Privacy

Here at SpryFeet.com, I know that nobody likes SPAM.

I hate SPAM. You hate SPAM. We all hate SPAM.

Here is my privacy promise to you:

  1. I will never sell, rent, or otherwise share your name or email address with any other business for marketing purposes.
  2. I will use your email address only to send you relevant content at a reasonable interval.
  3. I will be respectful of your attention with my email messages.
  4. You must double-opt-in to start receiving email from me — once on this site, and again by clicking a link in my first email message to you.
  5. You can unsubscribe at any time, even if you enjoy receiving my email messages.
  6. I engage only those third-party services needed to run my business, such as an email provider or a billing service, that are as serious as I am about your privacy.
  7. The site-specific cookies that I use to track usage — so that I can improve SpryFeet.com and ensure that I am delivering content that you will enjoy — will never include personal information or identify you by name.

It is really that simple … and really that serious.

Kirk Mahoney, Ph.D.

Here are the details about each part of my privacy promise to you:

  1. The best practice for an Internet-based business today is to carefully guard one’s email list. This is not like the old days, when people would build lists only to sell them to spammers, who would then spam the unwitting addressees. Spammers today harvest email addresses in other ways, such as when you post something on a forum and the forum shows your email address — a big no-no! Spammers’ robots scour the Internet looking for text strings with the pattern “blah@blah.com” and so on. The next thing you know — WHAM-O! — your email address is on some spammer’s list. (One way to avoid this is to use “blah at blah . com” instead in anything visible on the Internet. But, admittedly, you do not always have this option. So another technique is to use a throwaway email address from one of the free email providers.) In contrast, I follow the best practice of never sharing your email address with any other business for marketing purposes. For many reasons, it makes better business sense for me to tell you about someone else’s product or service than to let that business tell you directly.
  2. Face it: If I email you too often or email you irrelevant content, then you will unsubscribe, which hurts me. If I email you too rarely, then you will miss out on relevant and timely content, which hurts you. So it is in your and my best interests to email you relevant content at a reasonable interval.
  3. I hate misleading Subject lines; they, well, mislead readers. And I hate long email messages; they disrespect readers’ time. So you can count on my email messages to have meaningful Subject lines, to get to the point inside, and often to tell you “Go here!” for more information.
  4. My email provider — and all other reputable email providers — require that I ask you to use the double-opt-in method to subscribe. This helps to guarantee to my email provider that I am not a spammer. And this ensures that some jerk cannot subscribe you to email that you do not want.
  5. My email provider — and all other reputable email providers — also require that every message that I email to you include an unsubscribe link. In fact, my email provider automatically adds the unsubscribe link to the bottom of every message that I email. You click it, your browser opens to an unsubscribe page, and you confirm that you want off the subscription list. It’s that easy … and that automatic.
  6. If you have subscribed to get email from me, then my email provider has your name and email address — and that is all. And you now know how picky my email provider is! If you have bought something from me, then (1) thank you! and (2) be assured that my online-billing provider takes your privacy seriously, too.
  7. The Internet has been around long enough that most visitors have heard about browser cookies by now. If you want to refresh your memory or learn more about browser cookies, then read this entry at Wikipedia. Here are the basics. Cookies are bits of text stored on your computer by your browser. Web sites such as this one often use Web-server software that asks your browser to store cookies on your computer so that the software can anonymously track site usage. This lets me see — again, anonymously — the patterns of where visitors go on SpryFeet.com, which helps me with improving site layout and content. And remember that you are always in control of your browser’s cookies, as explained at Wikipedia.