Plain English Privacy Policy

4 Comments / rant

I’ve been seeing an increase in sites looking for w3c/p3p.xml, the w3c’s privacy policy thingie. I’ve skimmed through the spec and think it’s designed by robots for robots. Anyway, here’s my first stab at a policy.

Legal and Privacy Policy
(First draft: October 2, 2005.  last update: December 25, 2010)

1. You have none

  1. The blindingly obvious: I am Jim Carson. This is my personal web site.
  2. Intended consumer: No one — see (1). This site has elements that are inappropriate for everyone… especially minors, those bereft of a sense of humor, flat-earth theorists and/or groups prone to picking on specific demographics. If you are in these groups and have accidentally stumbled on this site, should know that you have bacteria living in your body right now. (And your epidermis is showing.) Reinstall your operating system from scratch. Do it now. For the Children
  3. There Is No Warranty: None. (Now, isn’t that refreshing from the three paragraphs of “your rights may vary from state to state… ” bullshit?   Use any information here at your own imminent peril. If you need help in identifying peril, here is a convenient list of disclaimers to get you started.)
  4. You Have No Privacy – Here follows a list of information I get from you, and what I probably do with it.
    1. Cookies — I love cookies.  Ahem.   When you post a comment, I store a cookie with the fields you fill out on your computer do you don’t have to fill in those fields again. It’s probably unnecessary with a modern browser that remembers that stuff for you. Regardless, you’re welcome to block them.
    2. Third parties – to offset some of my hosting expenses, I capitalize on some third-party sponsorship. This includes:
      1. Gooooogle AdSense – this appers as a small Google-served ad in the top, right corner of each page. Google claims it matches ad content based on stuff I write. This alone can be entertaining. Sometimes creepy.  Frequently for a non-profit. Here’s an example:

        Sample google ad

        How to work around this: The information is loaded as an iframe, which
        means your browser goes directly to google’s site for the ad. You can avoid this by … not loading the iframe. An ad-blocker, such as the free plugin to Firefox, will let you right click on and filter pagead2.googlesyndication.com        .

      2. Amazon.com Associates — these are links to specific products on Amazon.com using my Amazon.com Associates tag, jimcarson-20. Here’s an example:

        Pastry blender – example

        The only reason I still use it is Amazon has interesting products. In the unlikely chance you do buy something from Amazon as a result from this, I might receive a nickel towards a future Amazon.com purchase… next year when I’ve accumulated more than $10 of dimes and nickels. Maybe.

        How to work around this: Don’t click on the link.

    3. Comments — to leave a comment on this blog, you must provide a name and an email address.   It is my understanding that your email address is displayed.  Your IP address is also recorded.  I read every comment, but rarely respond in a timely fashion. If at all. I’m just that overcommited in everything in my life. Don’t feel bad if I don’t respond, or if the response comes at 2 a.m. some morning five weeks months years from when you posted your comment.I don’t share email address with anyone. As I’m just an individual (see “(I)” above), I have no product to market to you — here at least — so you’re safe. Probably.
    4. IP Address — I track every IP address to my site using a technology called “log files.” (Duh!)  I regularly run sometimes statistics as an ego-boo, to see who’s referencing me and what’s popular. With the advent of blogs, there has been a surge in the number of spamments and link-referral spam.  If your site sends a suspiciously high number of automated referrals to mine, or they involve popular pharmaceutical products, and Akismet doesn’t catch it, I’ll blacklist your IP address.  Sorry.
    5. All Your Base Are Belong To Us:

    * If I get one more question about updates not showing up because someone will not correctly set the goram default home directory in Dream Weaver like I’ve asked you to threefour, this list will get shorter.

4 thoughts on “Plain English Privacy Policy”

  1. BlockedIP

    “I’ll blacklist your IP address.” I’m already blacked in a list, Jim. Buuahhhhh….
    Are you another B$Legend (drmike)?:a kind of gestapo, kgb, whatever?

  4. John

    We REALLY want to know the significance of cleanlivingcom.

    (I was never good at taking direction… tell me not to ask, and my hand was always the first to go up.)

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