a third-party website, that third-party may also set new cookies that are not covered by this policy. In such cases, we recommend that you read the cookie policy on the third-party website itself.

Contacting us
If you contact us, we store and process the following data from you: Name, e-mail address, telephone number as well as other Personal Data that you provide when contacting us. This data is collected and processed exclusively for the purpose of contacting you and processing your request and then deleted, provided there is no legal obligation to retain it. The legal bases for processing are contract and our legitimate interest.

Promotional use of your data
We use your data within the legally permissible scope for marketing purposes, e.g., to draw your attention to special promotions and discount offers. In addition, we may draw your attention to comparable offers by email, e.g., we may inform you about exclusive sales, promotions, or special events. The legal basis for processing is our legitimate interest.

MARKETING

General
Insofar as you have given us your separate consent to process your data for marketing and advertising purposes, we are entitled to contact you for these purposes via the communication channels you have given your consent to.

You may give us your consent in a number of ways including by selecting a box on a form where we seek your permission to send you marketing information, or sometimes your consent is implied from your interactions or contractual relationship with us. Where your consent is implied, it is on the basis that you would have a reasonable expectation of receiving a marketing communication based on your interactions or contractual relationship with us.

Direct Marketing generally takes the form of email or SMS but may also include other less traditional or emerging channels. These forms of contact will be managed by us, or by our contracted service providers. Every directly addressed marketing sent or made by us or on our behalf will include a means by which you may unsubscribe or opt out.

Affiliate Marketing
We also participate in Affiliate Marketing Programs. In general Affiliate Marketing Programs programs are designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking. You will never be charged a fee through one of our affiliate links, however, you may get a discounted rate of the relevant affiliate’s services and we will make a small commission. Our editorial content is not influenced by our affiliate partnerships.

ADVERTISING

We would like to show you interesting advertising outside of our website and use various third-party tools and cookies for this purpose. These collect and process information about your activities on our website – for example, which products you are interested in or which pages you visit. By knowing what you are looking for and how you use our website, we can adapt our advertising to your needs. And thus increase the likelihood that you will also be shown suitable and interesting advertising outside our website.

We also analyze this data to evaluate the relevance of the advertisements and to optimize the advertisements for you. Through the tools, your browser regularly establishes a connection to the server of the tool provider when you visit our website. For some tools, we have no direct influence on what data is processed by the providers. The following personal data may be processed by third-party providers:

HTTP header information (e.g., IP address, web browser, website URL, date, and time)
Measuring pixel-specific data (e.g., pixel ID and cookie ID)
Additional information about visits to our website (e.g., orders placed, products clicked on).

The legal bases for processing are our legitimate interest and your consent in case of cookies. For further information, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

General

We are present on social media and if you contact or connect with us via social media websites, we and the relevant social media website are jointly responsible for the processing of your data and enter into a so-called joint controller agreement. The legal basis is our legitimate interest, your consent or, in some cases, the initiation of a contract.

When you visit our profiles and interact with us and others
When you visit our social media profiles, we, as the operator of the profile, process your actions and interactions with our profile (e.g., the content of your messages, enquiries, posts, or comments that you send to us or leave on our profile or when you like or share our posts) as well as your publicly viewable profile data (e.g., your name and profile picture).

Which Personal Data from your profile is publicly viewable depends on your profile settings, which you can adjust yourself in the settings of your social media account.

Please take care not to transmit or share sensitive data or confidential information (e.g., application documents, bank or payment data) via social media platforms; we recommend that you use a more secure means of transmission (e.g. e-mail).

PRINCIPLES OF PROCESSING PERSONAL DATA

Storage and Retention
As far as necessary, we process and store your Personal Data for the duration of our business relationship, which also includes, for example, the initiation and execution of a contract.

In addition, we are subject to various storage and documentation obligations, which result from the minimum statutory retention periods in accordance with Illinois’s Commercial Law and Fiscal Code, among others. The retention and documentation periods specified vary between two to ten years.

Security
Our website uses SSL or TLS encryption to ensure the security of data processing and to protect the transmission of confidential content, such as orders, login data, or contact requests that you send to us. We have also implemented numerous security measures (“technical and organizational measures”) for example encryption or need to know access, to ensure the most complete protection of Personal Data processed through our website.

Nevertheless, internet-based data transmissions can always have security gaps, so that absolute protection cannot be guaranteed. And databases or data sets that include Personal Data may be breached inadvertently or through wrongful intrusion. Upon becoming aware of a data breach, we will notify all affected individuals whose Personal Data may have been compromised as expeditiously as possible after which the breach was discovered.

Special Category Data
Unless specifically required when using our services and explicit consent is obtained for that service, we do not process special category data.

Automated decision-making
The Automated decision-making is the process of making a decision by automated means without any human involvement. Automated decision-making including profiling does not take place.

Do Not Sell
We do not sell your Personal Data.

Sharing and Disclosure
We will not disclose or otherwise distribute your Personal Data to third parties unless this is:

necessary for the performance of our services including our shipping forwarder and,
you have consented to the disclosure,
or if we are legally obliged to do so e.g., by court order or if this is necessary to support criminal or legal investigations or other legal investigations or other legal proceedings; or proceedings at home or abroad or to fulfill our legitimate interests.

International Transfer

We may transfer your Personal Data to other companies as necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. In order to provide adequate protection for your Personal Data when it is transferred, we have contractual arrangements regarding such transfers. We take all reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the Personal Data we transfer.

YOUR RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES

Privacy rights
You can exercise the following rights:

Right to information
Right to rectification
Right to deletion
Right to data portability
Right of objection
Right to withdraw consent
Right to complain to a supervisory authority
Right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing.

If you have any questions about the nature of the Personal Data we hold about you, or if you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us.

Updating your information
If you believe that the information we hold about you is inaccurate or that we are no longer entitled to use it and want to request its rectification, deletion, or object to its processing, please do so by contacting us.

Withdrawing your consent
You can revoke consents you have given at any time by contacting us. The legality of the data processing carried out until the revocation remains unaffected by the revocation.

Access Request
In the event that you wish to make a Data Subject Access Request, you may inform us in writing of the same. We will respond to requests regarding access and correction as soon as reasonably possible. Should we not be able to respond to your request within thirty (30) days, we will tell you why and when we will be able to respond to your request. If we are unable to provide you with any Personal Data or to make a correction requested by you, we will tell you why.

Complaint to a supervisory authority
You have the right to complain about our processing of Personal Data to a supervisory authority responsible for data protection. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach any supervisory authority.

USA SPECIFIC PROVISIONS

The following applies to all users located elsewhere in the United States. While we understand and appreciate that privacy and consumer data protection laws differ as they are subject to each state’s legislature and that no data protection framework similar to the DPA or GDPR exists on a federal level, we are committed to follow and apply the for your state relevant privacy rules and regulations. As of the day of drafting, the following other states had enacted privacy and consumer data protection laws:

California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) including its subsequent amendments from the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act (“CPRA”)
Colorado Privacy Act (“CPA”)
Connecticut Data Privacy Act (“CTDPA”)
Delaware Online Privacy Protection Act (“DOPPA”)
Indiana Consumer Data Protection Act (“ICDPA”)
Iowa Consumer Data Protection Act (“ICDPA”)
Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act (“MCDPA”)
Oregon Consumer Privacy Act (“OCPA”)
Tennessee Information Protection Act (“TIPA”)
Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (“TDPSA”)
Utah Consumer Privacy Act (“UCPA”)
Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (“VCDPA”).

Further and under consideration of the similarities of the above provisions, no conflict should arise pursuing a uniform approach in granting all users in the USA the same rights and privileges as set out above. However, should ambiguity occur the most stringent provision is chosen to ensure the most comprehensive approach when it comes to protecting your Personal Data.

Further, the following also apply:

i) “Shine the Light”
“Shine the Light” law (Civil Code Section 1798.83) requires us to respond to requests from California asking about the business’s practices related to disclosing Personal Data to third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. You may make a request about our collection and disclosure of your Personal Data using the contact details provided.

ii) COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)
When it comes to the collection of Personal Data from children under the age of 13 years old, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) puts parents in control. The Federal Trade Commission, United States’ consumer protection agency, enforces the COPPA Rule, which spells out what operators of websites and online services must do to protect children’s privacy and safety online. We do not specifically market to children under the age of 13 years old.

iii) CAN SPAM Act
The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have emails stopped from being sent to them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. To be in accordance with CAN SPAM, we agree to the following: If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, you can email us, and we will promptly remove you from ALL correspondence.

iv) Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)
If we process your Personal Data for the purpose of sending you SMS marketing communications, you may manage your receipt of marketing and non-transactional communications from us by replying or texting ‘STOP’ if you receive our SMS communications. In this respect, the data processing is carried out solely on the basis of our consent in personalized direct advertising per SMS.

v) Controls For Do-Not-Track Features
Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track (‘DNT’) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, our website does not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this policy.

vi) Right to complain
Finally, and in regard to the right to complain to a supervisory authority. You have the right to lodge a complaint about our processing of Personal Data with a supervisory authority responsible for data protection. Users based in the above-mentioned States may lodge a complaint with the relevant district attorney or attorney general office. However, we would appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you contact any supervisory authority.

DOES THIS POLICY CHANGE?

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. This might be for a number of reasons, such as to reflect a change in the law or to accommodate a change in our business practices and the way we use cookies. We recommend that you check here periodically for

any changes to our Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy was last updated on Monday, May 20th, 2024.

WHO SHOULD I CONTACT FOR MORE INFORMATION?

If you feel that the above is not sufficient or if you have any queries as regards the collection, processing, or use of your information we are looking forward to hearing from you. We will make every effort to reply as soon as possible and take into consideration any suggestions from your end.