The honest version.

Who we are

JokeBites is a humor website run by three people: Tyler Morgan, Hannah Lewis, and Brandon Cole. Our website is jokebites.com. We write jokes. That is the entire operation.

We are not a data company. We don’t buy, sell, or broker personal information. The only data we handle is what’s needed to run a functional website and respond to people who reach out to us.

Comments

If you leave a comment on JokeBites, we collect what you enter in the comment form: your name, email address, website (if you add one), and the comment itself. We also log your IP address and browser user agent string. This is standard WordPress behavior and helps us catch spam before it gets published.

Your email address is never displayed publicly. It may be passed to the Gravatar service as an anonymized hash to check whether you have a profile picture linked to it. Gravatar’s own privacy policy is at automattic.com/privacy. If you use Gravatar, your profile photo will appear next to your approved comments.

Media

If you upload images to the site — which currently only applies to contributors — those images should not contain embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors can download images from the site and extract any location data embedded in them, so we remove that before publishing anything.

If you’re sending us a photo for any reason, check that location tagging is turned off on your device first.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files stored on your device by your browser. Here is exactly what gets set on JokeBites and why:

• Comment cookies. If you leave a comment and choose to save your details, your name, email, and website are stored in cookies for one year. This is just for your convenience so you don’t have to retype them next time.
• Login detection cookie. Visiting the WordPress login page sets a temporary cookie to check whether your browser accepts cookies at all. It holds no personal data and disappears when you close your browser.
• Session cookies. When you log in (this only applies to site admins), WordPress sets cookies to maintain your session. Login cookies last two days. Screen display cookies last one year. Selecting “Remember Me” extends the login to two weeks. Logging out clears all login cookies immediately.
• Post edit cookie. Editing or publishing a post sets a one-day cookie that notes the post ID you just worked on. No personal data, just a reference number.
• Advertising cookies. Third-party ad networks including Google AdSense set their own cookies to serve relevant ads. See the Advertising section below for details and opt-out links.

You can manage and delete cookies through your browser settings at any time. Disabling cookies will not stop you from reading jokes on the site.

Embedded content from other websites

Some posts on JokeBites may include embedded content such as videos, images, or social media posts. Embedded content from other websites behaves exactly as if you had visited those websites directly.

Those third-party sites may collect data about you, set their own cookies, and run their own tracking. If you are logged into an account on one of those platforms when you encounter embedded content here, they may track your interaction with it. Their data practices are governed by their own privacy policies, not ours.

Advertising

JokeBites plans to run display ads through Google AdSense and potentially other ad networks. Ads keep the site free to read, which is the goal.

Google uses cookies to serve ads based on browsing activity across sites. Their advertising cookies enable them and their partners to show ads relevant to your interests based on your visit to JokeBites and other websites.

We don’t control the cookies ad networks set, and their data practices are covered by their own policies. Google’s is at policies.google.com/privacy. We will never hand your personal information directly to any advertiser.

Who we share your data with

We don’t sell personal data. That’s not a “we value your privacy” platitude — we genuinely have no infrastructure to do it and no interest in building one.

The only outside parties that receive any data are services required to run the site: our web host (which sees server logs), WordPress infrastructure, Gravatar (which receives anonymized email hashes), and ad networks (which set their own cookies independently). None of them receive your data for marketing purposes from us.

One WordPress-specific note: if you request a password reset, your IP address is included in the reset email that WordPress generates. This is core WordPress behavior we don’t control.

How long we keep your data

Comments and their metadata are kept indefinitely. This lets WordPress automatically recognize and approve follow-up comments from the same person rather than holding everything in a moderation queue.

Registered users (currently only contributors and admins) have their profile data stored in WordPress until they or an administrator deletes it. All registered users can view, edit, or delete their own information at any time, with the exception of their username.

Contact form submissions stay in our email inbox for as long as they’re relevant to an active conversation. We don’t archive them afterward.

Your rights over your data

If you have left a comment or registered an account on JokeBites, you can request an export of the personal data we hold about you. You can also request that we delete it. The exception is data we’re legally required to keep for administrative, legal, or security reasons.

GDPR gives users in the European Economic Area the right to access, correct, delete, and object to how their data is used. CCPA gives California residents similar rights. To exercise any of these, email us at contact@jokebites.com. We’ll respond within 30 days.

Where your data is sent

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service before approval. Comment data passed for spam checking includes the comment text, your name, email address, IP address, and browser agent string.

Contact form submissions are routed through FormSubmit and delivered to our inbox at contact@jokebites.com. FormSubmit does not permanently store your messages on their end.

Everything else stays within our hosting environment, apart from what ad networks collect independently through their own cookies when you visit the site.

Email and newsletter

We plan to offer an optional email newsletter at some point — low frequency, jokes-focused, nothing you didn’t ask for. When that happens, we will collect only your email address. Every message will have an unsubscribe link that works immediately. We will not share subscriber addresses with anyone for marketing.

Until then, the only email we collect is what you send us directly through the contact form, used only to reply to you.

Children’s privacy

JokeBites is a general-audience website. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has submitted personal data through our contact form or comment section, email us at contact@jokebites.com and we will delete it promptly.

Changes to this policy

We’ll update this page when something meaningful changes — adding the newsletter, bringing on new ad partners, or anything else that affects how data is handled. The date at the top reflects the most recent revision.

We won’t email visitors about routine updates. If a change materially affects your rights, we’ll communicate it more directly.

Questions or requests

If anything here is unclear, or if you have a data request to make, just email us. We’re real people and we read our inbox.