Who we are

Our website address is: https://sopasia.com.

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

On contact forms, you may willingly provide information to us for newsletters or for us to use to answer your questions or contact you for special events or offers. We store that information in Customer Relationship Management Software, from companies like MailChimp.

If at any time you wish us to remove you completely from all our contact databases, simply submit a form and verify that you do in fact want to be completely removed and we will do so, usually within 5 business days.

Contact form data stored on this website’s databases are purged regularly to maintain maximum security and a minimum impact should we ever experience an intrusion. Your security is our security.

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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites 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 use both Google Analytics and localized (and anonymous if you do not have a site membership) cookies to manage your user experience.

Who we share your data with

  • WordPress.com (optional, you must sign into their system to share your data)
  • Google (Analytics tracks you anonymously unless you are logged into Google’s services)
  • MailChimp (if you sign up for our newsletter, your email address and name is stored in MailChimp databases)

We use Google Analytics pixels to track users to enhance both our knowledge of how to improve our site experience and to market to you. For our purposes, that data is anonymized.

Once you land on our website, we don’t [yet] have a way to remove you from Google’s data pools.

If you block cookies or refuse to log in and identify yourself on any Google service, you remain anonymous to both our systems and theirs unless you sign up for a service at this website or willingly supply your contact to us.

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.

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.

We use Google Analytics pixels, but we send no collected data like your name, address, email, or phone number to either company unless you explicitly request to be added to a list on one of their services.

Your contact information

This refers to any information that you voluntarily submit to us and that identifies you personally, including contact information, such as your name, e-mail address, company name, address, phone number, and other information about yourself or your business.

How we use your data

We use the information we collect only in compliance with this Privacy Policy. Customers who contact us or subscribe to our marketing are obligated through our agreements with them to comply with this Privacy Policy.

In addition to the uses identified elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, we may use your Personal Information to:

  • improve your browsing experience by personalizing the Websites and to improve our Service;
  • send information or content to you which we think may be of interest to you by post, email, or other means and send you marketing communications relating to our business;
  • promote the use of our services to you and share promotional and information content with you in accordance with your communication preferences;
  • send information to you regarding changes to our Customer Terms of Service, Privacy Policy (including the Cookie Policy), or other legal agreements
  • meet legal requirements.

Additional information

How we protect your data

We do not allow public access to our servers. No FTP accounts, this site is not on a shared hosting platform. Database and code access are permitted to employees or contractors of SOPAsia only.

When reasonable, your data is encrypted. However, some features on this website make encryption problematic.

What data breach procedures we have in place

In the event of a breach, anyone for whom we have an email address will be notified immediately.

We also notify known authorities of any breach that puts your personal data in jeopardy.

What third parties we receive data from

At this time, only WordPress.com integrates for inbound data on this website.

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

At this time, we only use user data to provide services on this website and target users for advertisements to remind them of the services we provide.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

Other than breach notifications, we are not aware of any regulatory disclosures we must provide. Please feel free to notify us if you are aware of any.

Your Contact Information

We do not store any personal contact information without your express permission. At any time, you may request we remove your contact information from our newsletters, website, or records by contacting us directly and providing information we can use to remove your information or by opting out of our marketing materials.

Cookies, Pixels, and Tracking

If you visit sopasia.com you are being tracked by cookies. At this time, we don’t turn cookies off for people who wish to enjoy the website but opt out of tracking by Google, or other behaviour and traffic tracking tools.

Please do not visit sopasia.com if you don’t want to be tracked by these systems, or use a simple cookie and pixel blocker to avoid our behaviour detection.

We hope to create an option to turn off these tracking systems.

GDPR

We don’t fully understand every possible GDPR implication at this time but are trying to comply even though we do not target EU citizens.

We respect your right to privacy and information protection and try to make you aware of tracking systems we lawfully use in Asia that may not be fully compatible with European standards due to slow technology advancement.

If you are an EU citizen or any person who wishes to completely remain anonymous, it is best to block or turn off cookie and pixel tracking or avoid this website.

All newsletters or any form of communications are 100% opt-in and you are responsible for removing yourself if you want to remain anonymous or remove your information from our systems.

Notice of Intrusion

If we have reason to believe our systems have been compromised and your contact information in some way potentially exposed to unauthorized parties, we will use whatever contact information we have to inform you. Our goal is to notify you within 72 hours, as well as authorities at the highest level.

At this time we do not have the ability to track and inform every nationality’s local authority, though that is our goal. This page will be updated when we have that capacity.