Who I am
I am Peter Maier. The address of my homepage is: https://thoughtstrands.com. You are on it right now. As my website is hosted in Germany, it is subject to the EU GDPR: https://gdpr.eu.
What this website is for
This website is my personal homepage and blog. While it may feature some advertisement for my work, no sales are performed via this website. It only ever points to places where you may obtain my work.
What personal data I collect and why
Comments
When you write a comment on this website, in addition to the data shown in the comment form, the site collects your IP address and the “user agent string” (used to identify the accessing browser). This helps the site recognize spam.
The website further generates an anonymized sequence of numbers (called a hash value) from your e-mail when you leave a comment. This hash value is passed to the Gravatar service to check if you use said service, in which case your profile picture from Gravatar is shown publically in the context of your comment once the comment has been approved. You can find Gravatar’s privacy policy here: https://automattic.com/privacy.
(In the future I will install a service for automated spam recognition that will scan the contents of comments.)
Contact form
No contact form is implemented yet.
Cookies
When you write a comment on this website, there is a checkbox at the bottom of the comment form that you may or may not check. If you do, you agree to your name, e-mail, and website URL (if given) being stored in cookies. This is a convenience function, so that you need not enter your data again when writing further comments. The cookies are saved in your browser (meaning that you can delete them yourself at any time) and expire after one year.
If, for some reason, you visit the login page, the site will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
Performance optimization
In order to increase the website’s performance, I use the Hummingbird plugin for server-side caching: https://wordpress.org/plugins/hummingbird-performance. I also use the Smush plugin for lazy loading and image compression: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit. Both are developed by WPMU DEV: https://wpmudev.com. Hummingbird and Smush use the StackPath Content Delivery Network (CDN). StackPath may store web log information of site visitors, including IPs, UA, referrer, location and ISP info of site visitors for 7 days. Files and images served by the CDN may be stored and served from countries other than your own. StackPath’s privacy policy can be found here: https://www.stackpath.com/legal/privacy-statement.
Analytics tools and services
The site does not use any sort of analytics tools or services.
Embedded content from other websites
Posts on this website may contain embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.) from other websites. Said contents behave exactly as if you had visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, or employ third-party tracking services. They may also monitor your interaction with the embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Who I entrust with your data
Noone except the necessary services noted throughout this document.
How long I save your data
When you write a comment on this website, the comment, including its metadata, is saved infinitely. This way, further comments of yours can be automatically recognized and approved instead of having to wait for me to check them manually.
What rights you have pertaining to your data
If you have written comments on this website, you can request an export of your personal data.
Furthermore, you can request the deletion of all your personal data. This does not include data that I am obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
How I protect your data
I try to leave that to the professionals. The website runs on WordPress: https://wordpress.com. Mine is the only account on this website and I do my best to regularly update WordPress and all plugins.
The website is hosted by Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com. The Hetzner servers are located in Germany. Read about what data Hetzner stores in server logfiles here: https://docs.hetzner.com/general/general-terms-and-conditions/data-privacy-faq.
StackPath, the CDN used by the Hummingbird and Smush plugins, participates in and has certified its compliance with the EU – U.S. Privacy Shield Framework (see StackPath’s privacy policy, linked above).
What measures I offer in case of a privacy breach
If your data does leak despite my protective measures, there is not much I can do beyond attempting to inform you of the breach (given that I have noticed it) and fulfilling requests you make based on your aforementioned rights. Even if the sensitivity of the data I handle is limited, I urge you to be sensible about giving it away.
Further information
If you have any questions or remarks about this privacy policy, feel free to reach out through the connect page: https://thoughtstrands.com/connect.