Sunday, November 20, 2005

The CycleDog Privacy Policy

Fritz wrote about his privacy policy on Cycle-licious, so I though it would be informative to do the same here. It’s very brief – there ain’t one.

Now, before anyone gets all in a snit about that, allow me to explain that I’m a technological Luddite. I don’t know how to use tags or trackbacks, and frankly, I’m not sure I’d ever need that information anyway, so why bother? There’s a simple hit counter at the bottom of the page, and I get some feedback from StatCounter that looks like this:

Weekly Stats Report: Oct 24 - Oct 30 2005
Project: CycleDog
URL: http://cycledog.blogspot.com
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 101 72 73 53 83 43 66 491 70
Unique Visitors 62 56 62 43 57 33 54 367 52
First Time Visitors 37 37 46 25 33 23 41 242 35
Returning Visitors 25 19 16 18 24 10 13 125 18


Riveting stuff, ain’t it?

I write because I want to, and while there’s a kind of ego-gratification that comes from attracting a larger audience, I’d probably keep writing the same mixture of rants, comedy, and opinion even as that audience grows bigger. That doesn’t mean I’m impervious to ego-gratification. I’m hardly a saint. But in one sense, I wouldn’t want all that information because it could influence me to write toward that target audience. Does that make sense? Still, I gotta be careful about what I say or those black helicopters will be hovering over the house again. I hate that.

I had some targeted ads on here for awhile, but they went away. The code is still on the page template, but I suspect that I wrote about beer too much, and Google pulled the ads. But I only suspect that is true, I don’t know it for a fact. Regardless, I had lukewarm enthusiasm for ads, so it doesn’t bother me that they’re gone.

Now, the folks at Google, on the other hand, may have ways to monitor traffic here. That’s their business, not mine. But let me reiterate – I don’t collect information on readers. I don’t know how to do so, nor do I want to learn. I wouldn’t know what to do with the information anyway.

So, if any of you feel up to it, please feel free to post something in comments. Maybe my neo-Luddite view of digital privacy is naïve, but regardless, I’ll be posting something about cycling again, maybe tonight or tomorrow, or whenever a good idea rises up out of the sludge at the bottom of my coffee cup. Creativity runs on caffeine!

5 Comments:

Blogger Yokota Fritz said...

Hey Ed,

Blogspot/Blogger is owned by Google, so Google is tracking visitors to CycleDog.

I still see Google Ads on your blog -- Google hasn't yanked anything.

6:25 PM  
Blogger Ed W said...

So, Fritz, what you're telling me is that Google thinks I'm sooooo boring that targeted ads are wasted! Oh, the shame!

If I ever became the Vice President of the United States, my Secret Service codename would be 'Ed W'!

8:13 PM  
Blogger The Donut Guy said...

Hmm, I don't see any of the Google ads on your site.

I have all kinds of ad-blocking software running so I rarely see ads though:-)

7:39 AM  
Blogger Ed W said...

I hadn't thought of that either, George. I have a simple web filter called Proxomitron that removes most ads.

Like I said, I'm a Luddite!

6:13 PM  
Blogger Yokota Fritz said...

A blogging Luddite. Is that something like the Electric Amish?

3:33 PM  

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