Our policy on your privacy.

Your privacy is as important to us as it is to you. Here's how we deal with it.

At Explore-Italian Culture, we are dedicated to protecting your data and privacy. We know how important our own privacy is to us, and we protect yours as if it were our own.

This policy outlines the types of personal information we receive and collect when you use this website, as well as some of the steps we take to safeguard that information. This can help you to make a proper decision about whether or not to share your personal information with us at all.

Explore Italian Culture strives to maintain the highest standards of decency, fairness and integrity in everything we do. That's why we are dedicated to protecting our online visitors' privacy when you're on the site.

About cookies (no, not the chocolate kind).

A cookie in this sense is a string of information that Explore Italian Culture stores on your computer, which your own browser provides each time you return to the site. We use this information to help us identify and track visitors to see how they are using the website, and how they prefer to access information.

All this helps us to provide you with a better experience while you're here.

Google Analytics cookies.

We use Google Analytics (GA) to analyse how people use this website. GA collects data about demographics and interests, and it generates statistical information about how the site is used. It does this by using cookies. These cookies remain on your computer. 

We share the information with Google, and Google stores and uses it on its own computer systems. Google also has a privacy policy, which is available at this link if you'd like to know more.

Explore Italian Culture uses information from GA to track how many people visit this site, but no personal information which could identify you is collected. We use the information GA provides to create reports about how people are using the site, what they like and what we could do better.

This allows us to keep the site updated, and improve our visitors' experience.

If you would rather Google did not collect this information, you can prevent it by adding an opt-out tool to your browser - download it by clicking here.

Advertising cookies.

We use third party advertising companies - Adsense and Amazon - to serve ads on this site. These companies also use cookies and "web beacons" to keep an eye on how often you've seen an advertisement. We share this information with them, but again we do not provide any data which could identify you personally. 

You can opt out of seeing personalised ads fro over 125 different ad networks by clicking here.

Adsense: Some of these third party ads are served by Google. Google's cookie enables it to serve ads to our visitors based on their visits to other sites on the internet. You can opt out of personalised ads by visiting the Google ads opt out page, here. 

If you'd like to know more about how Google manages data, you can find out at this link.

Affiliate products and services.

We receive an affiliate commission for some of the products and services we sell on Explore Italian Culture. This is a list of the affiliate services we use, and a link to their privacy policy so you can be clear about how they use information.

If you click on a product link - whether or not you buy it - you're agreeing to that company's use of cookies, as they outline in their policy.

For your information, here are links to the privacy policies of each affiliate we use on this website.

Retargeting ads and tracking pixels.

Explore Italian Culture uses retargeting ads, which require the setting of cookies in your browser. We also use Facebook pixels to assess the effectiveness of some Facebook ads. You can change your FB ad settings here. 

Refusing cookies.

You can set your browser to accept or refuse all cookies automatically, or to let you know when a cookie is being requested. Taking this action should not cause a problem with the way you use our site, but it may mean you can't use all its interactive features.

To find out how to refuse cookies, consult the "Help" section of your browser.

Personally identifiable information.

Explore Italian Culture may collect and use your personal information for the following purposes: 

• To run and operate our site.
• To display content on the site correctly.
• To improve customer service.
• To help us respond to your customer service requests and support needs more efficiently.
• To personalize your user experience.
• To understand how our users as a group use the services and resources provided on our site.
• To improve our site.
• To improve our products and services.
• To run a promotion, contest, survey or other site feature.
• To send information to you that you agreed to receive about topics we think will be of interest to you.
• To send periodic emails, which may include electronic newsletters and/or autoresponder series of emails.
• To respond to your enquiries, questions, and/or other requests.

We collect personally identifiable information in different ways including (but not only) when you visit this site, register for our newsletter, fill out a form, or in connection with a range of other activities we make available.

Specifically, if you sign up for our newsletter, we need to ask for your first name and email address so we can send it to you. 

If you fill in a form (for example to ask us something) we again need your name and email so we can reply, and we need to know what your request is (obviously!).

If you fill in one of our forms to submit, for example, a story to us, we again ask for your details. Photos, or other details you include, may identify you personally. Be sure that's OK with you before you submit anything.

If you fill in any of our Facebook comments sections, Facebook stores your comments and may publish them on your timeline, depending on your settings.

This site also allows you to share content with your friends and followers on various social media platforms. Below are the links to their privacy policies, so you know what information they collect and how they use it.

If you're not happy with that, that's fine - don't share anything.

Facebook's privacy policy

Pinterest's privacy policy.

If we make any changes to the collection of personally identifiable information, we will inform you by placing a notice on this site. 

And finally, we never, never use personal information for any purpose other than the one you supply it for. We do not sell it or in any other way provide it to anyone else.

Explore Italian Culture has links to other websites which we think may interest you. But once you click on those links and leave our site, we do not have any control over that other website, so we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information you provide when you visit them.

Always exercise caution, by looking at the privacy policy of websites you visit, before continuing to use them.

Non personally identifiable information.

We may collect non-personally identifiable information about you whenever you interact with our site. Non-personally identifiable information may include the browser name, the type of computer and technical information about your method of connecting to our site, such as the operating system and the Internet service provider you used, and other similar information.

Children's privacy protection.

This website is directed to adults. It is not directed to children under the age of 16. We operate our site in compliance with current regulations. Anyone under the age of 16 must have a parent or guardian provide consent to use this site. We do not knowingly collect or use personally identifiable information from anyone under 16 years of age.

Release of information.

If we sell Explore Italian Culture, the information we have obtained from you through your voluntary participation in our site may transfer to the new owner as a part of the sale so that the service provided to you may continue.

Should that happen, you will receive notice through our website of that change in control and practices, and we will make reasonable efforts to ensure that the purchaser honours any opt-out requests you might make.

California Consumer Privacy Act Statement.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), enacted in 2018, creates consumer rights relating to the access to, deletion of, and sharing of personal information that is collected by businesses.

Explore Italian Culture has not sold any personal information from visitors to the site in the past 12 months (and never would).

Data storage.

Personally identifiable information and non-personally identifiable information collected by this site  is stored on our host's servers. That host is SiteSell Inc., located at 1000 Saint-Jean Boulevard, Suite 702, Pointe-Claire, QC H9R 5P1 Canada.

How you can correct or remove information.

We provide this privacy policy as a statement to you of our commitment to protect your personally identifiable information. If you have submitted any information through this site and you'd like to download and review it, click on this link. 

You can also request to edit or delete any of your information from the servers, by clicking on this link.

Updates and effective date.

Explore Italian Culture reserves the right to make changes to this policy as the need arises. If there is any material change in our cookie and delivery practices, we will indicate on the site that those have changed, and provide a link to the updated privacy policy.

We would encourage you to review this policy periodically, so you'll always have up to date information about the information we collect, and how we collect and use it. 

Agreeing to terms.

If you don't agree to this privacy policy, please do not consent to the setting of cookies and the collection and storage of your personally identifiable information.

Your explicit consent indicates acceptance of hits policy in its entirety.

Last reviewed and updated: 24 June 2024.

Other legal policies.

If you'd like to see any of our other legal policies, please click on the images below.

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