Privacy and Cookie Policy

This policy was written by an engineer and not a lawyer. It’s meant to be informal and not a legal agreement or contract. Where agreement is implied below, it’s understood as user consent through their web browser settings. This interpretation is in compliance with the Norwegian “ekomloven” which is the local adaptation of EU directive 2009/136/EF: better know as the “EU cookie law”. Important data points have been highlighted in bold to make the text more readable.

Servers and logs

Technical definitions: A “request” means the standard HTTP request your web browser or other client software transmit to a server for the purpose of retrieving a resource. “Request information” refers to the standard HTTP request headers sent to the server by your web browser or other client software and can include the time of the request, the name of client software, your IP address, your preferred language, and other standard headers.

This website is delivered through BunnyCDN by BunnyWay d.o.o., Hetzner Cloud by Hetzner Online GmbH, and Linode by Linode LCC.

All content delivery providers may collect and store your request information temporarily and use it exclusively for the purposes of delivering this website to you and to detect and block automated misuse and security issues (“malicious bot activity”).

All request information is logged and stored by Ctrl blog for up to 100 days, usually no more than 30 days. Attempts at accessing password protected resources or requests that are automatically identified as automated, aggressive/high-frequency, or malicious may be logged for up to one year. This information is used for aggregated statistical purposes such as identifying which web browsers or operating systems are the most popular, or which webpages are the most popular. The logs can also be used to identify and troubleshoot technical problems.

Automated software may identify and refuse service to IP addresses that are through to be unusual, disruptive, or hostile to protect server security.

Analytics

Ctrl blog records which pages that are visit, how long the visit last, and which web browser and operating system is used. This data is used to track the popularity and interest in pages over time and is only shared in aggregate numbers. No personal data, including IP addresses, is stored along with this data. It’s purely technical metrics.

Advertisement

Ctrl blog is a participant in the Amazon Services, LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Pages with these types of links are clearly labeled.

Web feed syndication service

The web syndication service (“RSS”) at “feed.ctrl.blog” is governed by the same policies as the main website with the following addition:

IP addresses subscribed to the syndication service may undergo extra scrutiny to identify and prevent automated “web scraping”/article theft.

Secure communications

Everything served from this site, with the exception of streaming videos as described above, is loaded over an encrypted connection between your device and the server (HTTPS) providing added protection against surveillance and interference by third-parties.

Newsletter and your email address

You can share your email address with Ctrl blog and receive weekly updates in your email inbox. Your email address is stored by Ctrl blog exclusively for the purpose of delivering you news and updated articles from Ctrl blog.

You can delete your email address from our lists by unsubscribing from it. You can find instructions on unsubscribing at the bottom of every delivered email.

Your email address will be removed from the mailing lists immediately, but it can remain in the delivery queue for up to one day. It will remain in the system for up to one month afterwards before its permanently deleted. Your email address may remain in backups for an additional 60 days. (For a total of 90 days.)

Comments and your data

Your comment may be published publicly, along with your name and optionally a link to your website. Comments from new commenters are held for approval.

Your comment might be lightly edited (remove un-called-for profanities, personal attacks, unwanted links, etc.). Edits never change the meaning of a comment. Your name will be changed to “Anonymous” if you don’t enter a name or enter something else entirely.

The comment system requires you to provide a valid email address. Your email address is not published. Your email address is used to generate your unique “IdentCircle” (the image shown next to your name). Your IdentCircle helps the community recognize you and helps prevent identity theft (you need to know your email and your name to immitiate a user to fake a response).

You may receive one personalized email from the author in response to your comment. You’ll receive no further emails.

Your commenter profile data is used to assign you a community score. Your comments may be automatically approved and published if your commenter profile score is in good standing. Your score increases every time a comment from you is approved and it slowly decays over time. Your commenter profile score is also used to rank the leaderboard.

You can request to make a comment anonymous (disassociate it from your name, link, and IdentCircle), or request comment deletion by submitting a change request. The request must originate from the email address used to submit the comment. Send your requests to comment+edits@ctrl.blog. Please provide a link to the comment you wish to change. (Unverifiable/spoofed emails from domains that support sender-verification (SPF, DKIM) are automatically rejected.)

Spam handling

No unsolicited commerical junk comments (“spam”) are allowed. Commenters who leave spam comments (“spammers”) aren’t afforded the same privacy rights as normal well-behaved users.

Your IP address is stored with your submitted comment for up to two weeks (three during holidays). (Almost all IP addresses are deleted immediately after the comment is reviewed.) The storage period may be increased to three months if your comment is flagged as suspicious by either an automated system or manually.

Your IP address and email address may be disclosed along with your comment to third-parties (including your hosting and service providers, affiliate partners, and automated anti-spam systems) if your comment is determined to be spam.

Additional notices for third-party content

Efforts have been made to reduce the amount of third-party embedded content and data minimization techniques have been deployed to reduce data sharing with any third-parties where third-party content has been embedded.

This website usually hosts all resources that are included on its pages on its own web servers out of principle. Their use on this site is limited so it should only concern a small minority of pages, however occasional third-party content (like a video or graph) may be embedded and loaded as part of specific pages. The terms and conditions as well as privacy policies of these third-party embedded contents are provided by the service provider. Please refer to the privacy policies of these services to learn more about their use on this websites.

This privacy policy can change without notice. Changes will appear on this page.