I guess my visitors are mainly concerned with the cookies my website sets on their computers and the personal information stored in it’s database. Beyond that anonymous visitor data is collected by my web server. The following sections are intended to defined my approach to data collection and protection with respect to this website.
Personal Information
- I’ll only ask for personal information that is necessary to operate the website and provide a better service.
- The same applies to storing personal information.
- This is my personal website and I won’t share any personal information collected by this website with anyone else, unless required to by law.
- I won’t display commenters email addresses openly on the website, nobody enjoys spam.
The cookies
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. This website is based on WordPress and sets the usual cookies to identify users and commenters, nothing customised in this area. This enables the website to reduce the amount of time you spend entering you personal identification. Visitors who don’t want cookies on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using this website.
This section is pulled out of the WordPress Codex on the cookies set when you comment on a post. These are the only relevant cookies, since I’m the only one with user access to the website.
When visitors comment on your blog, they too get cookies stored on their computer. This is purely a convenience, so that the visitor won’t need to re-type all their information again when they want to leave another comment. Three cookies are set for commenters:
Again, all the data in the cookies is stored hashed. When the visitor returns to your blog, WordPress checks for the existence of their cookie, and then tries to compare their hashed data with the values stored in the WordPress database.
The commenter cookies are set to expire a little under one year from the time they’re set.
The database
The information supplied with your comment is stored in the database along with the text of your comment in plain text. Database access is password protected.
Anonymous Information
- I’ll analyse these data to see how well the website and individual posts are doing.
- I use the Akismet service, so any spam comments will be used to fine tune performance.
Website Visitors
Like most website operators, I collect non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request.
This website uses Google Analytics for this purpose, and it sets and uses a number of cookies on your computer.
This information allows me to better understand how visitors use this website, and not to track you personally. But I understand that not everyone likes cookies, so Google provides a service to enable you to opt-out of Google Analytics.
I also collect potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. I’ve no interest in knowing exactly who you are and don’t use this information for this purpose or release it to anyone else.
Changes
Naturally, it’s possible that this privacy policy may be altered in time to match changes in the functionality of this website and the legal framework of the Web. I would suggest that it might be worth checking this page from time to time.