What we collect, and what we don’t

Who is responsible for this site

RodentVerify (“we”, “us”) publishes this website and decides how the limited personal data described below is handled. For anything on this page, write to contact@rodentverify.com.

What we do not do

It is quicker to start with what is absent, because most of what a privacy policy usually covers does not happen here.

• We do not offer user accounts, logins or profiles.
• We do not accept comments.
• We do not run a newsletter and do not collect email addresses for marketing.
• We do not sell or share personal information, and we do not exchange it for anything of value.
• We do not run advertising networks or retargeting pixels on this site.
• We do not ask for your name, address, phone number or payment details anywhere on the site.

Information we collect

Server logs

Like almost every website, the servers that deliver these pages record a technical entry for each request. Our hosting provider keeps those logs. They typically contain your IP address, the time of the request, which page was requested, your browser and operating system, and the page you arrived from.

These logs exist so that the site can be kept running and secure — diagnosing errors, identifying attacks, blocking abuse. They are held by the hosting provider under that provider’s own retention schedule and are not used to build a profile of you.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4, connected through the Google Site Kit plugin for WordPress, to understand which pages are read, how people arrive and whether anything is broken. It is the only analytics tool on the site.

Google Analytics sets first-party cookies in your browser — typically named _ga and _ga_<identifier> — which hold a randomly generated number used to tell one browser from another. Through this we receive aggregate reports: page views, approximate location at city or country level, device type, referring site, and how long pages are read.

We have no way to identify you personally from these reports, and we do not attempt to. Google processes this data on our behalf and as a controller in its own right under its own terms; Google’s handling is described in Google’s Privacy Policy and in Google’s business privacy information. Google Analytics transfers data to servers outside your country, including the United States.

Google Search Console

Site Kit also connects this site to Google Search Console, which reports the search queries that led people here. That data reaches us already aggregated by Google and contains nothing that identifies an individual reader. Search Console sets no cookies on your browser.

If you email us

When you write to us we receive your email address, your message and whatever your mail provider attaches to it. We use that to reply and to act on what you told us — usually a correction. Correspondence is kept while it is useful and deleted when it is not. We do not add you to any list, and we do not pass your address to anyone else.

Cookies used on this site

Three kinds of cookie or local storage may appear while you use RodentVerify:

• Analytics cookies set by Google Analytics, described above.
• A measurement setting stored in your own browser. Several guides include a block that draws droppings, gaps and gnaw marks at true physical size. Because screens differ, you can calibrate it against a bank card, and your setting is remembered in your browser’s local storage under the key rv-mm. That value is a number describing your screen. It never leaves your device, it is not sent to us, and clearing your browser data removes it.
• Affiliate cookies set by a merchant, but only if you click an affiliate link. See the next section.

Affiliate links

Some pages contain affiliate links. If you follow one, the merchant may set a cookie that records that you arrived from RodentVerify, so that a later purchase can be attributed to us. That cookie is set by the merchant, on the merchant’s own domain, under the merchant’s privacy policy — not by us. We receive only anonymous commission reports: a product, a date, an amount. We are not told who bought anything.

What we publish does not depend on those relationships. The reasoning is set out in the Affiliate Disclosure.

Links to other sites

Guides link out to the CDC, the EPA, state health departments, university Extension programs and product pages, because naming a source is the point. Once you follow a link you are on someone else’s site under someone else’s privacy policy, and we have no control over what they collect.

Your rights

The rights below apply to the limited data described above. In practice we hold almost nothing about any individual reader — analytics data does not identify you — so the most common request we can actually act on concerns email correspondence.

If you are in the EEA or the United Kingdom

Under the GDPR and UK GDPR you may ask us to confirm what personal data we hold about you, to give you a copy, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how it is used, and to provide it in a portable form. Where we rely on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

We process analytics data on the basis of our legitimate interest in understanding how the site is used, or on your consent where the law requires it. We process email correspondence in order to answer you. You have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

If you are in California

Under the CCPA as amended by the CPRA you may request disclosure of the categories and specific pieces of personal information collected about you, deletion of that information, and correction of inaccurate information, and you may opt out of any sale or sharing of personal information. RodentVerify does not sell or share personal information, and there is nothing to opt out of. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

Other US states

Several other states now grant comparable rights of access, correction, deletion and opt-out. If you live in one of them, make the request and we will treat it the same way.

How to make a request

Email contact@rodentverify.com and say what you want. We may ask for enough information to work out which records are yours — normally the email address you wrote from. We do not charge for this, and we aim to respond within one month.

Children

RodentVerify is written for adults dealing with their own homes. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, write to us and we will delete it.

Security and retention

The site is served over an encrypted connection. We keep analytics only in aggregate, inside Google Analytics, under the retention period set in that account. Email is kept while it is useful. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Changes to this policy

When what we do changes — a new analytics tool, an affiliate programme, a newsletter — this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves. Material changes are described here rather than slipped in silently.

See also: About · Editorial & Sourcing Policy · Affiliate Disclosure · Contact