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The FDE Blog·Updated

Privacy Policy

What The FDE Blog collects when you visit, the one cookie it sets, how its analytics work, who receives the data and the choices you have.

Here is how The FDE Blog ("we", "us") handles information about visitors to thefdeblog.com (the "Site").

What we collect

  • Request data. To deliver and protect the Site, our hosting provider processes the standard details of each request: IP address, browser type, the page asked for and the referring address.
  • Browser and device type. From the user agent your browser sends, our server takes the browser name and version, the operating system and the device type (desktop, mobile or tablet). The user agent itself is not recorded.
  • Approximate location. From your connection, our hosting provider gives our server a country, region and city. We keep that approximate location and never your IP address.
  • First-party analytics. We wrote the small script that runs on each page, and it reports to our own server alone. It records the pages you view and their address (campaign tags such as utm_source included), the page that sent you here, your screen and window size, how far you scroll and how long the page stays in view, whether a recommendation comes into view, and the links and buttons you click, with their text, their address and where you clicked. Nothing in it comes from another company; it sets no cookies of its own and keeps nothing in your browser.

We use one first-party cookie, set by our own server on thefdeblog.com. It contains a random visitor ID, how many visits you have made, when you last visited and a check code proving our server set it. That lets us count visits and tell new visitors from returning ones. Page scripts cannot read it, it goes only to this Site over secure connections, and it expires 400 days after your last visit. You can remove it in your browser settings whenever you like.

Who processes analytics

Our server sends the analytics events described above, with the visitor ID, the device key and the approximate location, to PostHog, Inc., which stores and processes them for us in the United States. We never send it your IP address, your user agent, your name or your email address.

A company we have a business connection with uses the same analytics account for its own website: our analytics account is shared with it, and it can see the events described here. Funding and recommendations names it.

Writing to us

When you write to us through the contact page, we collect your email address, your message, your name if you choose to give one, and the approximate country your connection appears to come from, which our hosting provider tells our server. We do not store your IP address or your user agent with the message.

Your message is used for one thing: replying to you. It is stored with a database service provider in the United States and deleted after 12 months at the latest. It is never used for marketing, and the only others who handle it are the service providers that host and store it for us.

If you want a message removed earlier, send the request through the same contact page with the email address you wrote from.

If an article links to a company we recommend, the link goes first to an address on this Site. Our server records the click, meaning the page, the link's place on it and which of the company's pages it leads to, then forwards you to that company's website. The forwarding address includes a one-time click ID, your visitor ID, this Site's name, the page you came from and a signature showing the link came from this Site, which lets that company connect your visit there with your visits here. When the rules under Your privacy choices apply to you, no visitor ID is included. Funding and recommendations names the company and explains the connection.

Device key

Our server also attaches a device key to each event. It is made by hashing your IP address and user agent with a secret key (HMAC-SHA256) and keeping the first 32 characters. One browser on one connection always yields the same device key, so visits that probably come from the same device can be linked, on this Site and on other websites that share our analytics. Nobody can work back from the key to your IP address or user agent, and we neither keep those nor pass them to our analytics provider. Many people can share a connection, such as an office or a mobile network, so the device key is an approximate signal and not an identity.

Children's privacy

The Site is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.

Your privacy choices

  • Global Privacy Control. A Global Privacy Control signal from your browser is honored: we set no cookie and clear any earlier one, compute no device key, leave the visitor ID out of links to a company we recommend, and log your page views only under an anonymous ID that is new each day and different on each site, so no visit is linked to the next.
  • Visitors from Europe, the UK and Switzerland. If your connection appears to come from the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, or we cannot tell where it comes from, the same rules apply automatically.
  • Your rights. Where you live may give you rights under laws such as the GDPR or the California Consumer Privacy Act, including access, correction and deletion.

Who we share information with

We do not sell your personal information. Request data is processed by our hosting provider and analytics events by our analytics provider, on our behalf, as described above, and information is disclosed when required by law. Our database provider likewise stores messages sent through the contact form on our behalf.

Get in touch

To ask about your privacy or to have a message you sent us deleted, write to us through the form on our contact page.