Privacy is a Human Right

I believe privacy is a fundamental human right and have crafted this document to be simple and straightforward. It’s important that you understand what information I gather and why.

Analytics

I gather information on how many people visit trev.com for purposes both egotistical and editorial. Fundamentally this information helps me understand what people like so I can create the best content. I never have and never will sell any of your information.

Every website keeps track of visitors, some more than others. In many cases they share this information with other companies either explicitly or behind the scenes. In either case you have no choice about who gets your information and how it’s used. I do not make your information available to anyone. I respect you too much to sell you out.

You may not realize it, but tools like Google Analytics provide a great deal of your information to large companies so they can track your behavior across the internet for the purpose of generating revenue. Additionally, this information sharing helps build a unique profile of who you are and your interests. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say they spy on you. I don’t do that by design.

I run a private copy of Matomo, an open-source analytics tool designed with privacy in mind. It is set to collect as little information as possible while giving me some visibility into why people care to read what I post. It is, hands down, the most privacy friendly analytics tool. Importantly, Matomo is completely GDPR compliant.

Personally Identifiable Information

I don’t collect your personally identifiable information unless you very explicitly give it to me. If you send me an e-mail or fill out a form you may share personally identifiable information by your own hand. If you don’t want to provide personally identifiable information, don’t share in the first place. Simple. I do not require any of your personally identifiable information in order to visit trev.com, and if I’m being very honest, I’d rather not have it to begin with.

Do Not Track

You can enable a feature called Do Not Track in your browser. This is a bullshit attempt to make you feel safe and carries no weight. Do Not Track lacks any enforcemenet mechanism. If you send a “Do Not Track” signal trust that I fully respect it, but it really does nothing in the grand scheme of things. You should not feel safe simply because you enabled Do Not Track in your browser. I can’t overly stress what a joke Do Not Track really is. By all means use the feature, just don’t expect it to actually enhance your privacy on other sites, though I definitely have your back.

Cookies

My analytics engine uses cookies so I can see how many visitors come back to trev.com. These cookies don’t have any of your personal information and can only be read by trev.com.

Ages ago people alleged cookies could personally identify you and run applications on your computer. That’s absolutely untrue.

The cookies trev.com asks your browser to accept simply tell my analytics engine who a visitor is as a random string of characters and do not identify you in any personal way. It’s important to note they can’t actually perform any tasks on your computer and are essentially as powerful as a text file – because they are a text file. Critically, cookies can only be read by the website which created them in the first place. For example, red.com and blue.com can both ask to place cookies on your computer, but red.com can’t read blue.com’s cookies. All of this is to explain why cookies are not a boogieman. If you are curious about Cookies you can learn more here.

Web Hosting

I don’t own the infrastructure that sends trev.com to you. When you visit trev.com your internet provider talks to a series of computers that end up asking Cloudflare and my web host Pair Networks to give you a copy of trev.com. I have no control over your Internet provider or the infrastructure used to deliver trev.com to you.

I do have control over the choice of the servers which hold the files for trev.com. I made a conscious decision to trust a few companies after significant research.

Pair Networks is a capable and trustworthy web host who has gained my trust. That said, they likely keep internal logs and may have more information about trev.com’s visitors than I do. Visitors to trev.com are subject to Pair Networks’ Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

I use Cloudflare to make pages load a little more quickly as well as handle some other back end settings. You are are subject to their Privacy Policy and Terms of Use as well.

Trev.com Terms and Conditions

You are encouraged to read the Terms and Conditions some lawyer made me publish by visiting trev.com/about/legal/.

Acknowledgements

As part of my analytics tool, trev.com uses the GeoLite database created by MaxMind, available from www.maxmind.com. I use this information to get a rough idea of where my visitors are. I can’t tell where you are specifically. I have no idea where your home is, at best I know the city from which you hail.

Updates

I reserve the right to change this policy at any time.

The latest copy of this Privacy Policy is available at trev.com/about/privacy/. Similarly, The most recent copy of trev.com’s terms and conditions is available at trev.com/about/legal/.

Thank you for taking the time to read this policy. If you have any questions, please e-mail [email protected].