Privacy Policy

TL;DR (I don’t know why TL;DR’s don’t go at the top of posts!): I’m a believer in privacy. I believe privacy is a fundamental human right. We should all expect privacy. Sadly, that’s not always the case. There are many people out there who try to strip away our privacy. Some of those people have malicious aims, and some believe the end justifies the means, others are just well-meaning people who fail to grasp the long-term implications of their proposals.

I’m somebody who guards my privacy, and while you’re here, I will respect yours. You’re not required to give me any information. I’m not going to try and figure out who you are, sell your data, track you all over the Internet or engage in other such terrible behaviours.

The third-party services this site uses that you should be aware of are Cloudflare, WordPress, Akismet and Google Fonts.

Who Am I?

I’m Sara, pleased to meet you! I’ve thought for a while about starting a sex blog because I like sex, I enjoy writing, why not combine the two, right? For now, this is just a hobby. A place to share some thoughts, ideas, stories, etc. I don’t advertise on this site. There’s no tracking networks, targeted advertisements, contextual advertisements or anything else. Should anything change in the future, this policy will be updated.

Your Data

Personally, I’m not interested in your data. As such, I’m doing my best to gather as little as possible.

Analytics

This site does not use Google Analytics.

Due to the Terms of Service of my hosting provider, AWStats, an open-source Web analytics tool, runs on my Apache-powered server. My host uses this as part of its infrastructure monitoring, to assess and adjust bandwidth and throughput, to remain vigilant against security threats, and to overall ensure the smooth running of its systems for paying customers like me, and users such as yourself.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am able to see anonymised usage statistics myself, including country of traffic origin, referrer information and some device information (eg. web browser). This is not individual session data, but aggregated data. I am not able to identify you from this information, nor would I wish to do so.

AWStats does not leave cookies on your system.

Cloudflare

This site also uses Cloudflare as a Content Delivery Network and for additional security. Cloudflare may install cookies on your device. Any cookie that Cloudflare installs on your device is defined as Strictly Necessary for GDPR purposes. The cookies Cloudflare may install are as follows:

_cfduid is used by Cloudflare to detect malicious visitors. It is placed on the devices of users who are using a shared IP address (such as a proxy or VPN service). It cannot provide either myself nor Cloudflare, with personally identifiable information but can identify your specific device to CloudFlare as either harmless or a threat.

_cflb is used by Cloudflare for load-balancing. When Cloudflare sets this cookie, it will route all future requests to the same origin as well as handle redirected requests in the event of some sort of failure. Or to put it in non-technical terms, it makes sure that your experience is as fast as possible, no matter where in the world you are.

_cf_bm is used by Cloudflare if you are behaving like a bot. Bots are rampant on the Internet. They spam up comment sections with utter gibberish, they try and brute force their way into systems, they harvest email addresses left in plain text to add people to spam lists. Worse, is that they use up huge amounts of bandwidth through their shitfuckery which impacts genuine users. We don’t want them here. Unless they’re sexy Cylons. Even then, they better be the nice ones.

cf_ob_info and cf_use_ob are used for Cloudflare’s Always Online service. If this website goes down due to technical error (it happens!), Cloudflare will attempt to use a cached version of the website so that you can access the page you were trying to view. The former cookie provides Cloudflare with non-identifiable information about the problem, while the latter cookie is used to fetch the requested page from Cloudflare’s cache.

Comments

Users are welcome to leave comments on articles I write, although I would ask that you don’t be a dick about things if you disagree with me. There are millions of other websites out there, so I’m sure you can find something more to your taste.

When commenting, you should be aware that due to the huge amounts of spammers out there, I have chosen to use the Akismet service. By submitting a comment, you are giving your consent to have Akismet compare your message with its ma-hoo-sive database of spammy nonsense. There is a link to Akismet’s Privacy Policy below every comment box, and you can also view it here. If you disagree with Akismet, then please don’t leave a comment.

Regarding avatars, I have made a decision to disallow the use of Gravatar for the time being. Unfortunately, as Gravatar is part of the WordPress core, it is unfeasible for Gravatar to be completely disabled. Those using tools such as Disconnect will see that this site still connects to Gravatar. However, what I can do is set the default avatar to commenters to a simple silhouette icon. Not the sexiest thing in the world, but at least while you’re here, Gravatar isn’t gaining any additional data!

Additionally, I am using a plugin to strip comment data of IP addresses. This makes spam detection a little tougher for Akismet, but it also means I have less data about you!

Contact Form

If you choose to contact me for any reason, I ask that you give me an email address so that I can respond, if necessary. How I handle your data depends on the circumstance:

If you are asking a genuine question that requires a response, I will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible on the email address you have provided. This could take a few days, so please be patient. I do not store email addresses for longer than necessary, nor add people to contact lists, address books, mailing lists or any of that. If we haven’t exchanged any emails in thirty days, and I have no reason to expect one from you, then your email and email address will have been deleted.

If you are offering me an unsolicited commercial service (eg. SEO, web design, lead generation), I will assume you are some sort of bot and immediately discard your email.

If you are trying to hook up with me, I’ll assume you’re probably not my type, so will immediately discard your email and add your email address to my blacklist.

If you are simply sending me abuse, for whatever reason, I’ll assume that you’re a prick, discard your email, blacklist you and move on with my day.

All messages sent via the Contact Form will be sent over SSL to a secure server. I use an encrypted email provider (Protonmail) to handle my emails.

Additional Cookies

DYNSRV is a session-based load balancing cookie that will expire shortly after navigating away from this website or closing your browser. It does not allow me to track you.

Should you click on any social media icon on this site, please be aware that they may (and to be honest, almost certainly will!) start trying to track and log your behaviour. Please ensure that you have already familiarised yourself with the Privacy Policies of any social media platform that you have an account with. Social sharing options are offered for people with pre-existing accounts.

As this site does use third-party plugins, from time to time, it may happen that a change is made that introduces a new cookie and I am not immediately aware of this. If you spot this, please let me know. I assure you that I am not deliberately attempting to hide anything from you.

Don’t Believe Me?

Not a problem. Too many people believe everything they read online.

If you’re concerned about your privacy and don’t trust me to protect it for you, but still want to peruse my wares (as it were) then I recommend the following:

Use a browser that cares about Privacy. Firefox, with its containers, allows you to properly separate work, rest and play online. You can use these containers to prevent websites from tracking you. Think of them as a virtual machine or sandbox! Firefox also comes with enhanced privacy protections and anti-tracking features, as well as other useful features such as DNS over HTTPS which can protect your web history from snoopers. There are also other browsers such as Brave that claim to be privacy-conscious, but I’m afraid I have too little experience with them to comment.

You may also want to consider browser addons such as Disconnect.me, which allows you to see where your data is going and to block it from going to places you don’t want it to go (such as Gravatar, for example!).

You could consider a VPN. Do remember that as above, using a VPN with this site will cause Cloudflare to attempt an assessment of whether you are a friend or a foe. This assessment will have no impact on your overall privacy, and little impact on your browsing ability. Also, be aware, that when you use a VPN you are taking the trust that you (hopefully!) have in your ISP and placing it in the hands of the VPN provider. Always do your homework, and avoid free VPNs where possible as they are much more likely to be logging and selling your data (the VPN included with the Opera browser was recently accused of this!).