Privacy Policy

Last updated: 23 October 2026

Introduction

This privacy policy (“Policy”) and this site’s Terms of Service (together the “Terms”) govern all use of https://irisharoundtheworld.com and that site’s services (together the “Site” or “Services”). The owners and contributors to the Site will be referred to as “we,” “us,” or “our” in this Policy. By using the Site or its Services, and/or by clicking anywhere on this Site to agree to the Terms and this Policy, you are deemed to be a “user” for purposes of this Policy. You and every other user (“you” or “User” as applicable) are subject to this Policy. You and each user also agree to the Terms by using the Services. In these Terms, the word “Site” includes the site referenced above, its owner(s), contributors, suppliers, licensors, and other related parties.

We provide this privacy statement explaining our online information practices, so that you can decide whether and how to interact with the Site and the Services.

We may release your information when we deem it appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety.

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Please also review our Terms of Service, which govern the use and the users of the Site.

By using our site, you agree to this privacy policy. Where the law requires your consent (for example, for personalized advertising cookies if you are in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom), we ask for it separately through our consent banner, and you are free to say no.

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page. If we have your email address, we may also send an email notifying you of any changes.

Who We Are

The Site is owned by Stephen Palmer, an individual, who is responsible (the “data controller”) for the personal information described in this Policy. You can contact us by email at [email protected] or through our contact page.

Information We Collect

Information you give us: your email address (and any other details the sign-up form asks for) when you subscribe to our newsletter; your name, email address, website (if you add one) and comment when you leave a comment; and anything you include when you email us.
Information collected automatically: when you visit the Site, we and our partners collect information such as your IP address, browser and device type, operating system, the pages you visit, the site that referred you, how you interact with the Site and its ads, and your approximate location (worked out from your IP address). This is collected using cookies and similar technologies, as explained below.

Mobile Device Privacy

The following applies to our site, when viewed on a mobile device:

When accessed with a mobile device, our site may collect information automatically, such as the type of mobile device you have, device identifiers, and information about your use of the site. Regardless of the device you use to access the site, it will also collect information you provide, as well as information about your interaction with the site and its content.

If location services are activated on your mobile device, our site may collect information about the location of your device. Your mobile network service providers may collect device-specific information, such as a device identifier, when you use our website. This information collected by your mobile network service will not be associated with your personally identifiable information.

Cookies

We may log information using cookies, which are small data files stored on your browser by the Website. We may use both session cookies, which expire when you close your browser, and persistent cookies, which stay on your browser until deleted, to provide you with a more personalized experience on the Website.

We and our partners use cookies and similar technologies for these purposes:

Essential: to make the Site work, keep it secure and remember your cookie choices.
Analytics: to understand how visitors use the Site (see Google Analytics below).
Advertising: to show and measure ads, including personalized ads (see Mediavine Programmatic Advertising below).
Comments: to remember your name, email address and website after you leave a comment, so you do not have to type them again.

If you visit from the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, a consent banner provided by our advertising partner Mediavine asks for your permission before cookies are used for personalized advertising. You can accept, reject all, or choose individual settings, and you can change your choices at any time with the Manage Preferences link in the Site footer. If you reject, you will still see ads, but they will be based on the content of the page rather than on information about you.

You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, as explained in the Mediavine section below.

How Your Information May Be Used

We may use the information collected in the following ways:

To operate and maintain the Website;
To send you promotional information, such as newsletters. Each email promotion will provide information on how to opt-out of future mailings;
To send you administrative communications, such as administrative emails, confirmation emails, technical notices, updates on policies, or security alerts;
To respond to your comments or inquiries;
To provide you with user support;
To track and measure advertising on the Website;
To protect, investigate, and deter against unauthorized or illegal activity.

Advertising

Display Ads

We may use third-party advertising companies to serve content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use cookies, as noted above. Our ads are managed by Mediavine, as described below.

Retargeting Ads

From time to time, the Website may engage in remarketing efforts with third-party companies, such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram, in order to market the Website. These companies use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to the Website.

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.1)

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at All About Cookies.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

IP Address
Operating System type
Operating System version
Device Type
Language of the website
Web browser type
Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit National Advertising Initiative opt out page. You may also visit Digital Advertising Alliance website and Network Advertising Initiative website to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at Digital Advertising Alliance’s AppChoices app to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please visit Mediavine Partners.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4, a web analytics service provided by Google, to understand how visitors find and use the Site, for example which pages are popular and how long people stay. Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies to collect information such as the pages you visit, your device and browser type, your approximate location and how you arrived at the Site. We look at this information in summary form to improve the Site, and we do not use Google Analytics to identify you personally.

To learn how Google collects and processes this data, see How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services and the Google Privacy Policy. You can stop Google Analytics from collecting data about your visits by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Affiliate Program Participation

The Website may engage in affiliate marketing, which is done by embedding tracking links into the Website. If you click on a link for an affiliate partnership, a cookie will be placed on your browser to track any sales for purposes of commissions.

Some links on the Site are affiliate links, including links to Amazon (some are shortened to amzn.to). If you click one and buy something, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Site also links to our own Etsy shop. Purchases there are made on Etsy and are covered by Etsy’s own terms and privacy policy.

On the Website, you may subscribe to our newsletter, which may be used for advertising purposes. All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels. The pixel is embedded in emails and allows an analysis of the success of online marketing campaigns. Because of these tracking pixels, we may see if and when you open an email and which links within the email you click. Also, this allows the Website to adapt the content of future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behavior will not be passed on to third parties, other than the email service that sends the newsletter for us.

Our newsletter is sent using SendFox, an email service run by Sumo Group Inc. in the United States, which stores your email address and sign-up details on our behalf. You can read the SendFox privacy policy. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of every email, or by emailing us.

Comments

When you leave a comment on the Site, we collect the information shown in the comment form (your name, email address and, if you add one, your website), the comment itself, and your IP address and browser user agent string to help detect spam. Your email address is never shown publicly. Comments may be moderated before they appear.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service, run by Automattic, to see if you are using it and to show your profile picture next to your comment. You can read the Automattic privacy policy.

If you leave a comment, your name, email address and website may be saved in cookies on your device, so you do not have to fill them in again next time. These cookies last for one year.

Social Sharing Buttons and Embedded Content

The Site has share buttons (provided by the Hubbub plugin) and Pinterest Save buttons so you can share posts on Facebook, Pinterest, WhatsApp, by email and on other networks. When you click one of these buttons, you go to that network’s website or app, and it may collect information about you under its own privacy policy, for example the Pinterest Privacy Policy.

Posts on the Site may include embedded content (for example, videos or social media posts). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the same way as if you had visited the other website. Those websites may collect data about you, use cookies, and track your interaction with the embedded content.

Security

We use the Wordfence security plugin to protect the Site against hacking, spam and other abuse. To do this, it records information such as IP addresses, browser details and the pages requested, and it may check IP addresses against lists of known threats. You can read the Wordfence privacy policy. Our web hosting provider and our content delivery network, Cloudflare, also process IP addresses and request data to deliver the Site and keep it secure.

How Long We Keep Your Information

Newsletter: we keep your email address until you unsubscribe. We may keep a record that you unsubscribed so that we do not email you again.
Comments: comments and their details are kept until the comment is deleted, so that we can recognize and approve follow-up comments automatically. You can ask us to delete your comment at any time.
Emails you send us: we keep them for as long as we need to deal with your message, and for a reasonable time afterwards for our records.
Analytics: Google Analytics keeps data for the retention period set in our Google Analytics account, after which it is deleted automatically.
Advertising data: Mediavine and its partners keep the data they collect in line with their own privacy policies.

International Transfers

Many of the services we use, including Google, Mediavine, SendFox and Cloudflare, process information in the United States and other countries, which may not have the same data protection laws as the country where you live. Where the law requires it, these transfers are protected by legal safeguards, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Your Rights in the European Union, the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom

If you are in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, data protection law (the GDPR and the UK GDPR) gives you rights over your personal information. We rely on these legal grounds to use it:

Consent: for personalized advertising cookies where the law requires consent, and for sending you our newsletter. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
Legitimate interests: to run, secure and improve the Site, understand how it is used, show non-personalized ads, display and moderate comments, and reply to your messages.
Legal obligation: where we must keep or share information to comply with the law.

You have the right to:

ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
ask us to delete your information;
ask us to restrict how we use your information;
object to how we use your information, including at any time to direct marketing;
ask for your information in a portable format; and
withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting anything we did before you withdrew it.

To use any of these rights, email us at [email protected]. We will reply within one month, and we may ask you to confirm your identity first. For data collected by Mediavine and its partners for advertising, you can also use the Manage Preferences link in the Site footer.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority, for example the one in the country where you live or work. In Ireland this is the Data Protection Commission.

Your Rights in the United States

Residents of some US states, including California, have rights under state privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act.

In the last 12 months, the Site has collected these categories of personal information: identifiers (such as IP address, cookie and device identifiers, and email address, including in hashed form); internet and other electronic activity (such as pages viewed and interactions with ads); approximate geolocation; and inferences drawn from this information for advertising. We collect this information from you, from your device and browser, and from our advertising and analytics partners, for the purposes described in this Policy. We disclose it to the service providers that help us run the Site (such as hosting, email, analytics and security services) and to Mediavine and its advertising partners.

We do not sell your personal information for money. However, allowing Mediavine and its partners to use cookies for targeted (interest-based) advertising may count as “selling” or “sharing” personal information, or as “targeted advertising”, under some state laws.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

know what personal information we collect, use and disclose, and get a copy of it;
ask us to delete or correct your personal information;
opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information and of targeted advertising; and
not be treated differently for using any of these rights.

How to opt out: if you are in a state with an applicable privacy law, a “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link appears on the Site, usually at the bottom of the page. Click it to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information for targeted advertising through Mediavine. Mediavine also honors Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signals in states that require it.

To make any other request, email us at [email protected]. We will need to confirm your identity before we act on your request, and we will respond within the time the law requires. You can also ask someone you have authorized to make a request for you. If we decline your request, you can appeal by replying to our decision. If you are not happy with the outcome of your appeal, you can contact the Attorney General of your state.

We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16.

No Users Under the Age of 13

The Site is not intended for children under the age of 13. Children under the age of 13 should not use the Site at any time. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If we obtain actual knowledge that we have collected information from anyone under the age of 13, we will erase that information from our servers. It is a violation of our Terms of Service for children under the age of 13 to use the Site.

If you are under 16, please ask a parent or guardian before you subscribe to our newsletter or leave a comment.

Disputes

We are based in Ireland and you are contracting to use our Site. This Policy and all matters arising from your use of the Site are governed by and will be construed according to the laws of Ireland, without regard to any choice of laws rules of any jurisdiction. The courts of Ireland will be the only permissible venues for any and all disputes arising out of or in connection with this Policy or the Site and Service. This does not take away any rights you have under the mandatory consumer or data protection laws of the country where you live, including your right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Contact

If you have any questions about this Policy, or you want to use any of your privacy rights, please email [email protected] or use our contact page.