Privacy policy

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Privacy is a complex issue because some of it relates to personal choices by Web designers, and is fully under my control, and some of it relates to technological choices that are largely outside my control. For what it's worth, here's my personal privacy policy for this Web site:

Personal choices

The only records that I keep are for sales of my books, and I only retain your name and e-mail address. I use this information to send update notices when new versions of my books become available so that I can offer previous purchasers discounted upgrade prices. If you have purchased one of my books and want your name removed from my records, simply contact me and I'll do that. (It won't be possible to remove that information from backups on DVD, but those are not accessible over the Internet and should therefore be safe.) However, see "Technological Choices" (below) for issues related to Paypal.
Information stored on my home computer, including the aforementioned names and e-mail records, is protected by a strong password—combined with some software measures to quickly find the computer should it be stolen. Since my wife and I both work at home, it's rare that the computer is left alone long enough to be a theft risk. When we travel, someone usually stays at our house, and if we don't bring the computer with us, it's hidden somewhere safe.
I run "best of breed" antivirus software (updated automatically), keep my operating systems (Mac and Windows) updated with the latest security patches, don't visit sketchy sites, and am careful not to click links that arrive via e-mail. That doesn't make me immune to malware, but it does greatly reduce the risk that my computer will be infected by something nasty that might jeopardize the abovementioned personal information.
My Web site is hosted by Bluehost, which has a good reputation for protecting its Web sites against hacking. Nothing's perfect, of course, but they try hard.

Technological choices

To the best of my knowledge, my Web site uses cookies for only one purpose: to maintain a connection (a persistent session) between you and the Web site while you browse. To the best of my knowledge, there are no specialized tracking cookies.
Although I do not maintain records of your purchases other than the abovementioned name and e-mail address, all financial transactions on my site are conducted via Paypal, which keeps its own records. Consult Paypal's privacy policy for details of what they do.
I use the simplest possible Web design practices, with only vanilla HTML and (to the best of my knowledge) no Java code, Javascript, Perl, or any other software other than HTML. The only possible exception involves the Paypal "buy now" and "donate" buttons, which are processed entirely by Paypal, not by my Web site.