Your privacy is critically important to me. I have a few fundamental principles:

  • I don’t ask you for personal information unless I truly need it – I can’t stand services that ask you for things like your gender or income level for no apparent reason;
  • I don’t share your personal information with anyone, except to comply with the law, develop my products, or protect my rights;
  • I don’t store personal information on my servers unless required for the ongoing operation of one of my services;
  • In my web service, I aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what’s visible to the public, seen by search engines, kept private, and permanently deleted;

Below is my privacy policy which incorporates these goals:

It is my policy to respect your privacy regarding any information I may collect while operating my web service.

Visitors

Like most web service operators, I collect non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. My purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how my visitors use this web service. From time to time, I may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of this web service.

I also collect potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on my web service. I only disclose logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that I use and disclose personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to my web service choose to interact with me in ways that require me to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that I gather depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, I ask visitors who sign up as users at website to provide a username and an email address. Those who engage in transactions with me are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, I collect such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with me. I do not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain web service-related activities.

Aggregated Statistics

I may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to this  web service. For instance, I may monitor methanist.com or use spam screeners to help identify spam. I may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, I do not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

I disclose potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of my employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on my behalf or to provide services available at my web service, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using my website, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. I will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to my employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, I disclose potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when I believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect my property or rights, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of my website and have supplied your email address, I may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with me and my products. I primarily use my various web services to communicate this type of information, so  I expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send me a request (for example via a support email or via one of my feedback mechanisms), I reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help me support other users. I take all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying information.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. I use cookies to help identify and track visitors, their usage of my web service, and their access preferences. Visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using my web service, with the drawback that certain features of my web service may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Business Transfers

If I, or substantially all of my assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that I go out of business or enter bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of methanist.com may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

Ads

Ads appearing on any of my websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by me and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Comments

Comments and other content submitted to my Anti-Spam service are not saved on my servers unless they were marked as false positives, in which case I store them long enough to use them to improve the service to avoid future false positives.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, I may change this Privacy Policy from time to time, and in my sole discretion. I encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to this Privacy Policy. If you have a methanist.com account, you should also check your dashboard for alerts to these changes. Your continued use of this web service after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

For all comments or questions on this Privacy Policy, please use the form below: