Privacy Policy

About This Policy

The Rookie Cook — www.therookiecook.com

Originally founded in 2011, The Rookie Cook was revived in 2025 with the same mission: to share simple, affordable, family-friendly recipes. We collect minimal data to enhance your experience while respecting your privacy.

By accessing or using this website, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

1. Personal Data We Collect

We collect minimal personal data to provide you with a better experience on our website. This includes:

Newsletter Signups

When you subscribe to our newsletter, we collect your name and email address. This information is used solely to send you recipe updates and food-related content.

Contact Forms

When you contact us through our website, we collect your name, email address, and any message you send. This information is used to respond to your inquiry.

Comment Forms

If you leave comments on our recipes, we collect your name, email address, and the content of your comment. We also collect your IP address to help prevent spam.

Cookies

We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience, remember your preferences, and analyze website traffic. These cookies do not store personal information.

2. Cookies

Cookies are small text files placed on your device when you visit our website. They help us provide a better recipe browsing experience by:

• Remembering your preferences (like if you've accepted our cookie policy)
• Understanding how you interact with our recipes and content
• Analyzing website traffic to improve our user experience

Our website uses WordPress default cookies and analytics cookies. You can manage or disable cookies in your browser settings, but this may affect your experience on our site.

3. Comments

When you leave comments on our recipes, we collect the data shown in the comment form, as well as your IP address and browser user agent string to help detect spam.

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.

4. Embedded Content

Our website may embed content from other sites (like recipe videos from YouTube or Instagram). 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.

5. Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors interact with our website. This service collects information such as:

• Which recipes are most popular
• How long visitors spend on our pages
• Which links visitors click on
• General demographic information

We use this data to improve our website and provide content that our visitors find valuable. You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

6. Data Sharing

We only share your data with trusted third parties who help us operate our website, such as:

• Mailchimp for newsletter delivery
• Google Analytics for website analytics
• WordPress for website functionality

These third parties have access to your personal information only to perform specific tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.

7. Data Retention

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.

Contact form entries are retained for 12 months to allow us to follow up on inquiries. Newsletter subscriber data is retained until you unsubscribe.

8. Your Data Rights

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.

9. European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in the European Union, you have the right to:

• Access, correct, or delete your personal data
• Object to processing of your personal data
• Request data portability
• File a complaint with a supervisory authority

10. California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

If you are a California resident, you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect, use, and share
• Request deletion of your personal information
• Opt out of the sale of personal information (we do not sell data)
• Receive equal service and price when exercising these rights

To exercise these rights, please contact us at privacy@therookiecook.com.