A Privacy Policy (like no other)

Listen, I'm no legal expert. I'm the sole developer of this website, not a business with a team of lawyers on a retainer. I have zero legal expertise when it comes to documents such as this. However, this document's presence is required for certain third-party integrations that I have in place. Therefore, I'm going to lay forth the policy of this website, and the obligations I will make to you, the user, as the owner of this website.

1. Your data is yours

Your data will never be sold to third parties, nor will it be distributed to third parties without your consent. I hold this value dear in my own life, and I believe it's one of the core fundamentals that the modern internet is lacking. I'm not in the selling-your-data business. Never have been, never will be. There's a couple of exceptions though;

a. Your data is passed in an encrypted form to Disqus, a third party that powers the website's commenting system. This is necessary to set up an account over at Disqus in order for you to use the comment widgets. These accounts are isolated from the main Disqus community, and are only ever usable via this website.
b. Should you decide to use social login, the website will obtain your email address from the third party provider in order to create you an account on this website. I ask for this information in order to be able to send you notifications and relevant pieces of information about this website or its content.
c. If there is any legal need to share your information with any law enforcement or governing bodies, I will do so. I don't believe anyone is above the law, and I will co-operate fully with any ongoing investigation into criminal activity.

I will never spam you. Email notifications are entirely within your control from within your account settings page. If you don't want to receive notifications of a certain type (or any type), simply turn the notifications off. It's that simple, and it takes effect immediately. Again, this isn't a big website. I'm one guy, and I don't build complicated systems that "take 28 days to unsubscribe you". I never understood that.

Lastly, your email address is not viewable by anyone except me (the website owner). Periodically I get requests from editors of publications asking to use certain content posted on this website. I will forward those requests to the individual who posted the content, and make no assertion to the requestor that the use of content is allowed unless the author of said content has given express permission to do so.

2. This website uses cookies

Like literally every other website on the planet, this website uses cookies to keep track of who you are around the website. These are called "session cookies", and they're used by the website to understand which user is making a request for which page at any given time. These cookies cannot track you while you are not on this website.

Our Ad partners at Google also use what's called "third party cookies" in order to track people around the web. These assist in delivering relevant ads to you. Google has some information on their website that outlines their commitment to user privacy.

3. Your account

This website collect data about you. This website does not verify data about you, with the exception of your email address. This is a security measure to ensure only legitimate users are signing up to this website. You can provide as much or as little data as you like about yourself. It doesn't even have to be true. In the authoring world, people go by different names all the time, and we expect nothing less on this website either.

You can also delete your account whenever you want. Simply visit your account settings page and click "Delete Account". I won't try and stop you, and should you decide to delete your account, all of your data, including any submissions you may have posted to the website are deleted immediately. It may take a while for Google to stop serving your content in search results. This is because Google only periodically indexes the website, though the website will make a best-effort to inform Google of changes to content (both newly added and deleted content).

Finally

If you have any questions or concerns about this policy, need clarification, or to report a data breach, please use the Contact Us page to get in touch.