Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://thewaybackgroup.org which is the official website for The Way Back Group Ltd a strictly not-for-profit group registered in England and Wales with company number 11873364.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

When you email us we get a copy of the data you provide as an email. We do not share any information with any third parties. If you want to sign up to our mailing list you will find a form on most pages at the side or below on a mobile device.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

You can disable cookies in your browser. Here are some example tutorials:

• Disable Cookies in Chrome
• Disable Cookies in Firefox
• Disable Cookies in Safari
• Disable Cookies in Internet Explorer

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. YouTube videos). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. Most of our content is our own, including our images. It’s just videos that are hosted elsewhere.

These websites like YouTube may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

We are proud to say that we DO NOT use Google analytics or any third party external analytics websites services. We really do value your privacy and we do not see why these big companies need to track your movement across the internet. We use a small plugin (Koko) and track basic metrics like how many visitors and page hits and all this information is kept on our server so no-one ever sees it. This means that your privacy is kept private and while you are on our website big brother is kept at bay. Happy browsing and we hope you enjoy our content from all the team! x

Who we share your data with

Simple, we do not share your data with anyone else.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

We put all of our analytics data in the bin automatically after 60 months.

Our My.TheWayBackMeditation.org registration process temporarily stores user IP addresses as user meta to help validate and vet pending users. Saved IP values are deleted upon both approval and denial of pending user. No other personal data is recorded. We expunge this data regularly and never share it with any third party.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Your contact information

Only what you put in the site in order to leave a comment or create an account is stored and it is not shared with anyone else. You can request that your comments are deleted and your account removed if you like.

ReCAPTCHA

On the contact page we use Google reCAPTCHA v3 which is an invisible filter to prevent spammers and bots from sending us lots of emails. This means we can focus on answering your emails. This only applies on the contact page and should not affect your privacy or provide tracking:

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Additional information

What third parties we receive data from

We make use of the following 3rd party services to provide you as much positive and helpful content as possible. Your interaction with them is under your control and your data rights are between you and them.

• Mailchimp (<2023), Sendinblue (>2023)
• YouTube, Rumble, Vimeo – for hosting videos
• Amazon – for selling our books

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

None – we are far too busy helping people on their spiritual and soul journeys. We are not in it for money but to help people so we really do not spend time doing complex marketing exercises.

Supporting Your Freedom, Rights & Open Source Community

We believe in freedom, for example the freedom to browse with privacy and to not be data tracked or have to use expensive software. We support the open source community and are happy to share with you all the cool tools and resources we use to build this website, plus some others we are happy to recommend:

We are not sponsored by nor receive any incentive from any of the above. We just like to share cool stuff with you.

Stock Images:

Many of our images are from Mark Zaretti, and can be obtained from iStock. However we also make use of freely available stock images from unsplash.com. Notable mentions to the following talented photographers: Andrew Neel, Anway Pawar, Blaz Erzetic, Chang Duong, Cynthia Magana, Eniko Kis, Greg Rakozy, Hudson Hintze, Jeremy Perkins, Elena Mozhvilo, XPS, Nghia Le and Joshua Earle

Terms and Conditions

Posting

We provide the ability for members of the public to post comments and feedback on many of our pages/articles/blogs/podcasts and so forth. All commenters are subject to our privacy policy (above) and our terms and conditions outlined here. These apply to all kinds of “posts” on this site which include but are not limited to comments and replies. We also apply these to our accounts on social media platforms, where applicable.

1. There are so many automated spam/troll/advertising bots that we have automated anti-spam and moderation in place. All comments are by default blocked until the authenticity of the email address provided with the comments has been verified.
2. Email address. The email address provided in the comment submission must be genuine and the property of the person making the submission. We will, at our discretion attempt to confirm the validity of email addresses:
   1. Our team may send an email to the address submitted by the commenter in order to validate the email address is genuine.
   2. Comments with non-validated, fake or fraudulent emails cannot be published.
3. No spam. All automated messages, advertisements, and links to competitor websites will be deleted immediately.
4. Respect other users. No flaming or abusing The Way Back, its team, followers or members. Inflammatory, threatening, harassing, trolling or abusive comments will be deleted by moderators.
5. Adult content. No profanity or pornography is allowed. Posts containing adult material will be deleted.
6. Illegal content. No re-posting of copyrighted materials or other illegal content is allowed. Any posts containing illegal content or copyrighted materials will be deleted.
7. Comment/post on relevant pages only. Information posted in the wrong area will be deleted by moderators.