Summary
Brief summary: you will now see a notice about cookies the first time you visit albertnet (or visit on a different device or after clearing your cache). If you quickly dismiss the cookie banner by clicking “I decline,” cookies will not be used on your albertnet sessions. If you click “I agree” or select preferences and manually enable these cookies, I will start getting certain information about your session (e.g., whether or not you’re a return user; how long you spent on the page; what type of device you used; and your city and state) that I never got before. But nothing will personally identify you, and your session info will be like a bit of plankton in an ocean of it. This new website behavior is an experiment and I may go back to the way things were, in which case I will update this post. So, in short: you have nothing to worry about and don’t need to manually opt out of anything! The rest of this post provides details on this, in case you are interested. Otherwise, feel free to bail and go check out a more amusing post!
(If you are on mobile and do not see the notice about cookies, they will not be used. I am still trying to get that part working.)
Introduction
As the sole proprietor of albertnet, I respect your privacy and am committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy & Cookie Policy explains how I collect, use, and store data when you visit my blog.
Please bear in mind that in general terms, you are not providing much information—certainly no personal data—to albertnet, and you never have. You are just here reading, unless you post a comment. Other than that, only bare-bones aggregate information has ever been gathered in the first place, and I never saw it. What’s changing is that I have recently enabled Google Analytics for this blog. This will make certain data available to me, but again, none of it is personally identifiable. There is nothing you need to worry about, but you can read on to get more detail.
Why I am using cookies (at least for now)
I turned on Google Analytics for albertnet to analyze site traffic, so I can better understand how visitors interact with my blog. I am doing this out of curiosity. Existing stats (i.e., from Blogger, before I turned on Google Analytics) have been giving me perplexing insights lately, such as a steady increase in page views originating from France. This could mean my posts about a week of bicycling and eating my way through the French Alps (for example, this post) really resonated with French readers. On the other hand, it could mean bots, scrapers, or spam crawlers are being routed through data centers in France. Or, it could be somebody is stealing my content to generate their own pages and using a VPN to look like he’s from France, just to be sneaky. Or it could be none of the above.
Above all else, I seek to understand if my page views represent actual humans vs. A.I.-driven malfeasance. What will I do with this information? I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. I guess it depends on what (if anything) I learn. But I promise I won’t (and actually can’t) use this information to target you for any communication, or to make my blog addictive, or to leverage your data in any way for any personal gain. But I do want you to understand that the Google Analytics platform uses cookies, so that is a change for albertnet.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a service that helps a website owner understand how visitors engage with the site’s content. Google Analytics collects data such as:
- IP address (anonymized)*
- User location (country, city)
- Device and browser information
- Pages viewed and time spent on the site
*A word on IP addresses: I don’t know how or why anyone would seek to fetch these and if there is a way to see this information I won’t be seeking it out. I also don’t know what “anonymized” actually means in this context. Regardless, chances are extremely high that you use a dynamically assigned IP address from a giant pool maintained by your ISP, which could no more identify you than a seat assigned to you on an airline flight. (Less, actually.)
Google Analytics uses cookies to track this data, but that doesn’t mean they’re suddenly seeing you naked or anything. A cookie can tell Google Analytics that you are the same person who came to albertnet last week. It can then report to me that I have x number of return visitors today. It can say what posts you checked out and how long the pages were open. It won’t be able to tell me who you are, or whether you actually read anything, or whether you laughed.
The cookies in place on albertnet are not used for any other purpose than Google Analytics. I wouldn’t know how to use them in any other way even if I could.
Types of cookies used
Google Analytics uses the following types of cookies:
- Essential Cookies: These are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off. I suppose they have always been used. This would also be a good name for a bakery.
- Functionality Cookies: These are used to enhance your experience by remembering preferences (e.g., language or region). I suppose they have been used in the past as well.
- Tracking Cookies: These cookies allow albertnet to track website usage through Google Analytics, helping me understand visitor behavior. They do not track you across different sites.
- Targeting and Advertising Cookies: These do not actually apply and are never used on albertnet. I used a third party utility for the cookie notification banner and this category comes with it. Leave it off (and even if you turn the toggle to Active, nothing will change).
Consent and your rights
By viewing this site, you consent to my use of cookies for the purposes outlined above, if and only if you consent. As I have said, you are given the choice and the default behavior if you click the Decline button is to turn off all but the essential cookies. You can manage your cookie preferences at any time via the “Update cookies preferences” link at the very top of the page. I do encourage you, if you are comfortable doing so, to enable the tracking cookies, as this will help me learn about your usage. (To reiterate, these cookies do not track you as you move around on the Internet; they only gather metrics about your visits to albertnet.)
I hope you didn’t find that banner annoying. Oh, and by the way, if you’re on mobile, you probably didn’t see a cookies notification banner at all. I haven't gotten that part working yet (which means mobile users aren’t represented in the analytics, so the Brave New World is looking a fair bit like the timid old one).
How I protect your data
While Google Analytics collects data like location and usage patterns, it ensures that this data is anonymized and stored securely. This blog does not collect personally identifiable information unless you choose to post a comment below (which you can do anonymously if you prefer). If you click on a “contact me” link like this one, obviously any information you share in that email is visible to me, but then you know that already.
How I protect the privacy of people I write about
You may have noticed, on this blog, that when I refer to a person who is not a celebrity, I tend to use a single initial rather than a first or last name (e.g., “E—’s handwriting is a bit hard to read”). If I write unflatteringly about a person, the initial I use may have nothing to do with the person’s actual name. If you see an actual name spelled out in these pages, it usually means that either the person gave me explicit permission to use his or her name, or the person has passed away. Like I said, I take privacy seriously. (In the early years of albertnet I was not quite so disciplined about this. My policy has become more stringent over time.)
Your GDPR Rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to:
- Access any personal data I may hold about you (which in the case of this blog is nothing anyway since I never do web forms and don’t even know how)
- Rectify or update your data if it is incorrect (which also doesn’t really apply)
- Delete your data if requested (though this would be limited to your location, device and browser information, and time spent on the site)
- Withdraw consent for cookies at any time
Grammar errors in the cookie notification banner
Yes, I know there are grammar errors in the language of the notification banner and its various tabs. It is all boilerplate text and I lack the ability to edit it. You get what you pay for, and I have been called the world’s cheapest man.
Updates to This Policy
I will undoubtedly update this Privacy and Cookie Policy from time to time. Please check back regularly for any changes. The last update was on March 7, 2025.
Conclusion
Thank you for visiting albertnet and wading your way through this policy. I am sorry this post has been so boring, but it’s not a scintillating topic, after all; I had to create this policy quickly to reference in my footer, and I had to implement the footer and the cookie opt-in banner immediately upon turning on Google Analytics (to be compliant with GDPR).
If you have any questions about this policy, or if you wish to exercise any of your GDPR rights, feel free to contact me here.
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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.
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