Privacy

This page says what this site stores about you, where it keeps it, how long it keeps it, and who else sees it.

Reading the site

This site runs no advertising scripts. Its fonts and styles come from this site. Three scripts come from other servers: Google Analytics, which sets cookies, the Umami analytics tracker, and the hCaptcha spam check if the owner turns it on. Each is described below.

Pictures of other people, such as the avatar of somebody who replied from another site, are fetched and stored by this site and served from here. Your browser does not fetch them from the other server, so that server does not learn your IP address.

When you follow a link from this site to another one, your browser tells that site only which site you came from, not which page.

To slow down abuse, the site counts requests from each IP address for a few minutes. The counts are kept in memory only, and they are lost when the site restarts. The web server writes a log line for each request. By default the line does not contain your IP address. The owner can turn that on, and whoever hosts the site can keep its own logs.

Analytics with Google Analytics

Every page loads Google Analytics from googletagmanager.com, a service run by Google. It sets cookies named _ga and _ga_ followed by an ID, which last up to two years and let it tell one visit from the next. When a page loads, your browser sends Google the page address, the site you came from, your browser, operating system, device and screen size, the language, and your IP address, which Google uses to work out your approximate location. It is loaded whether or not you are signed in. Google's privacy policy covers what it does with them, and Google's opt-out browser add-on stops it.

Analytics with Umami

Every public page loads an analytics tracker from Umami Cloud (cloud.umami.is), a service run by Umami Software. It counts visits and sets no cookies. When a page loads, your browser sends Umami the page address, the site you came from, your browser, operating system, device type, screen size and language, and your IP address, which Umami uses to work out your country. The tracker is not loaded for somebody signed in to the site. Umami's privacy policy covers what it does with them.

Comments

When you leave a comment, the site stores:

• Your name, your website and the words you type. These are shown on the page beside your comment, for as long as the comment is up.
• Your email address, if you give one. It is optional, it is never shown, and it is used to decide whether your comment needs a moderator and to email you about replies if you ask for that. The site deletes it after 180 days.
• A salted hash of your IP address, which lets the site spot a run of spam from one place. The IP address itself is never stored. The site deletes the hash after 30 days.

If this site can send mail, a new comment waiting for a moderator is emailed to the people who moderate it.

Comments are stored as files beside the posts, and the site may keep those files in version control. A copy deleted from the site can stay in that history until the owner rewrites it.

Reply emails (optional). If this site can send mail and you tick "email me when somebody replies", the site emails you when a reply to your comment is approved. Each message has an unsubscribe link. If you unsubscribe, the site keeps your address on a list of addresses it must not email about replies. The mail provider the owner chose sees each address a message goes to.

The contact form (optional)

If this site has a contact form and you send a message, the site stores your name, your email address, the subject, the message and a salted hash of your IP address, in a private file that is not published. If the site can send mail, it also emails the message to the owner, through the mail provider the owner chose. The site deletes the message after 365 days, and the hash after 30 days.

Spam checking with Akismet (optional)

Only if the owner turns it on, the site sends each new comment, webmention and contact message to Akismet, a spam-checking service run by Automattic. Akismet receives your IP address, your browser's user agent, the page you came from, your name, email address and website, and what you wrote. Akismet's own privacy policy covers what it does with them.

Spam checking with hCaptcha (optional)

Only if the owner turns it on, the contact form and the comment form carry a spam check from hCaptcha, a service run by Intuition Machines. On a page with one of those forms, your browser loads hCaptcha's script and widget from hCaptcha's servers. hCaptcha receives what your browser sends it: your IP address, your browser's user agent, the page's language, and signals about your device and how you use the widget. When you send the form, the site sends hCaptcha the widget's answer and your IP address. If you are signed in to comment, the comment form has no check and your browser loads nothing from hCaptcha. hCaptcha's privacy policy covers what it does with them.

Replies from other sites

Webmentions. When another site links to a post here and sends a webmention, this site fetches that page and stores its author's name, website and avatar address and the words of the page, and may show them as a comment. They are a copy of a page that is already public. When a post here links to another site, this site sends that site a webmention, which tells it only the address of the post.

The fediverse. Posts here are published over ActivityPub, so they are copied to the servers of the people who follow this site, on Mastodon and similar services. If you follow this site from one of those services, the site stores your public profile: your handle, display name, avatar address and profile address, until you unfollow. That list is kept in the site's files beside the posts. When you reply to, like, boost or quote a post, the site stores the activity and who sent it, and may show replies under the post.

Accounts

The people who write this site have accounts. The site stores each account's username, email address, a hash of its password and its public profile. A signed-in account gets one cookie, __Host-geekity_session (called geekity_session on a site without https), which holds a random session id and nothing else. It is deleted when the person signs out or the session expires.

How long the site keeps things

The site checks these periods when it starts and every six hours after that.

Asking for your data to be removed

Write to the owner of this site. The owner can find every comment and contact message that carries your email address and erase them together, on Tools > Personal data: your comments stay in their threads signed "Anonymous", without your email, website or address hash, your messages are deleted, and your address comes off the list of addresses not to email about replies. Comments left without an email address, webmentions and fediverse replies are removed one at a time.