Privacy

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

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

Here is our privacy promise to you here at SpryFeet.com:

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

Dr. Kirk Mahoney
Founder, SpryFeet.com

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

  1. The best practice for an Internet-based business today is to carefully guard one’s subscription 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, we 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 us to tell you about someone else’s product or service than to let that business tell you directly.
  2. Face it: If we contact you too often or send you irrelevant content, then you will unsubscribe, which hurts us. If we contact you too rarely, then you will miss out on relevant and timely content, which hurts you. So it is in your and our best interests to send you relevant content at a reasonable interval.
  3. We hate misleading Subject lines; they, well, mislead readers. And we hate long email messages; they disrespect readers’ time. So you can count on our email messages to have meaningful Subject lines, to get to the point inside, and often to tell you “Go here!” for more information.
  4. Our ESP — and all other reputable ESPs — require that we ask you to use the double-opt-in method to subscribe. This helps to guarantee to our ESP that we are not a spammer. And this ensures that some jerk cannot subscribe you to email that you do not want.
  5. Our ESP — and all other reputable ESPs — also require that every message that we email to you include an unsubscribe link. In fact, our ESP automatically adds the unsubscribe link to the bottom of every message that we 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 messages from us, then our ESP has what you submitted — and that is all. And you now know how picky our ESP is! If you have bought something from us, then (1) thank you! and (2) be assured that our 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 us see — again, anonymously — the patterns of where visitors go on SpryFeet.com, which helps us with improving site layout and content. And remember that you are always in control of your browser’s cookies, as explained at Wikipedia.