Who I am
This website’s address is: https://aarontgrogg.com.
This is the personal blog of Aaron T. Grogg.
I use this site mostly to talk about the study and exploration of web technology-related topics, but could also include personal topics.
What personal data is collected and why
Comments
When visitors leave comments, this site 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, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
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 the login page, we 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.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
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.
Analytics
This site uses Google Analytics and WordPress analytics to track usage statistics.
IP addresses are anonymized, and Do Not Track requests are honored.
Who your data is shared with
No one.
How long your data is retained
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they 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 we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where your data is sent
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Contact information
Aaron T. Grogg
[email protected]
How we protect your data
This site makes use a a TLS certificate, encrypting all data transfers happening on the site.
This site and its database are both hosted on Dreamhost: https://www.dreamhost.com/
Dreamhost’s Privacy Policy can be found here: https://www.dreamhost.com/legal/privacy-policy/
What data from third parties this site receives
None.
What automated decision making and/or profiling this site does with user data
None.
Plugin: Shield Security
Our website uses specialist security software – Shield Security. This helps to ensure data breaches do not occur and our website and data are protected against hacking attempts and intrusion.
Shield Security protects site visitors and works to block potential hacks while monitoring web traffic and filesystem changes.
The learn more about Shield Security, please follow this link.
Cookies
The Shield Security plugin never stores any sensitive, personally identifiable information in any cookie at any time.
In the case that the Shield Security plugin needs to redirect a visitor or any request, it may use a cookie to prevent repeated/infinite redirect loops.
For registered/logged-in users, the Shield Security plugin uses a cookie to track user sessions and control display of certain in-plugin admin notices.
The Shield Security plugin does not normally use Cookies for unregistered site visitors. It may however use a cookie to register the closure of the Shield Security security badge to prevent repeated display.
Data Storage: User Sessions
For logged-in users, the Shield Security plugin stores information on the username, the IP address and the time of last login and last activity.
This information is purged upon logout or data cleanup.
Data Storage: Audit Trail
The Shield Security plugin has an Audit Trail feature that will log the following information:
Audit Trail message that may include email addresses
Logged-in username (where applicable)
Originating IP address of the request
For logged-in users this represents information that may be used to locate (by IP address) and identify individuals and their activity on the site.
This information is stored for security purposes by the site administrator.
This data will be retained and then automatically purged from the database after a fixed time period, as determined by the site administrator. (Currently this is set to 14 days.)
Plugin: Akismet
We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).