Privacy Policy

TradeShowTips.com is my personal site about exhibiting at trade shows. I'm Michael Flavin, and I run it myself. This page explains what information the site collects when you visit or contact me, and what I do with it.

The contact form

If you use the form on my contact page, you give me your name, your email address and your message. The form also asks you to solve a short math question so I get fewer spam messages.

When you hit send, the site emails your message to me. I use your name and email address to read and answer your message, and that's it. I don't add you to a mailing list, I don't sell your information, and I don't share it with anyone else.

Your message stays in my email inbox. If you'd like me to delete it, ask me through the contact page and I'll do it.

Analytics and cookies

My site is hosted by GoDaddy, and their built-in traffic tools load on every page. They set a few cookies so I can see basic numbers, like how many people visit and which pages they read. These cookies are named _tccl_visitor (it lasts about a year), _tccl_visit and _scc_session (both last less than an hour).

Cloudflare sits in front of the site to keep it fast and to block bad traffic. It sets a cookie named __cf_bm, which expires after about 30 minutes and is used to tell people from bots.

I don't run advertising on this site, and I don't use advertising or retargeting cookies. If you'd rather not get cookies at all, you can block or delete them in your browser settings. The site will still work.

Server logs

Like almost every website, our hosting provider (GoDaddy) and Cloudflare, which sits in front of the site to speed it up and block attacks, keep standard logs of requests. That includes things like your IP address, your browser type and the page you asked for. They use these logs to run and protect the site.

Spam protection

The site uses Akismet, a spam filter from Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. Comments are turned off, so you won't find a comment form here.

The trade show calendar

My Find Trade Shows page shows a calendar from TheTradeShowCalendar.com inside the page. That calendar comes from their site, not mine, and it loads its own scripts, including StatCounter, which sets its own cookie. Their privacy practices apply to that calendar.

Links to other sites

My articles link to convention centers, show organizers and other sources. Once you click through to another site, its own privacy policy applies.

Children

This site is written for trade show professionals. It isn't meant for children, and I don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Changes to this page

If the site starts collecting something new, I'll update this page and change the date at the top.

Questions

If you have a question about this policy or about your information, please reach out through my contact page.