Privacy policy and cookies

To make this site work properly, we sometimes place small data files called cookies on your device. Most big websites do this too.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.

How do we use cookies?

Short version

We collect anonymous statistics about your visit, like which of our pages you viewed.
Some 3rd parties like Facebook and Twitter may know you visited this website if you use their services. We can’t control them, but we don’t believe this knowledge poses any threat to you.
If you sign up with us we take great care to keep your information safe and we’ll never share it with others without your express permission.
We never share your data with 3rd parties except to help us deliver our own services.

These are just the key points. If you need detail, keep reading.

Measuring our visitors

We measure visitors to our website using Google Analytics. This records what pages you view within our site, how you arrived at our site and some basic information about your computer. All of that information is anonymous – so we don’t know who you are; just that somebody visited our site.

The information we collect from analytics helps us understand what parts of our sites are doing well, how people arrive at our site and so on. Like most websites, we use this information to make our website better.

You can learn more about Google Analytics or opt out if you wish.

Facebook, Twitter and other social networks

These services provide social buttons and similar features which we use on our website – such as the “Like” and “Tweet” buttons.

To do so we embed code that they provide and we do not control ourselves. To function their buttons generally know if you’re logged in; for example Facebook uses this to say “x of your friends like this”. We do not have any access to that information, nor can we control how those networks use it.

Social networks therefore could know that you’re viewing this website if you use their services (that isn’t to say they do, but their policies may change). As our website is remarkably inoffensive we imagine this is not a concern for most users.

Our articles might include information from various 3rd party APIs to collect information like an embedded Google Maps or YouTube (see Google’s privacy policy). Those services will also track visitors and viewers and we have no control over them.

Discussion comments

To allow visitors to discuss our blog articles and some web pages we use a discussion system called Disqus.

To do so we embed code that Disqus provide and we do not control ourselves. Disqus anonymously tracks visitors to pages like we do. They also remember who you are if you login to any Disqus service, so you can comment on any website using their tool.

Logging in to Disqus can be done in many ways, including via Facebook. If you login via social network, Disqus will be able to link your activity to that network. In this way, your Disqus activity may be personally identifiable.

Disqus will know what pages you viewed in our site and what you wrote on those comments. Of course all comments you leave are also publicly visible on the Internet alongside your name, so we do not imagine this is a concern for many people.

How to control cookies

You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.

Emails

We may send you email notifications regarding your service which you have specifically requested (such as newsletters or notifications when there is a new comment or article). You have the ability to opt out of any of this communication at any time.

We will never provide your personal information or email address to any third parties except where they are specifically employed to help deliver our own services, as detailed above.