melek.dev exists to share some of my MapTool programming projects. The website is powered by WordPress, so there are some cookies meant to improve site usability that a privacy minded guest should be aware of. I also engage in some basic, privacy-respecting tracking using Matomo. This is for my own satisfaction to see how people enjoy the site, and the data is both anonymized and never shared.
Tracking
You may choose to prevent this website from aggregating and analyzing the actions you take here. Doing so will protect your privacy, but will also prevent the owner from learning from your actions and creating a better experience for you and other users.
As the owner of this site, I’m able to know where you are coming from in the form of your IP address, which pages you access, and when you are accessing them, so there is some tracking when you visit my site.
If you are new to web tracking and privacy with this, think of websites as a bit like asking somebody to deliver you a newspaper or magazine; I need to know which publication you want a copy of and where to deliver it. I also of course know when you asked me for the paper and when I got around to sending it to you.
Note that this is a bit more complicated because your request is routed many times to different machines possibly all over the world in order to get to me, and each of these machines is also entitled to the same data I am.
To protect your privacy and mine, this site uses SSL, which basically means I send you the magazine in a secure folder only you can open up. That means while those intermediate machines can see that you are requesting something from me, they can’t actually see what you’re asking for or what I’m giving back.
Beyond that basic data, I sincerely value my privacy and yours. Beyond that data, if I provide any kind of interactive element – be it a comment, name field, email address, or profile registration data – that it should be obvious exactly how it will be used. Any “sharing” is opt-in, and you can always request I destroy your data and anonymize your visit to my site.
If you have any doubts or questions, please let me know by pinging me (Melek) in the MapTool discord.
Comments
Generally I do not invite comments. However, if you have the opportunity and leave comments on the site, WordPress automatically collects the data shown in the comments form, and also the your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. Spam is the main reason I don’t invite comments.
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, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on this site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are 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 visit this site’s login page (which you shouldn’t, since I don’t invite guest users), this site will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
Embedded content from other websites
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.
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.
Who we share your data with
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so WordPress can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
In the event this site accepts registrations, if you register an account the site will also store the personal information you provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
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 the site holds about you, including any data you have entered such as comments and user profile fields. You can also request that I erase any personal data the site may have about you. This does not include any data I am obliged to keep for administrative & legal (such as speech which might serve as an agreement between us, or a threat to anyone’s safety), or security purposes (such as IP addresses for spam detection).
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.