I’m putting up a “privacy policy” because I think there’s a legal requirement to have one. Also, it’s nice to be able to see what information is being collected on a website that you visit. I hope you find this helpful.
There are three ways on SteveEscoffery.com that information about visitors to the site is collected: through the Email List, the Contact Form, and via Google Analytics. Below is some info on each.
Email List
In order to sign up for the Email List, a visitor to the site just needs to submit an email address.
Email addresses of members of the Email List are stored solely in a highly secure electronic environment – in an account with the email server, MailChimp. These are some of the security measures MailChimp has in place (as mentioned on this page):
- “All login pages (from our website and mobile website) pass data via SSL.
- The entire MailChimp application is encrypted with SSL.
- Login pages have brute force protection.
- Logins via the MailChimp API have brute force protection.
- We perform regular security penetration tests, using different vendors. The tests involve high-level server penetration tests, in-depth testing for vulnerabilities inside the application, and social engineering drills.”
Contact Form
When sending a message through the Contact Form, the email address and name you supply will end up on a personal computer.
No personal information (like email address or name) will ever be shared, sold, lent, etc.
Google Analytics
This site uses Google Analytics to look at basic demographic info of visitors and general viewing trends – like:
- the location (country and city) of each visitor
- the duration of time a visitor spends on the site, and on individual pages
- how many visitors view the site with a computer, and how many with a mobile device
- how many visitors use each type of web browser to view the site (like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari)
- how many visitors the site receives each day
There’s no information collected that’s personally identifiable.
And I mainly use Google Analytics to look for spikes in traffic correlating with specific events – like to see how many page views a new piece of content is getting, etc. I’m also intrigued to see what countries, and what parts of the United States, people are visiting from.
Cookies
Google Analytics accomplishes the above by placing a “cookie” in the web browser of everyone who visits the site. Cookies can be removed from your web browser with a few clicks, and they can also be blocked (usually by changing a setting in the Preferences panel of the web browser).
According to W3Techs, about 54.4% of all websites use Google Analytics and these cookies; and 65.6% of websites use some form of analytics.
More information can be found in Wikipedia’s Google Analytics entry.
Options You Have for Removal of Data
If you’ve sent any messages through the Contact Form, and you’d like your email address (and any names you’ve sent along with messages or emails) removed from my records, you can send a request through the Contact Form, and I’ll delete your data when I see your message (usually within one to two days).
And if you’ve signed up for the Email List, you can automatically opt out at any time by clicking the “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom of each email that’s sent. That link will take you to a page that will let you unsubscribe (with one click, I believe). And your email address and name will be removed from the system.
And you’re always welcome to sign back up, and/or send messages again.
Google also has a way to keep your web browsing off of their radar. Here’s a link with info on how to do that.
Privacy Questions
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please contact me here. Thanks for reading, and I hope you like the way I’m doing things.