First, we have good news. The usual terms of service document consists of a seemingly endless train of paragraphs in legalese occasionally punctuated by terms in bold or italics that highlight the rights of the service provider or the actions you may not take in order to use the service. Instead, this document is mostly promises and friendly advice, concluding with a very short list of forbidden user actions.
The main purpose of this site is to be a personal blog for the Moore family. The main purpose for publishing this site under a dedicated domain name using our own customized WordPress installation on Amazon AWS services is to avoid exposing users of the site to the behind-the-scenes intelligence gathering engaged in by Facebook, Google, et al. By placing this site in our own encapsulated, secure-web-protected space, we reduce by large volumes the amount of data about your actions, views, likes, dislikes, personality characteristics, interests, etc. that various internet corporations collect about you when you visit other sites and then sell to advertisers and other commercial entities without your knowledge or consent. If you think we are just making this up, we recommend the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff for a thorough explanation or just follow along some of our upcoming posts on this topic.
The absence of online banner advertisements and embedded click-bait articles lists from outfits like Outbrain on this site are another method we use to protect your privacy. The bare presence of these items can communicate information about you to their sponsors — and anyone else to whom they sell this information.
There are a few other things you can do to protect yourself. First, you can restrict the use of third-party cookies in your browser. While it is possible for Facebook and Google to track some of your behavior on this site if you use the Login with Facebook or Login with Google features on our login page, you can largely eliminate this by excluding the use of third-party cookies when you visit. We’ve already tested this and found that the logins work without third-party cookies. See here for the gory details on what browser cookies are used for and how to protect your privacy by managing them. In addition, some browsers offer a “private” mode that eliminates not only cookies but other tracking methods used by websites and browsers. Be aware, though, that some browsers, notably Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Edge, have been designed to prevent you from blocking some of the methods used by Google or Microsoft to track your online behavior, even when using “private” mode. All this applies to your browsing habits whether by tablet, smartphone or PC.
See our privacy policy for a list of specific actions we do and do not take with the information you furnish us when you visit this site.
Finally, doing any of the following is against our rules and in most cases against the law, so don’t do it!
- Attempting to bypass site policies or exploit site vulnerabilities.
- Accessing site or user data without authorization.
- Capturing or distributing other users’ data without their permission.