In today’s digital age, your security is paramount. To this end, we have invested heavily in a variety of measures to ensure that your experiences with our website and emails are not only convenient and enjoyable but also secure. Here’s an overview of our initiatives and commitments to maintain your privacy and trust.
Website Security Measures:
SSL Certificate Protection
The first step towards safeguarding your interactions with our website is the implementation of an SSL certificate. This encryption tool ensures that any data transmitted between your device and our website remains confidential and tamper-free. This protection is reflected in the “https” designation in our URL (rather than “http”), a tell-tale sign of a secure and encrypted website. Look also for the closed padlock icon at the head of our URL – another clear indication of a secure, encrypted website – ensuring that all data exchanges remain private and untouched. You might be surprised to learn that some of the photographers in our area do not use this secure designation on their websites. You will continue to see in this article how seriously we take your trust and your privacy in visiting us and in opening our emails that we send to you.
Above is the URL of our Website or Domain: Two ways to always check a website’s secure status: 1) Look for the “https” rather than merely a “http” – that “s” means secure and is extremely important; 2) Look for that tiny little closed padlock icon at the very beginning. If it’s not there, then the site does NOT have an SSL Certificate and it is NOT secure. Unfortunately, two of our competitors’ sites are NOT secure.
Secure Hosting with SiteGround
Years ago, to ensure our website’s foundation is robust and secure, we chose SiteGround as our hosting provider. Known for their high-quality service, SiteGround equips our website with a stable, fast, and safe platform for delivering our content. We left another provider to migrate to SiteGround for those specific reasons. Extra protections we opted in for, such as SiteGround Security and WordFence, provide strong security against bots and spamming attacks. We get a report every week about how hackers attempted to find a way into our website (every website comes under attack) but ours is kept protected, clean, and free. Not once have we ever regretted our decision to go with SiteGround and these extra security measures.
Here is a real report from our WordFence security platform that we received recently. It shows the attempts at hacking into our site. We get this report daily, and it is always full of IP’s that are trying to get through. WordFence, along with other measures, helps keep them out. If any are able to get through, they are discovered by our malware scanner that constantly scans our site.
Extra Layer of Security with SiteScanner Premium
To go even one step further in ensuring website safety, we’ve integrated another paid service called SiteScanner Premium. This advanced tool performs weekly scans of our website for malware and viruses, ensuring our site remains clean and free of harmful software. This premium service is another facet of our commitment to your online safety and peace of mind.
MOZ scores our website with a SPAM score of only 1%. This is as low as it gets! Meanwhile, two of our competitors’ sites have Spam scores of 75% and 54% – respectively. That’s really high! How do we keep our’s low? Because we do all the things listed here. It doesn’t just happen. It happens because we are focused on it, and we care.
Low MOZ Spam Score
We pride ourselves on maintaining an incredibly low MOZ Spam Score of just 1%. This metric illustrates our diligence in ensuring our website remains spam-free. We regularly monitor this score, helping us quickly address any potential issues and maintain a clean, safe browsing environment for you. So, that’s our multi-layered protection protocols to keep our website safe and secure; and build your trust with us when you visit and peruse our website. Now for our emails…
Email Security Measures
Secure Email Service with MailChimp
For our email communications, we entrust our service to MailChimp. As a globally recognized email service provider, MailChimp places a high priority on security. Their robust systems and protocols mean you can trust the emails you receive from us.
reCAPTCHA is a seamless fraud detection service that stops bots.
reCAPTCHA Boots the Bots
At the very beginning of the process of signing up for our email list and our newsletter, we have just implemented a reCAPTCHA step that allows humans that are valid users through, but stumps the bots. This way, our email list that you are joining is only made up of real human beings. It does mean an extra step when signing up which can be a bit annoying, but we think it’s worth that extra step to ensure both your safety and trust, as well as ours. Also, we will NEVER share or sell your contact information. We truly value your privacy!
MailChimp and SiteGround Integration
Our email security doesn’t stop with MailChimp. We have also integrated our email service with our SiteGround hosting provider. This optimized connection between the two quality services maximizes security, as they are designed to work perfectly together. Not all hosting platforms and email service providers integrate seamlessly like these two do. Even in these “under-the-hood” systems that you perhaps don’t think about – we do – because we care about your safe and private experience with us, and we want to earn your trust!
This is the result we got when we ran a test of our website in Google SafeWeb… a nice green GO status. That’s the way we will keep it, and we’ll keep monitoring it. When you visit us or receive our emails, we’ve got you protected!
SPF and DKIM Authorization
Lastly, we have implemented Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authorization protocols. These little-known tools allow your email provider to confirm our authenticity when we send out emails, ensuring we’re a safe sender and significantly reducing the risk of phishing or spam.
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