Plain-talking privacy policy for real people
Who and what
You are looking at the privacy policy page for https://billbennett.co.nz
This is my site. It isn't run by a faceless corporation. If you have a problem with any privacy issue here get directly in touch with me at bill@billbennett.co.nz.
What personal data is collected here and why?
I'm not interested in your personal data beyond what's needed to make the newsletter subscriptions work and counting page visits to remind myself I'm not just talking to an empty room.
The only data I collect is:
- Email address.
- Your name, although this optional. You can just provide an email address.
- Your membership status. The Ghost system used here distinquishes between paid and free site members. I don't collect payments so everyone is a free member.
- Your email open rate. This is a percentage telling me what proportion of emailed newsletters you have opened. Don't worry. I'm not checking this, but I do look at the aggregate number each week.
- The country you signed up from. Some of these are marked 'unknown' so it's optional and uninvasive.
- The date your account was created.
I have no intention of sharing or selling this data. That's not why I'm here.
That said, there are a few minor privacy wrinkles to worry about.
Google Analytics and Statcounter
For the moment Google Analytics and Statcounter track reader visits and count the number of readers for each post.
Both use cookies to track you. I have no control over what they do with the data they collect but it isn't always good. If you want to turn off cookies and use all the privacy tools available to you I'm cool with that.
Soon I'll move to a less invasive tracking alternative.
Comments
Subscribed readers can leave comments on the site. If you do, the comment will show your name. That's it.
Media
If you upload an image to the site comments you should avoid uploading images that include embedded location data (EXIF GPS) because site visitors can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
Google Analytics and Statcounter use cookies.
Ghost
This site runs on Ghost. You can see Ghost's privacy policy here: https://ghost.org/privacy/
Embedded content
Posts on this site may include embedded content (videos, images, articles, etc.).
Embedded content from other websites behaves in the same way as if the visitor visits the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies and embed additional third-party tracking. They may monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
How long do we keep your data?
If you leave a comment here, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. There's not much metadata.
If you are a registered user, I store your name, email address and the other data mentioned in the list above in a user profile. When you stop being a registered user, that profile gets deleted.
What rights do you have over the data?
Really, there's not much data, just what is listed above. But if you want to check, I'm happy to send you a copy of what is on file. You can also request that I erase your data at any point. As I said, I'm not interested in milking your data.
There's a legal bit here about this not including any data I am obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. As far as I know, I don't do this and I can’t think of when this could possibly happen, but you never know.
That's it.