My Privacy Promise Updated April 7, 2024 by Dave Woods

I believe that privacy is a human right, and the key to privacy is mutual understanding and consent. That’s why I’ve written this Privacy Promise in plain-spoken language you can easily understand.

First, let’s define some terms:

• This Privacy Promise covers my website, davewoods.net.
• When I refer to “privacy,” I’m specifically referring to the privacy of digital information.
• Digital information generally falls into two categories:
  1. Personally-Identifiable Information
     (e.g.: name, email address, device IP address, a complete log of all pages you’ve visited on a website, etc.)
  2. Anonymous / Non-Personally-Identifiable Information
     (e.g.: overall visits to a website, visits to a single webpage, average time spent on a webpage, the number of times a link is clicked in an email newsletter, etc. — all of which is collected without any indication as to who was behind those activities)
• The two most well-known and comprehensive privacy laws are:
  • The European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
  • The State of California’s CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)

With those terms defined, I promise that:

• I will never sell any type of digital information to third parties.
• I do not use cookies of any kind on davewoods.net and, as a result, I do not collect any Personally-Identifiable Information during your visits (learn more about website cookies and analytics).
• I only collect a bare-minimum amount of Personally-Identifiable Information, and only:
  • When communicating with prospective or current clients.
  • When a person chooses to join my mailing list by subscribing through a signup form on davewoods.net (learn more about email marketing and subscriptions).
• I utilize strong passwords on all digital accounts and cloud services where information is stored.
• I am here to answer your questions about privacy practices, tell you which of your personal info I have on file, and delete that personal info upon request. Please direct your privacy questions or requests to dave@davewoods.net.

It’s also important to note that some provisions of both the GDPR and CCPA do not apply here because I simply do not engage in the types of activities that certain segments of these laws were intended to prevent.

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Additional information about:

Website cookies and analytics

Instead of using a typical website analytics service (like Google Analytics) that disrespects privacy and harvests lots of Personally-Identifiable Information, I use a privacy-focused service called Fathom Analytics on all davewoods.net.

Fathom is great because it uses no cookies, it doesn’t follow your activity around the web, and it only collects Anonymous / Non-Personally-Identifiable Information.

For example, if you visit two pages on one of my websites, I’ll know what two pages were visited, and for how long — but I won’t know who visited them because Fathom does not collect your computer’s IP address.

Bottom line: I only want to know how well my website content is performing. I have zero interest in personally profiling you when you visit my websites, nor do I want to help others (like Google or Facebook) profile you.

As an added bonus: Because Fathom uses no cookies, I don’t have to bother you with annoying GDPR banners on my websites (hooray!).

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Email marketing and subscriptions

Although I have temporarily paused my email newsletter, I previously sent occasional email messages to my subscribers (usually once or twice per month, but never more than once per week) using the Mailchimp email marketing platform. My MailChimp account is currently deactivated, but I may resume email publication in the future. As a result, this section currently only describes past practices relevant to existing subscribers:

I only sent email messages to people who chose to opt-in via a form on davewoods.net (or a past website for my former company, Deedub Inc., that is no longer online). I did not manually add subscribers without their consent, nor did I obtain email addresses from third parties (nor will I ever in the future).

When you subscribed to my list using a form on one of my websites, I only collected the following information:

• Your first name
• Your email address
• The date you originally subscribed
• The address of the specific web page where you subscribed
• Any questions you asked, or ideas you wanted to share, that could be answered or featured in a future email message (this was completely optional and not required to subscribe)

After you subscribed, I also collected the following information with each email message I sent:

• Whether or not you opened the email message
• When you opened the email message
• How many times you opened the email message
• Which links you clicked within the email message

This information was collected to determine your preferences so that I could continually improve my email content and personalize future messages.

Each email message I sent featured a clear and concise footer with a reminder of how you subscribed to the list, plus clickable links to unsubscribe or update your profile.

You are still free to unsubscribe at any time by using the unsubscribe link within one of my past email messages, or by contacting me at dave@davewoods.net.

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Future updates to this Privacy Promise

This page will be updated anytime there are changes to my privacy practices, or whenever significant changes are made to my websites (or other methods of communication) that have an impact on privacy.