Privacy Policy

Who we are

My name is Scott M. Stolz, and this is one of my many websites. I am just a concerned citizen of the world who wants to make people’s lives better.

The website is published by my company WisTex, which operates many of my endeavors.

Our website address is: http://opensourceyourmind.org.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

When you vist this or any other website, certain information is collected for a variety of purposes. Here is how and why we collect certain information.

Comments & Forum Posts

When visitors leave comments or forum posts on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

If you fill out a contact form, we will use the information you submit to fulfill or attempt to fulfill your request. If we use a third party provider to fulfill your request, they will be provided with the relevant information they need to do so. The purpose of the form will be disclosed on the form itself, so you know what the information will be used for.

For example, if you sign up for our mailing list, we will add you to our mailing list. If we use a technology provider to manage our mailing list, we would enter that information into their system in order for your to receive our newsletter or other mailings you opted into.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we 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.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

We use both self-hosting and third-party tools, such as Google Analytics, to gather statistics and information about usage patterns of our website and content. This helps us improve the website by allowing us to see which content is popular and how people are using the website.

Who we share your data with

To keep your information secure, we avoid sharing information as much as possible, however, sometimes it is necessary to deliver the functionality of the website or for other legal reasons.

For example, we may share your information with other entities for the following reasons:

To fulfill a request you made, if we are using a third party to fulfill that request.
The law requires that we disclose that information. (For example, Texas state law requires that we report child abuse.)
We are served with a valid court order or subpoena requesting the information.

Anything that you publicly share on our websites (via comments, forum posts, public user profile, etc.) is considered public information and is typically visible to logged in users, and the world. You should not post information in publicly viewable areas (whether here or elsewhere) if you want that information to remain secret.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment or post on the forums, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Publicly posted information is retained indefinitely.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments or posted on the forums, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. This does not include publicly posted information (comments, forum posts, blog posts, etc.).