Hello. I’m Jeff, and welcome to my blog.
Privacy, security, anonymity. These are the coins of our digital realm today. So I want to be transparent with you about what I see when you visit my blog, vs what other people, groups or corporations might see.
The Parties who receive information about you when you visit my blog:
- Well there’s me, Jeff Wilson. I get some information.
- There’s the hoster, or what we might more accurately call in 2019, the Software as a Service company that provides this service. That company’s name is Automattic, and the product I’m paying about $8/month to use is called WordPress.com
- There’s also other parties involved. Like Google. I have no control over much of these, but read on for more information.
What kind of information do you see Jeff?
I see:
- The Geolocation of your IP address, which may or may not be your device’s real IP address
- Referrer: typically I see a source for how you arrived here on my little blog. It may be Twitter or some other social network, or it could be a Google search or a Bing search
- I may see whether you arrived at my blog directly to one of its posts, or came to the home page.
- I can see what you clicked on (for instance, an article with a link)
What don’t you see Jeff?
I cannot see the following:
- Your actual IP address
- Your email address
- Your Twitter or Facebook page
- Your Browser, operating system, or any details about the device you used to read my words
- Your friends list, private messages, or anything like that.
You are anonymous to me – and I like that
In fact, there’s nothing really at all identifiable about you, or your device, to me, the writer of this blog. I only see this stuff (click to enlarge and to see what I see):
That’s about it. Note that I may see your name if you choose to leave a comment, but honestly, I’m not big on allowing comments on my blog anymore. The internet has enough places for commentary and I want this place to be the home for my words.
You can always email me though at colossus at wilson dot tech if you have questions.
What Automattic Sees and Does when you visit my blog
There’s a big long privacy policy Automattic has for the people it calls its users. Those people are people like me: paying customers who render payment yearly in exchange for the WordPress.com blog service. Those people are not you. You are considered a visitor to a user’s site (mine). The distinction is subtle but important.
General Privacy Policy for Visitors: https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/
If you are visitor to my site from any of the European Union member states and you are curious about your rights vis a vis my blog, please see this notice from Automattic, which seems to apply more to me than to you.
GDPR Specific Privacy Policy for Visitors / Data Subjects from 🇪🇺 European Union🇪🇺
What Google & other companies See and Do when you visit my blog
I honestly don’t have 100% clarity on this myself. I know for instance that:
- Google fonts ping Google, and Google fonts are used in WordPress.com
- If you Google for my site and click a link to my site, that link click will be collected by Google and perhaps Automattic
Rest assured, I’d turn these features off if I could.
Other disclosures and details:
- I pay approximately $8/month to host this site
- I pay this cost out of my own pocket
- I am a Full Time Employee in the Information Technology sector serving small-medium businesses in and/around the Los Angeles County Metroplex
- I publish disclosures per blog. You can view one blog’s disclosure notice here.
- I do not have access to logs and cannot delete them for you. You would need to contact Automattic for that
- I do not put ads on my site because I don’t like ads and I don’t want to be tracked any more than you do
- What I see and what Automattic sees are probably broadly similar to what other blog/SaaS providers see, including providers like Medium and Ghost
Wilson.tech 