Who “We” Are
Updated June 17, 2023.
My website address is: https://www.peterscottcameron.ca.
What Personal Data “We” Collect and Why “We” Collect it
First, It is not really “we.” This is all legalese. I personally collect nuttin’ extra on nobody, nohow! On general principles I’m against it. If it were entirely up to me, there would be no data collection here whatsoever. But it is not entirely up to me. Nevertheless I have done my best by limiting things to reputable services, and having nothing at all to do with Google, Facebook, and the rest of the privacy invaders and corporate colonizers.
If you sign up to subscribe to the site, I will have your email address and your name, but I am not asking for any other information. My subscription management service is Mailchimp; they maintain only your name and email. They are reputable and reliable and to the best of my knowledge do not sell or share emails or such.
That said, my blog site is hosted by DreamHost, and the platform is Word Press, and I am certain they, like Gravatar mentioned below, gather general traffic data. Again, I don’t approve, but it is fairly harmless and they are highly reputable, which is why I chose them for hosting.
There is too, too much data harvested on the Web; it has become one of the main weapons in the arsenal of the corporate-government-surveillance-complex (with a nod to Dwight Eisenhower). It is all aimed at a rather successful effort to convert us from human beings into automaton consumers. I will do everything in my power to protect you, my loyal readers, from abuse and intrusion by the likes of Google, etc. I intentionally avoid using Google tools such as Google analytics because of the company’s predatory practices. Nevertheless, Google insidiously tries to slither into everything. It is difficult to fight, but fight we must.
One of the reasons that there are no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or any other such media links here is because I will have nothing to do with them. They are first, and foremost, data collection and selling devices. That is their primary (manifest) function in the sociological sense; everything else that they do to provide jollies is secondary to that main function. (They have also debased public discourse, and contributed to the general lowering of the collective I.Q. of society, and with the help of the likes of Fox “News,” have promulgated division and polarization and anti-democratic notions in society — but that is another issue!)
For a good read on data collection and surveillance, I recommend The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff. Another great title is Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, by Roger McNamee. Even better is The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World, by Max Fisher.
Legalese on Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site my Web site provider collects the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, it is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
If you leave a comment on my site you may opt-in to saving your name and email address cookies. These are supposed to be for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so the site can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
Legalese on Embedded Content from Other Websites
It is possible that articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. Such embedded content will be rare, by the way. I’m not sure I will ever do that. But if I do…
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. I think this is all pretty nefarious and so will try to avoid embedded content.
Do check your privacy settings on your browser to manage as much of this as you can and as you see fit.
What Rights You Have Over Your Data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data that DreamHost holds about you, including any data you have provided. You can also request that DreamHost erases any personal data held about you. This does not include any data they are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where We Send Your Information
Visitor comments are checked through an automated spam detection service, Clean Talk. This one is for your and my benefit, to filter out the spammers and other bad guys. Nothing to worry about here.
Privacy Policy Links for Sites and Services Associated with peterscottcameron.ca.
DreamHost: https://www.dreamhost.com/legal/privacy-policy/
WordPress: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/
Gravatar: https://automattic.com/privacy/
Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/
CleanTalk: https://cleantalk.org/publicoffer#privacyFirst,