Your Privacy Is My Concern
The protection of your privacy is very important to me. I value your trust, and want you to understand what information is collected here, how I protect it, and how it is used. This policy is in addition to the conditions laid out in the Terms of Use.
Personally Identifiable Information — nonpublic information that identifies you — is only essential to using this website to the limit of your choosing; you do not have to share any information about yourself to use this site. And what information you choose to disclose here will be treated with honor, respect, and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
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This policy was last updated 4 March 2010.
My Privacy Policy
- I will not sell or rent your personal information to anyone.
- I will only share personal information in the interest of public safety and as required by law.
- I will notify you, and seek approval, in the event I desire to use any information covered by this policy in any manner not described here.
- I will maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect personal information I obtain about you.
- I will not share your personal information if doing so requires that such information be sent to a third person or country that does not have an adequate protection system in place.
- You can visit this site without telling me who you are or revealing any information about yourself, including your name and email address. You may interact with this site in almost total anonymity. What my web server will collect about you regardless is the domain name you used to access the Internet (such as aol.com or bellsouth.net), your IP (Internet Protocol) address, and the website you came from to get here (if any).
- I use this information to measure the number of visits, average time spent here, pages viewed, and other statistics about visitors coming to my website in general. I may also from time to time use this data to monitor site performance and to make the site easier and more convenient to use.
Concerning the privacy and safety of children:
- I make every effort to ensure that the privacy and other rights of children (minors) are not compromised. It is recommended that children have a parent or guardian present when browsing this site.
- Information and photographs that I post on this site are labeled with ICRA as being suitable for everyone.
- However, there is a commenting system in place on this site, and as such user-generated content may be displayed (as opposed to content generated only by me.) I moderate these comments to help ensure that the material on this site is safe for all audiences, but I cannot guarantee that I will catch everything.
Concerning comments:
- I am a firm believer in freedom of speech. Any comment you leave on this site will remain untouched (including grammatical and factual errors) unless you contact me and ask me to change your comment. In such a case, I will make exactly the change you request, and nothing more.
- The exception to this rule is if your comment contains offensive or fowl language, or links to sites that contain such. These comments will be edited immediately, or completely deleted if the entire comment is offensive.
- If I make edits to a comment or remove the comment altogether, I will make a note about my actions, name what was removed, and give a reason for the edit.
- If you continue to post content that is offensive, your IP address will be blocked from accessing this site.
Concerning your IP address:
- Your IP address is like a telephone number for your computer: it tells other computers where to send data that you requested. This address can also lead to your physical location, though, because each Internet Service Provider has their own IP range.
It’s for this reason that I’ve installed software on this site to remove your IP address from my site’s logs if you leave a comment here, so that your comment (and thus your Personally Identifiable Information) and your IP address cannot be connected.If I see that there is a flood of offensive comments coming from one person, I will temporarily turn the above-mentioned software off so that the IP address of the commenter in question will be recorded, and can be blocked. After that is performed, the IP address removal software will be turned back on.- Edit: This program no longer is in place. And I’ll tell you why. After receiving a couple comments, I noticed that it didn’t actually work! The IP address was, indeed, removed from beside the comment on the comments page, but not from the logs themselves. It was trivial to see who had commented and from what IP they came. Since it’s basically wasting machine cycles to have this running when it doesn’t do anything, I’ve deleted the program. I know I said at the bottom that I’d not change this policy to limit your privacy but to enhance it, however this program wasn’t real privacy. It was pseudo-privacy. Like luggage locks, it only served to give a false sense of privacy. I’d love to find a program like this that actually works, but for now your IP address will be recorded as usual (the same as it is on every other site you visit.) Just like before, however, if a flood of offensive comments are seen coming from one IP address, that address will be blocked.
Concerning cookies:
- Cookies are small pieces of data stored by your Internet browser on your computer’s hard drive. They save information such as passwords and preferences. This site, along with thousands of other websites, uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience. The only cookie you as a visitor will encounter on this site is on the article comment forms (but not on the contact page), and that cookie is set so that your name, email address, and website address will be remembered for you for your convenience.
- This cookie is an opt-in cookie, meaning you have to check the checkbox titled “Remember me” next to the “Name” field in order for it to be set in your browser. If you do not check that box when commenting, then no cookies are stored on your computer from this site.
- If you choose to opt-in to having this cookie set for you, please be aware that there are other websites (such as Facebook) which read the cookies stored on your computer to see where you’ve been. They may also gain access to your email address if you posted it with your comment. The only way to keep them from having that information is to remove the cookie. Open your browser’s help files for information about how to do this.
- This site does not read the cookies already stored on your browser.
Concerning your email address:
- All data entered into the contact form (the form on the Contact page used to send me an email) is sent to me along with your message, including your email address. A valid email address is required in order to use the contact form.
- Your email address will also be sent to me if you choose to include it when leaving a comment on an article. You do not have to give your email address to leave a comment.
- Neither of these two forms will result in your email address being displayed. Your email address will never be shown on this website, and will never be shared with others.
- However, please be aware that this information is currently sent as plain text and is not encrypted.
Concerning encryption:
- TLS (Transport Layer Security) and its predecessor, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), are encryption protocols used for securing transactions of information across the internet. These protocols use heavy encryption — similar to what your bank uses for its website — to ensure the data you send to their site cannot be read by a third party. This site does not make use of TLS or SSL encryption at this time.
- If you send me an email message using the contact form or leave a reply to an article using the comment form, you should know that there is no encryption in place to protect the transmission of that information and that it is not secured against interception by a third party.
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This Privacy Policy may change from time to time without a visible notice on the front page of this website. However, if I make a change to this policy, it will not be to limit your privacy, but to enhance it.
For instance, I have plans in the future to include TLS or SSL encryption on pages that contain forms. When I get that in place, I will make the change to this policy to reflect the new security. If you have any questions or concerns about this policy, please feel free to contact me about it. I am prompt to return email.
~Jonathan