I hate spam just as much as everyone else, so I decided to define a privacy policy for TwentyPeacefulMinutes.com to make it clear that we will never send you an unsolicited email and to define what information we collect, how long we store it and how long we use it. Rest assured, we do not share, sell, lease, rent or disclose your information!

Information We Collect

Account Information: you may create an account on our blog at www.TwentyPeacefulMinutes.com as well as an account on our discussion forums at www.TwentyPeacefulMinutes.com/forums. Either type of account is free. When you create an account, we store the information you provide in order to allow you to log in to your account via the username and password you create.

Cookies: when you visit our site, we send one or more cookies – a small file containing a string of characters – to your browser. These cookies generally store your specific preferences or the username of your account, to allow our website to recognize you when you return to our site.

Server Logs: like most websites, our site logs each time anyone accesses it. These logs generally include your IP address, the date and time of your visit and what pages you visited. Your IP address is the address assigned to your computer by your Internet service provider each time you connect to the Internet; as IP addresses are generally assigned in country-specific blocks, your IP address may allow us to determine what country you are accessing our site from. This information allows us to analyze how many people visit the site and check for potential problems on the site.

Emails and other communications: when you fill out a contact form or send us an email, your message will be stored on our server as a normal part of delivering the message to the proper individuals. Generally, emails will be kept private, and if any portion of any communication you send is made public, care will be taken to remove any personally identifying information.

Comments and posts: in most cases, you may post comments to any of the stories on our blog, and you may post messages in our discussion forums. Please remember when posting such message that those messages will be stored and made public on the Internet for an indefinite period of time. You retain the copyright to, and responsibility for, any comments you post to the blog and posts you make in the forum, however, by posting comments or posts to our site, you grant us permission to use your message on our site.

Information Sharing and Usage

We will not use the information you share with us to send you any type of unsolicited email. Outside of material you post for public view (i.e., messages posted to the forum or comments posted to articles on the blog), none of the information you share with us will be disclosed to any third party.

We do maintain aggregate data (i.e., the number of people who visited the site, or a specific page of the site, etc.) that we may disclose either directly to third parties or on the site itself. Only aggregate data, with no personal or other identifying information, will be disclosed.

Data Retention

Much of the data we collect is not retained – for instance, after a period of 30 days, the IP address information in our logs is hashed, which removes the specific IP address from the record.

Email

We do not operate any email newsletters; if you register for an account on the blog or on the forum, you will receive an email confirming you have created an account. Depending on the settings and preferences you indicate at signup, you may also receive an email if you receive a private, direct message from another member of the discussion forum. Also, you may request email notification from FeedBurner.com of any new stories posted to the blog via the link in the side column on the blog. You may opt out of receiving those emails at any time by following the instructions provided by FeedBurner.com. Otherwise, you will not receive any email from us. We will never share your email address with any third-party, unless necessary to comply with a lawful, valid subpoena.

Questions

If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy policy, please don’t hesitate to email me at Josh@TwentyPeacefulMinutes.com!