bythom.com and its related sites may collect information about you in order to properly function. Your continued use of the bythom.com and its related sites indicates that you are aware of these policies and accept them. The current privacy situation for bythom.com is as follows:
Summary:
- Google fonts are used on this site; however they should be served directly, so aren’t tracked
- bythom.com does not add additional cookies or tracking information. If you send us an email, that information is collected and retained.
Details:
This site has used the Google Analytics external tracking mechanism in the past to better understand whether you're a new or repeat visitor to this site, and which articles you're reading. It also used to use other services that left cookies, as well as have advertising that may have tracked you. No more. We’ve done our best to make sure that we don’t track you and that we’re not facilitating any other company or service who wants to track you.
There are three things you should know, though.
- Some of you send us direct email and comments on articles. We archive only some of such email received (our email provider archives it permanently). Thus, we may maintain a record of something you've sent us. Again, however, it is not our practice to do anything with such information other than act on it and store it. We don't currently build email address lists and sell them to others (and if we ever do build such lists, we would likely perform a courtesy opt-out mailing first). If a response is warranted, we respond to your email and possibly archive your original query. If you've submitted a comment on an article, we may edit it and place it on the site if we think it adds useful information or commentary, and we may archive your original submission (usually we’ll respond directly if the comment contained a question). We do not, however, currently identify the originator of such information posted on our sites by anything other than initials. You won’t see your name pop up in a Google search because of something you wrote to us (you can explicitly tell us to do otherwise and we may comply). In short, we'll respond when you ask for response, and we may archive what you've sent us so that our records regarding this site are complete.
- Our Web server knows where you came to this site from, when you got here, how long you stayed, and some information about the browser and display you’re using. All servers do this and put it in a log file. That log file is kept private, and we periodically look at it to try to detect any issues that might be arising. Also, that log file is automatically erased (currently after 30 days).
- If you click on a video, the files for those are currently hosted by other sites and those sites will capture your viewing. However, until you click, nothing is leaked to the video hosting site (currently Vimeo). I’m looking into finding a way to deal with that slight privacy leak. Vimeo’s Privacy Policy.
To be complete we should say that this site’s privacy policies are as best as we can describe, and are subject to change. We're Internet users just like you are, and we prefer sites that have policies that impact our privacy as little as possible. We've tried to model our own behavior accordingly. But business practices and needs, and legal regulations do change from time to time, and we may need to change my policies accordingly. We've always tried to conduct this business as an "open dialog" between ourselves and our customers, so if you have any concerns or criticisms, please feel free to address them to us so that we can consider them.