Purpose

This privacy policy provides mandatory information as required under Article 13 of the European General Data Protection Regulation (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)). This declaration might be modified without further announcement. Therefore, you should revisit this privacy declaration before each visit in case you are concerned.

General information

I use this website to publish educational content and random thoughts of things (mainly) related to science and technology. Furthermore, I describe and link to books and scientific publications that I wrote and write or that other people wrote and I consider to be recommendable. If you do not like my content or my privacy policy, then do not visit my website.

I take privacy very serious: I simply do not want or need your personal data. However, the nature of the world wide web requires that some data is processed that is considered as personal data. For further information, please read the rest of this privacy policy. Since this website is mainly educational, I added some links to Wikipedia where you find more information about the underlying technology and learn something about the underlying technology.

Collected and processed personal data

IP addresses are considered as personal data. Hence, by visiting my website you are opting-in to send this personal data together with some other data such as your browser’s “user agent”. This could be used (in combination with other readable information (e.g. screen size via a javascript request) for device fingerprinting and that is why it is (probably) considered as personal data. If you are concerned what is data is required for the “internet”, then have a look at the Wikipedia articles on protocols like HTTP, HTTPS and HTTP/2.

This homepage runs on managed webspace hosted at https://www.zone.ee/en/ (Zone Media OÜ - Lõõtsa 5 - 11415 Tallinn) and they offer basic user statistics. You can find their privacy policy (in Estonian) at https://www.zone.ee/et/lepingud/isikuandmete-kaitse-gdpr/.

The webserver will process (and partially, and temporally log) the following data:

  • IP address
  • User agent (your browser and operating system)
  • Timestamp
  • Requested page (URL)
  • Referrer (site from which is linked to the requested site)
  • HTTP status code

The log files might be used for

  • understanding if optimization for any browser engine is required for better accessibility and functionality
  • detecting and defending intrusion attempts as well as prevent scammers and other bots to access pages
  • geolocating users by country to see if local adaptation (e.g. translation) or using local servers (e.g. content delivery networks) makes sense to enhance user experience
  • detecting malfunctioning pages that causes loops and performance issues
  • understanding what pages have the highest visits/hits and therefore understand what content is most popular to adapt future blog posts to these topics and therefore enhance user experience

Data transfer to third countries

No collected data that I mentioned above is transferred to third countries.

Access to your personal data

Since I do not store any personal data that I can trace (verifiable) to a single person, I have nothing to give you access to.

Cookies

This homepage may uses cookies for some interactive elements to enhance your experience visiting my website and not for tracking. If you do not know what cookies are, then have a look at this Wikipedia article on HTTP cookies. Some external content, so called 3rd-party cookies, may set cookies if third-party content is embedded. You can disable them easily in your webbrowser of choice by deactivating 3rd party cookies. If you really love cookies but are afraid of those originating from websites, then I recommend baking some and eat them “alive” ;).

Automated decision-making and profiling

Such features are not implemented.

External (Third Party) content and links

I try to minimize the use of external libraries to minimize security issues and increase performance. However, sometimes they are necessary to provide you the content I created for you.
In this case the data transfer is between your browsers and the third party. My website is not involved in the data transfer. You are responsible to prevent this if you do not like it. You may use ad blocker, packet filters, blacklist hosts, use plugins such as noscript etc.

Maps

If suitable, geographic information is embedded. Maps are either embedded directly or via OpenLayers (http://openlayers.org/). The OpenLayers javascript library is hosted locally when possible and runs entirely in your browser.
The default maps by the OpenStreetMap project (https://openstreetmap.org) are used as default. You can find their privacy policy at https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy.

JavaScript Libraries

Some JavaScript libraries are loaded from external servers to assure that they are up-to-date. I try to host them locally, however this is not always feasible. The primary use of javascript libraries is for formatting mathematical equations (e.g. MathJax.js) and interactive elements such as interactive plots (e.g. plotly.js). Usually, the developers of these libraries host their libraries on cloudflare. You can find their privacy policy here: https://www.cloudflare.com/gdpr/introduction/. Nowadays, MathJax requires a library from polyfill.io as well. Polyfill.io is provided by Financial Times Limited. You can find their privacy policy here: https://polyfill.io/v3/privacy-policy/.

Other External Content

Google services such as Google APIs (e.g. fonts, stored datasets) and YouTube may be included on some posts.
They are services of Google Inc.. You can find their Privacy Policy here.

Some content is stored on Github Inc. (now part of Microsoft Corporation). You can find their privacy statement at
https://help.github.com/articles/github-privacy-statement/.

Some data used is stored on Amazon AWS. You can find their privacy policy here: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr-center/.

Social Media Buttons

This website does not utilize any share or like buttons. If you want to share something on social media, then it is your obligation to inform yourself about their terms and conditions.

Linking to other websites

A key element of the world wide web are hyperlinks. Apparently, people are not only afraid of cookies but of hyperlinks as well. I am not responsible for the content of other websites I set hyperlinks to. If you are unsure where you end up and if you really want to follow that link, then move your mouse pointer above the link without clicking and wait for your browser to show you the link in full length. Then you can decide if you want to follow that link or not. If you use a tablet or something else with a touch screen, then you may copy the link to an empty document and decide if you want to follow the link. In general, I recommend to use your own brain ;).

If you find dead links, then feel to contact me for updating respective hyperlinks.

This policy is effective as of March 27, 2020 and may be updated without further notification.