Privacy policy and cookie policy

Introduction

Hi, I’m Matt Maldre. A regular guy. Not some big company. I have several personal websites where I blog:

Why I blog

I blog for fun. I love interacting with people and receiving comments.

Let me try to be straightforward with what I do with privacy and cookies on all my websites.

Contact forms

My sites have forms where you can contact me. Those forms are only for contacting me. I don’t add you to an email list just because you used my contact form.

Newsletter signup forms

I also have forms where you can subscribe to my email newsletters. I never share those email addresses with others. Those email newsletters are only for sending out emails related to my websites.

Google ads

Some of my sites like spudart.org and mattmaldre.com have Google ads on them. It’s nice to get a little bit of money with the ads. However, the money is so small, it often doesn’t even cover the monthly cost of the web hosting. So with these Google ads, there are some Google cookies that Google puts on the site.

CCPA Compliance

As of December 27, 2019 all my sites use Google’s “Restricted data processing” for users who Google determines are in California. For proof, here’s a screenshot of my settings in Google Adsense:

Google Analytics

I also run Google Analytics on my sites. That’s only for me to see things like how much traffic I’m getting, and where it’s coming from. With my Google Analytics dashboards, I cannot see who anybody is. Google blocks their users from seeing that info. I do anonymize the IP addresses that Google Analytics collects, so even Google can’t track people via the Analytics cookies.

Embedded content (e.g. Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter)

From time to time, I’ll embed content in the blog posts and webpages of my sites. For instance, video will be embedded from Youtube for Vimeo. When video is embedded on a webpage, Youtube or Vimeo has their own cookies they install. Same is true for photos with Flickr, Facebook’s like button, and embedded tweets with Twitter. They all have their own cookies they run.

WordPress

My sites are run on WordPress. I believe WordPress has some sort of cookie they install too. I’m guessing it’s for their Jetpack feature to track traffic. I think WordPress also uses some sort of cookie to remember your name and email address when you leave a comment. Although, the new versions of WordPress might not do this. Honestly, I haven’t looked that closely into it yet.

Affiliate links

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Often when I post a link to Amazon, the URL includes my affiliate code, so I can get a percentage of the sale. I really don’t make much on this. It’s like a pocket of money every year. Sometimes I’ll embed an Amazon widget on my site. There’s gotta be some cookies that Amazon puts in those widgets.
I’m also an affiliate of Oriental Trading. Not many of those links on my site. But they have totally fun little toys. So much fun. Those are simple links where I make a little bit of money with a purchase.
I might also be an affiliate of other services. I’m looking into being an affiliate with 23andMe. What usually happens is that I join some affiliate service, and then they see how much traffic I get, and then they drop me from their program.

Updates

I hope I’ve covered all the things that I need to cover with cookies and privacy here. If I haven’t, please let me know. I’ll update this page when needed.

Contact me

With this privacy stuff, I think we are supposed to give a real email address. Let’s use privacy@spudart.org, so that way I can set up a filter to make sure I see the emails sent to me on this topic.

Thank you,
Matt Maldre
Please do enjoy my websites. And remember, I love comments! Please leave comments on my blog posts. (this privacy page isn’t a blog post, so there is no comment form on this page. But every single one of my blog posts has a comment form.)