Privacy Policy

Effective date: 19 October 2026

Sumter Kitchen respects your privacy. This policy explains what information may be collected when you visit sumterkitchen.com, why it is used, and the choices available to you.

Who we are

Sumter Kitchen is a personal recipe website operated from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Our website address is https://sumterkitchen.com.

You can contact us through our Contact page.

Information we collect

Information you provide

Depending on the features available on the site, you may provide information when you:

  • leave a comment, rating, or recipe review;
  • contact us;
  • subscribe to updates or a newsletter; or
  • otherwise submit information through the site.

This information may include your name, email address, website address, message, comment, rating, subscription preferences, and any other information you choose to provide.

Please do not include sensitive personal information in comments or other public submissions.

Information collected automatically

When you visit the site, WordPress, Jetpack, our hosting provider, and related services may automatically collect technical and usage information. This may include your IP address, browser and device type, operating system, referring page, pages visited, time of access, browser language, approximate country, search terms, outbound-link clicks, and page-performance information.

We use this information in aggregate to understand how the site is used, maintain performance, prevent abuse, and improve our recipes and navigation.

Comments, ratings, and reviews

If you leave a comment, rating, or review, we may collect the information shown in the relevant form together with your IP address, browser user-agent string, referrer, and site URL to help detect spam and abuse.

Comments and related metadata may be retained indefinitely so that we can display the discussion, recognise follow-up comments, and moderate the site. Anything you submit for public display may be visible to other visitors and indexed by search engines.

An anonymised string created from your email address may be sent to Gravatar to determine whether you use that service. If your submission is approved, your Gravatar profile image may appear publicly beside it. Gravatar and WordPress.com are operated by Automattic; see Automattic’s privacy policy and its privacy notice for visitors to users’ sites.

The site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Akismet may process information such as a commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, site URL, name, username, email address, and comment. See how Akismet processes comment data.

Analytics

We use Jetpack Stats to understand visits and site performance. Jetpack may process information including IP address, WordPress.com ID and username if you are logged in, user agent, visited and referring URLs, timestamp, browser language, country code, page views, video plays, outbound-link clicks, search terms, and performance information.

Sumter Kitchen receives aggregated statistics and does not use Jetpack Stats to identify individual visitors. Automattic states that Stats logs containing directly identifying information such as IP addresses and WordPress.com usernames are retained for 28 days for this feature. More information is available in the Jetpack Stats privacy information.

Cookies and similar technologies

The site and its service providers may use cookies, pixels, and similar technologies to:

  • operate and secure the site;
  • remember preferences and login status;
  • remember comment details if you choose that option;
  • provide analytics and measure performance;
  • support subscriptions, comments, and social features; and
  • prevent spam and abuse.

Some cookies are set only when you interact with a feature or are logged in. Social-media widgets or embedded content may set their own cookies and track your interaction under the relevant provider’s policy.

You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking cookies may affect some site features. See Automattic’s cookie policy and Jetpack’s cookie information for additional details.

Google AdSense and advertising

Sumter Kitchen uses Google AdSense to display advertising on recipe pages. The following explains how advertising data may be used.

Google and other third-party advertising vendors may place and read cookies, use web beacons, and process IP addresses, browser and device information, advertising identifiers, and interactions with ads. These technologies help deliver ads, measure their performance, limit repeated ads, and detect fraud.

Google and its advertising partners may use advertising cookies to personalise ads based on your previous visits to Sumter Kitchen and other websites. Other third-party vendors and ad networks may also use cookies to serve ads. Data use depends on the advertising features enabled, your choices, and applicable requirements.

You can manage Google personalised advertising preferences through Google Ads Settings. You can also opt out of personalised advertising from some other participating vendors through YourAdChoices. Opting out of personalised advertising does not remove all ads.

Browser settings let you block or delete cookies. Advertising preferences may be specific to your browser, device, or account and may need to be set again after cookies are cleared. Where a consent or privacy-choice message is displayed on this site, use its controls to make your choices. Visitors in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland are shown Google’s European regulations consent message. Where available, use the “Privacy and cookie settings” link at the bottom of a recipe page to review or withdraw your consent.

Learn more about how Google uses information from sites and apps that use its services and read Google’s Privacy Policy. Advertising partners may process information outside Australia under their own privacy policies.

Embedded content and social sharing

Recipes and articles may include embedded content or sharing tools from services such as Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, or other websites. Embedded content behaves as though you visited the third-party website directly. Those providers may collect information, use cookies, and monitor your interaction, particularly if you are logged in to their service.

Following a link to another website makes that website’s privacy policy applicable. Sumter Kitchen does not control third-party privacy practices.

Contact forms and email subscriptions

If you contact us, we use the information you provide to respond, manage correspondence, and protect the site from spam. We retain correspondence only as long as reasonably needed for these purposes or to meet legal obligations.

If you subscribe to emails, we use your email address and subscription preferences to send the updates you requested. We keep subscription records until you unsubscribe or the service is discontinued. You can unsubscribe using the link in an email or by contacting us. We do not send commercial electronic messages without the consent required by applicable law.

How we use information

We may use information to:

  • operate, maintain, secure, and improve the site;
  • publish and moderate comments, ratings, and reviews;
  • respond to questions and requests;
  • provide requested subscriptions;
  • understand aggregate traffic and content performance;
  • detect spam, fraud, and technical problems; and
  • comply with legal obligations and protect our rights and users.

We do not sell our contact correspondence or subscriber lists. Advertising partners’ collection and use of information is described in the Google AdSense and advertising section above.

Service providers and overseas processing

We use service providers to host and operate the site, provide analytics, filter spam, deliver email, display profile images, and support social features. These providers may process information on our behalf or for their own stated purposes.

Some providers, including Automattic and social-media services, operate outside Australia or use infrastructure in multiple countries, including the United States. Their locations and subprocessors may change. Please consult the privacy policies linked above for current information about their handling and international transfers.

We may also disclose information where required by law, to investigate abuse or security incidents, or to protect the rights, safety, and property of Sumter Kitchen, our visitors, or others.

How long we keep information

Retention depends on the type of information and why it was collected:

  • public comments, ratings, reviews, and related metadata may be retained indefinitely;
  • contact correspondence is retained only as long as reasonably needed;
  • subscription details are retained until you unsubscribe or the service ends;
  • analytics and security information is retained according to the relevant provider’s settings and policies; and
  • backups may retain information for a limited period after it is removed from the live site.

Access, correction, deletion, and complaints

You may ask what personal information we hold about you, request a correction, or ask us to delete information where appropriate. You may also complain if you believe information has been mishandled.

Contact us through the Contact page with enough detail for us to understand and verify your request. We will respond within a reasonable time. Some information may need to be retained for security, legal, administrative, or record-keeping reasons, and we cannot remove copies of information that other people or search engines have already saved from public pages.

If the Australian Privacy Act 1988 applies to our handling of your information and you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Children’s privacy

The site is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly request personal information from children under 16. A parent or guardian who believes a child has submitted personal information can contact us to request its removal.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when the site, its services, or legal requirements change. The effective date at the top will show when it was last revised. Material changes will be highlighted on the site where appropriate.