Oh hi!
Welcome to the most boring page on the blog – I admire whatever personality trait led you here.
Anyway, let’s try to whizz through this before one or both of us falls asleep.
This site is run by me, Neil Bennion. I respect your privacy, but then you know that. There’s a reason you’ve never caught me gawking at you through your lounge window, and it’s not because I’ve been hiding in the bushes or using some kind of crude periscope.
My mailing lists use double opt-in, just to make sure you really want to subject yourself to my various ramblings. That information isn’t stored here – it’s stored securely at a reputable email automation platform, which is also where my emails come from.
You can unsubscribe from my mailing list(s) by clicking on the email link at the bottom of every email. You can also send me an email asking me to do for you and I’ll oblige. You can even write it in crayon and fax it to me or present me with a plate containing pasta shapes spelling out your request – as long as I get the message, I’ll do it.
If you leave a comment and you think ‘Boy, does that make me look foolish’ or just don’t want it on the site for whatever reason, email me and I’ll delete it.
Oh – and this site stores information in cookies. It uses them for things like usage statistics and also to personalise your browsing experience. Third parties might use them to serve up adverts, too – you know what they’re like.
Anyway, I hope that gets the gist across – the detail is below. Where there’s a conflict, trust the text below.
All the best,
Neil
The (even more) boring detail:
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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.
Embedded content from other websites
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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Hosting
This website is hosted with WordPress. Some information may be logged when you visit this website, e.g. the IP address. This helps us to keep the site free from errors and protected from attacks.
Analytics
Google Analytics and Jetpack are used to record website visitor statistics. This is to help determine what content is useful, and generally to improve the performance of the site perform.
Here is Google’s privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
Mailing Lists
The website users MailChimp as its email automation service. If you sign up for a mailing list, this information is stored with MailChimp, which also collects information about email engagement.
There is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email, and you can also contact us directly to unsubscribe.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.