Privacy Policy

When you visit this website or use my mailing lists, information is collected from you and your computer. This Privacy Policy describes what that information is and how I use it.

First and foremost, your information is kept strictly confidential. I do not sell your information and I never will. I also do not collect personally identifying information (real name, address, phone number, etc.). However, if I begin to accept orders when I publish my books, that will change, and this Privacy Policy will be amended to reflect that, but I will still keep your information confidential. The information I do collect is statistical in nature and is only intended to help me create web pages that work for everyone, as well as to assist me in promoting my website appropriately.

The following information is collected from visitors to this website:

IP address - I have no use for your IP address (it's collected by the server, but I don't look at it), so you can pretty much drop it from the list. I'm only mentioning it because it's in the web logs.

Country - The country data is just kind of neat because it lets me see that I have readers from all over the world, which is really cool. If I ever attempt to market my work outside of the US, this information will probably become very useful.

Browser type - I use the browser type information for fine-tuning my web pages for my visitors. My visitors use Internet Explorer the most, with Netscape, WebTV, and Opera coming in next down the list.

Operating system - OS information doesn't really help me with anything, but it does let me know that most of my visitors use Windows, with Macs and WebTV next down the list. It's just another interesting bit of data, like the country information.

Referring URL - This information lets me know about the websites where people are finding links to my own website. I've been quite surprised to find my site listed on so many other websites.

Search terms used to find my site - The search terms are kind of fun. You'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't) at the words people have used to find me. Someday, when I finally get serious about promoting my website, I'll use that information to hopefully boost my rankings within search engines.

Date of visit - This information just lets me know when people are visiting my site the most, like during the day, versus evening, or after I've posted an announcement to my mailing list. If I have something important to announce, this information can help me assess when might be the best time to post it.

What files/web pages are accessed - Knowing what files are being accessed gives me an idea of where people are going on my site and what the most popular pages and/or stories are at any given time.

The following information is collected from users of my mailing lists:

E-mail address - I need your e-mail address in order to send you e-mail from the mailing lists. I sometimes collect names/screen names from subscribers on my BetaWolf list just because I interact with them on a regular basis and referring to someone by their name is more polite than using their e-mail address, in my opinion.

As this site and my mailing lists develop over time, I may amend the Privacy Policy to reflect changes in the types of information that I collect, but your privacy will always remain unchanged.