How We Handle Your Bits and Bytes
The Short Version I value your privacy almost as much as I value my afternoon peace and quiet. I am not in the business of harvesting your personal life to sell to some shadowy data broker in a basement. I collect the bare minimum needed to send you an email or make the website work properly. If that sounds fair, read on for the details.
What I Collect (And Why)
I’m not interested in your shoe size or your grandmother’s maiden name. Generally, I only see:
Comments: If you leave a comment, the site captures the data shown in the comments form, plus your IP address, mostly to help me filter out the bots trying to sell me “magic” hair growth pills.
Email Addresses: If you voluntarily sign up for my newsletter, I’ll keep your email address so I can actually send it to you. You can opt-out at any time by clicking “unsubscribe,” and I promise I won’t take it personally (much).
Cookies: Not the delicious chocolate chip variety, unfortunately. These are tiny files that help the website remember you were here. They tell me things like which articles are popular and whether people are visiting from London or Luzon. It’s all anonymous data used to make the site less clunky.
How I Use Your Information
I use your information to:
- Improve the site so it doesn’t look like it was designed in 1994.
- Keep the lights on and the blog running.
- Send you updates, stories, or the occasional grumble from “Cranky Colin.”
Sharing Your Data
I don’t sell, trade, or rent your personal identification information to others. The only “third parties” involved are the trusted tools I use to run the site (like my email service or website host). They are also legally bound to keep your data safe.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
External Links
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). 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.
Your Rights
If you want to know what data I have on you, or if you want me to delete every trace of your existence from my mailing list, just send me an email. I’ll be happy to oblige.
Updates to This Policy
Occasionally, I might tweak this policy to stay in line with new laws or because I’ve found a better way to do things. I’ll post any changes here.
The Bottom Line
I’m a blogger, not a spy. I want us to have a grand old time exploring this chapter of life without you worrying about who’s peeking over your shoulder.