You don’t have much privacy.
        Personal information is solicited and collected in connection with this website in several ways. No limit may exist on the kind of information that is being collected, and the person or other entity it describes, or allegedly describes, may be totally unaware of it.
        This website and its web host collect, or probably collect, the identity of each computer visiting this website. That identity, often known as an IP or Internet Protocol address, may be associated with the identity of a human being using a computer having that address at the date and time of the visit. That could be you. An identity of a computer may be even more specific than an IP address; for example, you may be using an Internet service provider (ISP) which attaches more specific identifiers that may facilitate tracing a person’s online activities later. You might be traceable even if you switch computers.
        Traffic analysis may be performed even without knowledge of the content of your communications. If all that is known is that you were in contact with this website or another or with particular pages at certain dates and times and for how long, inferences about you may be drawn from the dates and timing data.
        Computer hardware and software may be described in records associated with a visitor. For instance, your operating system version, browser security settings, and computer design characteristics may be supplied by your computer to this website without asking you.
        Pages and websites previously visited may be associated with a record of a current visit. If information about a previous-page or previous-website visit is in the form of a Uniform Resource Locator or URL, the URL may include any information that may be included in a URL, such as a user’s personal password and username or a search request (e.g., keywords) for a search engine. I know of no limit on the kind of information that may be included in a URL, and it may not have been encrypted. Not encrypting it means I can often read it, and probably so can many people, if they can see it.
        Subsequent information may be appended to any record about a person. Between the time information was collected and when it was examined (if ever), new information may have been added that could not have been associated with a person had the prior information not been available.
        Relying on anonymity or pseudonymity, or both, may not preserve privacy. While a name or pseudonym is not precisely synonymous with an identity, I may associate any name of yours and any pseudonym of yours with you so as to identify one person or entity and then publish, disclose, or reveal that information.
        A password of mine was transmitted in plain text by the URL of a website I visited. I discovered this when I read the long URL, something most people probably don’t do, and this was at a website that promotes its own security as beneficial to its users. At another website, which I managed, I sometimes received the search terms used by visitors who had arrived by way of a search engine. Google uses the URL to state a user’s search request, so that a searcher’s URL may indicate that person’s interests as of the moment of the search and perhaps longer.
        From information known about you (perhaps combined with wrong information allegedly about you), inferences may be drawn; and from information, wrong information, and inferences, probability-based assumptions and sheer baseless guesses may be used to draw up a description of you, a description which may be extensive, intrusive, and wrong, and of which you may know nothing, not even who created it, who has it, who used it in the past, who uses it now or will in the future, or who might amend it.
        The terms under which you may use this website permit the collection and use of information about you, and is legally an authority superior to this policy. That hierarchical relationship between terms of service and privacy policy may apply as well to most major websites in the U.S., to my knowledge.
        This website may carry an invitation or invitations to contact me. At least one such invitation may offer one or more options to supply information such as an email address and a mail address. An invitation may include its page or location within this website, so that exercising an invitation to contact me may indicate exactly what part of content you were using at the time.
        I may disclose your email and mail addresses if you ask me to contact someone on your behalf. If you ask me not to so disclose and ask that I serve as an intermediary instead, I may not do that but I may consider your request.
        Links on this website may provide convenient connections to other websites. Use of such a link by you may cause transmission of your personal information to that website.
        By my policy, all of that information, if and while I have it and if it identifies you or is associated with information that identifies you, is reasonably protected against unintended disclosure and is not sold, leased, rented, traded, exchanged, given, transferred, or otherwise shared except for its intended use, such as for a reply to the contact, except as required or apparently required by law, and except when a user uses a link to go to another website and takes information along in the process.
        Furthermore, corrections you propose, if brief, will be considered. If personal information about you is or may be wholly or partly erroneous, you may send me, at no cost to me, corrective information at any time. I will consider any legitimate correction that is concise and brief and may, within my discretion, correct or supplement the information I have about you. However, this right to have corrective information considered does not obligate me to disclose what information I have about you or whether I have information about you or not. Also, I may keep or not keep the corrective information regardless of what was done with the personal information that was the subject of the corrective information.
        Cookies are not sent by this website, whether cookies are session cookies or persistent. I may change that practice in the future and institute cookies, but I haven’t yet.
        Personally private information submitted by any individual under age 13 may be submitted only with parental approval or approval by a person or other entity entitled by law to act as a parent of the individual under age 13. I do not intend to keep any such information so submitted without that approval, although that depends on my learning from reliable information that the relevant individual is under 13.
        But problems with privacy policies are substantial. I view most of the privacy policies I’ve read as overly optimistic, too sweetly reassuring, and as window-dressing, whether sincere or not. A few problems are described below.
        The widespread exception for legal compliance includes complying with contracts. If a firm does not sell or trade your email address except that it will comply with the law, and that firm enters into a contract to sell your email address (perhaps along with many other pieces of information about you), then that firm can, and may be required to, sell your email address under the exception for compliance with the law. Many people probably don’t realize this.
        If you provide information Monday under the assurance of a wonderful policy, the policy can be changed on Tuesday, and the change can be retroactive. After they have your information, they may take away your privacy. And a unilateral revocation doesn’t have to be the next day, nor does anyone have to call you with the news. Maybe they have to post it on their website, but how many website privacy policies have you read more than once?
        When multiple factors of law may compel a given decision, or simply one law compels it, a mere policy is generally not very important, and may fall by the wayside along the way to a decision being made. Thus, for example, while no law may directly require disclosure of private information in an instance, legal issues may suggest to the holder of your personal information that disclosure may be wiser than nondisclosure. If the only restraint is a policy, that may not be an effective restraint. Moreover, you may never be told about the disclosure about you, and a policy requiring that you be told may fail in the face of other obligations, such as those imposed on business.
        Economics may compel disclosure. If a legally plausible demand is made, the ability to have it nullified by a proper legal challenge may be meaningless if the cost of mounting such a challenge is felt to be too much.
        Geography may throw a monkey wrench into neat plans. Perhaps you enjoy exquisite laws where you live. Perhaps they apply to this website, too. But this website is probably being hosted in a state far from where I live. And, for all I know, that host may have arranged for a computer services provider in another state or nation to share hosting responsibilities. Simply the routing of computer communications through telephone lines or wirelessly through the atmosphere or via satellites may permit other states or nations to allow the capturing of your personal information by governments, private persons, and businesses. Your personal information may be hopping across local and international boundaries without your ever realizing it. I may not realize it. Since an ironclad law in one place may be irrelevant somewhere else, the result may be a perfectly legal gushing of personal information without telling you.
        Very weak methods may be relied on to fulfill nondisclosure policy, and someone admittedly lacking permission, and perhaps unaware of a need for permission, may uncover the private information. An example of that is when private information is mailed in a window envelope and is made visible by manipulating the envelope without opening it, especially a risk when a recipient’s mailbox is shared. Another example is with password protection; many password systems are weak. Disclosure due to a breach of a weak method of nondisclosure may not be the legal responsibility of the holder of the information that was disclosed, but if weakness contributed to disclosure anyone whose information was improperly disclosed may properly wonder whether a privacy policy was adequate.
        Advertising on a website is often arranged through a third party, which may have its own access to your information and its own policy separate from that of the website. The website’s privacy protection may not apply to advertising carried on that same website. And trying to find out the advertiser’s or ad supplier’s policy may require that you first give up some of your privacy just to find out what they’ll say.
        Aggregation of data is often offered as if it amounts to protection, like the protection that comes from being anonymous in a crowd, but it may hardly protect at all. An aggregation may consist of as few as two people. If you’re one of the only two people in that particular aggregation, you may not feel anything like anonymous. And any organization that collects aggregate data may be able to tease it apart into individual data by analysis or guesswork, and guesses can be right or wrong. You may be profiled from aggregate data.
        An icon of trusty approval is posted on many websites, supplied by a nonprofit that promotes trust through privacy policies. When I visited the nonprofit’s website, I could not find the specific criteria for a satisfactory privacy policy without paying their substantial fee. I have read a number of policies posted on websites exhibiting that icon, however, and have not found them very comforting.
        In many instances, the reputation of a website’s owner may be more important than possible legal penalties, which may be nonexistent, too small to matter, or too difficult to enforce. Reputation, however, has its limits; for example, most businesses do not expect 100% popularity, and one may occasionally offend a customer and thereby increase its profit. If your privacy is damaged or may be, you may consider legal remedies and/or challenging an undeserved reputation and/or withdrawing future business, although in some cases probably none of these will work.
        Contrary motivations commonly weaken privacy protections. Security often motivates the weakening of privacy. Web hosts, for instance, often have to worry about damage or expense caused by unauthorized use of their systems, and preventing or penalizing wrongful access requires determining identities. Similarly, maintaining a customer’s goodwill often demands an ability to solve a problem for a customer, such as the loss of a password, and, if an insecure system allows too-easy assistance of one customer, the same insecure system may provide an opening that jeopardizes the privacy of other users.
        You may wish to consider using anonymizing software to access websites, some of which is free. Possible examples include Anonymizer (the top of its home page has supported some searches free, although your computer service may block use of this program) and Tor (downloadable software for you to install has been free). While some websites may restrict your use of their services if you anonymize your use of them, this website, at present, does not (although perhaps it might in the future), and I may not know if a web host restricts use by anonymized visitors. Likewise, you may find that the law where you are permits some anonymity.
        In general, the best way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone.
        In general, the best way to keep from being probed is to be of no interest to anyone.
        If those two observations are not of use to you, privacy policies, including this one, may not give you much protection.
        This Privacy Policy is effective for this website. This Privacy Policy is also effective for any other website of mine your use of which is governed by the same Terms of Use of Websites governing your right to use this website, except if another privacy policy is effective for such other website.
        This Privacy Policy is effective when posted on this website.

— Nick Levinson