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Frank W. Nelte

Privacy Policy

Like very many other websites, my website also gathers statistical information regarding visitors and the use of my website. Some websites do not inform their visitors about this gathering of statistical information. In the spirit of full disclosure I wish to bring the following to your attention.

My website uses Google Analytics to help analyze how visitors use my website. Google Analytics uses first-party cookies for data collection. First-party cookies do not pose any kind of threat to the visitors to my website, and they maintain your total anonymity.

Google ensures that data security and integrity for the users of all of Google’s services is maintained in such a way that any data gathered from my website and from all other websites that use Google products will not be associated with any personally identifiable information, thereby maintaining the total anonymity of all visitors to websites that use Google Analytics.

I do not and will not use third-party cookies on my website! Such cookies are common on websites that process commercial transactions, like payments for goods and also donations to the website, something that does not happen on my website. My website does not make provision for receiving donations or payments, and so there is also no need for third-party cookies.

First-party cookies are small text files that are placed on the computers of all visitors, for the purpose of collecting standard Internet log information and visitor behavior information in an anonymous form. The information generated by the cookie about your use of my website, including your IP address, is transmitted to Google. This information is then used by Google to evaluate in a collective and anonymous way how visitors make use of my website, and then to compile statistical reports for activity on my website.

I will never use the statistical analytics tools (and most certainly never allow any third party) to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to my site. Likewise, Google is committed to never associate your IP address with any other data that Google may be holding. And neither will Google link, or even attempt to link, any lP address with the identity of a computer user. Google will never risk their worldwide reputation by doing something like that. And I myself will never associate any data gathered from my website with any personally identifiable information from any source.

You can check out how cookies work at www.allaboutcookies.org. But please understand that first-party cookies do not pose any kind of threat to your anonymity. It is third-party cookies that provide the potential for activities that could breach a user's privacy and anonymity.

If you, however, for any reason feel uncomfortable about Google having placed this first-party cookie on your computer, then it is very easy for you to delete that cookie from your computer after you have completed your internet session. That makes no difference to me.

To delete cookies in Internet Explorer 11, do the following:

1) Open Internet Explorer and click the button "Tools".

2) Click the first option called "Delete browsing history".

3) In the pop-up  menu tick the box for "Cookies and website data", as well as any of the other boxes aimed at deleting unwanted information. Then press  the button "Delete".

For other versions of Internet Explorer and for other browsers the procedure is fairly similar.

That is all there is to deleting any unwanted cookies from your computer.

The only effect your deleting of the Google Analytics cookie will have is that the next time you visit my website, you will be identified as a “new visitor” as opposed to a “returning visitor”. I would much rather have you feel comfortable about your internet anonymity than to worry about my analytical data being correct, since there are always already any number of factors that ensure that website analytics can never be 100% accurate anyway.

So it helps towards the analytic data for my website data being more accurate if you don’t delete the Google cookies. But if you feel more secure, then please feel free to delete these Google Analytics cookies after each internet session of having visited my website.

You have nothing to fear at my website, as far as your anonymity is concerned. Please also understand that any other website that tells you how many people visit that website is gathering the exact same data that I am here openly revealing to you, whether they tell you about gathering this data or not. And if such websites offer you the opportunity to make a donation, then they will also place third-party cookies on your computer. And without the use of first-party cookies they would not even be able to know how many people visit their sites.

Frank W Nelte