GNU/Linux Guide:Privacy policy

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Introduction

I started the GNU/Linux Guide because I have a great passion for the principles of freedom, independence and personal empowerment. I believe that God has made us to be free. But to be free, we must also remain moral. And I find the tracking that most websites employ to be particularly perturbing and exceedingly immoral. And whilst I do not like to be subjected to such invasive tracking, I cannot in good conscience subject others to the same. This is the simple "golden rule".

But not all tracking is immoral. We must make a distinction between tracking website traffic and tracking and identifying users. The former does not trample upon anyone's rights. The latter does. And so below you can read what I do track, what I don't, how to block the tracking, why privacy is so important, and how to further protect your privacy.

Privacy Policy Summary

This site does not utilize cookies for regular users. I do track traffic on the website. I don't try to figure out the identity of users or try to track them across the web.

What I Track

I keep track of the traffic and some basic statistics on the website. I primarily use Matomo for this purpose. It gives me the general area our visitors are coming from (down to the city, if your IP address reveals that), what pages they’re viewing, how long they stay, how often they visit (if they're using the same I address) and which pages are popular. The server logs also record traffic data.

Cookies are only used for logged in users, like the administrator (that's me!) and other content contributors, in order to keep track of their sessions. They aren't used for regular users of the site.

What I do Not Track

I do not share our traffic data with any other organization, nor do I employ any remote analytics service. I do not track you across the web or try to figure out who you are. The site does not use cookies to track your subsequent visits (We have this option turned “off” in Matomo).

I do not use Google Analytics, which does more invasive tracking and sends all the data back to Google, who can then compare that with all the other data they have on you, figure out who you are and track you across the web. I do not have Google, Twitter or Facebook widgets on the website which send information back to their owners.

How you can Block my Tracking

Turning off Javascript will block my Matomo tracking, although the server will still record some basic information about your visit (this is actually outside my control and pretty much every server does this).

Why you Should Care about Privacy

You should care about privacy because you are a human being and privacy is your spiritual birth-right. Also, because surveillance and tracking dehumanizes you, monetizes you, objectifies you and ultimately leads to others controlling you. It also undermines societies based upon the dignity and freedom of the human being. If they track you everywhere you go, are you really free? If powerful people have massive amounts of private data even on judges and lawyers, is that really a free society?

How you can Protect your Privacy

I recommend downloading the DoNotTrackMe and NoScript plugins from your browser’s plugin page, turning off Javascript and Adobe Flash and checking out Tor. I also urge you to support the EFF and EPIC. The way we each spend our resources ultimately determines how society is shaped. If we spend our discretionary income solely on entertainment, then we neglect important pillars of our society like privacy at our peril.