Privacy Policy
Guides For This Website
For Everyone
Updated:
In this document, the word "we" refers to anyone working for Burtman.net, in a relevant capacity, including (but not limited to) volunteers and contractors, as we work together to develop and maintain this website and all associated content and projects.
General Statement
Everything is this policy appears voluntarily because your trust is important. For that reason, everything you need to know is here in plain English, without legalese jargon or any other trickery. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments at the bottom of this page (requires an account) or email them to info (at) burtman.net (doesn't require an account). As with all other forms of contact, we reserve the right not to respond to messages that appear to be computer-generated or otherwise not forming a genuine question - messages that look like spam. All messages appearing to be genuine will be answered in a timely fashion.
Volunteered information
Any information you send to, or via, this website, its connected social media accounts (if any), or any other related, publicly viewable accounts, including comments and mentions, are considered publicly available information. Such information may be shared, forwarded, quoted and used in other ways, but will never be used in ways that violate the initial intention of the information. For example, a positive posting about another website will never be mis-represented as a positive review for this one. We're just not those kinds of people.
Information sent in any way with a reasonable expectation of privacy is considered private for the purposes of this policy. All private information is bound tightly by our code of secrecy, which prevents it from being shared or referenced in any way, with anyone who doesn't need to know it. And we mean need. Anything that can be considered private will be. For example, an email sent to any Burtman address, a private message, or something you post by mistake and then quickly delete - is obviously not intended for anyone else, and we don't care for loopholes and trickery. We respect your privacy and the integrity of your communications. Period.
Cookies?
This site sets exactly one cookie, when you first load a page, which allows you to sign into your account and keeps track of things for your convenience, and for the correct functioning of the site. Although it is required in order to maintain logged-in sessions and remember your settings, this cookie can be deleted at any time, without causing any loss or damage to your data. If you delete the cookie, you will be logged out. Logging back in will restore the remembered data from your account.
If you don't have an account, or you don't wish to sign into it on a particular visit, you can happily continue with cookies entirely disabled, and it will not affect the functionality of the site, at all.
The cookie created on your first page load is encrypted, in order to secure your information, and it is never shared with any other site or service. The reason we do not have a GDPR menu is that we do not have any other cookies from this, or any other domain, and the only information we store is that which you explicitly and voluntarily provide. There are no adverts, marketing tools, external analytics, trackers or anything else you might not be excited about, and we do not use the blanket term 'legitimate interest' to allow spyware through our website.
Tracking?
The following tracking methods are commonly deployed by websites, in order to find out as much information as possible about their visitors, including geographical location, language, device and operating system, browser version, IP address, and even your private search history. None of these systems are used at Burtman.net.
HTML5 Canvas
Geolocation
Sneaky javascript beacon things
Image-embedded tracking urls and call-homes
"I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA
Some other creepy tracking method that's conveniently not mentioned?
Hell-to-the-no. Read line one of this policy to see why Burtman's not tempted by these sinful things.
Notice On Post View Tracking
As of build 75, released April 16, 2024, there is a small, internal post read log, which is updated when you read a post (IF you are logged in). This is not a tracking method designed to learn about you. The only information it records is your user id (already present on the system) and the id of the post you opened. This log allows the operation of the "prior read" function, which is used exclusively on series content (books and other chaptered content). The prior read function simply checks if your user id has been used to view the requested post before allowing you to read the next one in the series. For example, story #2 of a series will be made available once you have read story #1. This is called "series priority", and it has no further functionality. The data recorded is only used by the post display engine, and is not visible to any user or third party. No statistics are calculated on this data, and there are no reports generated for any reason, which include it.
Tokenized Login Links
As of build 91, released March 26 2025, links in automated emails that require login (such as to change mailing preferences, or to link to a post in a hidden group) now include a login token. This feature uses your account's private key to sign you in before loading the requested resource, meaning that you no longer click links in emails that end up at the 404 page. In order to make this work, it is necessary for the automated email generator to create personalized links.
As soon as you click one of these links, you will be logged in (providing your account is active and not already logged in), and the token will then be regenerated (rendering further use of this token impossible). The personalized links generated by this system serve no other function than logging you into your existing account, and create no additional data than that which you would have created by logging in manually. The link is randomly generated and does not contain any personal information, whatsoever.
Connected Sites?
At no point will this website ever employ under-handed methods to obtain information about any visitor, nor will any advertiser, sponsor, donor, supporter, social media platform or long-lost-uncle be permitted to use this site as a vector for the same.
As the site develops, some external websites may be linked to this one, but rest assured, none of the government's data-mining tools like facebook, linkedin, twitter, google, etc., will be among them. Burtman favors independent, socially-responsible and non-profit organizations, because we have rights, no matter how badly big brother wants us to forget it. Please note that the Google map embedded on the "Maps" page does not have access to your account, and disabling all related scripts and cookies will only prevent the map from displaying, which has no further effect on your user experience.
JavaScript
Burtman uses the smallest possible amount of javascript - only where it's necessary for functionality. The pages that use javascript are:
Playlist
The music on the Playlist page is embedded from SoundCloud.com.
The script domains are: soundcloud.com, sndcdn.com.
If you don't want to allow javascript from SoundCloud, the audio tracks will not play.
Maps
The Maps page uses a map embedded from Google.com.
The script domains are: google.com, maps.googleapis.com, gstatic.com.
If you don't want to allow javascript from Google, the map will not be displayed but the location names will still be shown.
We have not yet found a suitable, open source replacement for Google Maps, but once we do, the map embed will be provided by them.
Tool Profiles
For the time being, the instructional videos in tool profiles are coming from Youtube.com, but we use the no-cookie version to protect your privacy as much as possible.
The script domain is: youtube-nocookie.com.
Although there are several other youtube domains that want to use javascript, none of them are necessary for viewing the videos.
Replacing youtube videos with videos from a better source is on the development list.
Buy Me A Coffee
There is a new donation function that allows you to support me with a small donation. You might like it. Go and try it out!
The script domain is: buymeacoffee.com
If you don't wish to allow javascript from buymeacoffee.com, the donation function won't load, but you can still click the icon in the footer to go to the donation page, instead of using the embedded widget. It might suit you better,
Anything Else?
There are a few simple scripts on this website that perform basic functions.
The script domain, therefore, is: burtman.net.
One script scales the main menu for smaller screens and one provides text helpers for guest authors (shortcuts for text formatting and post-linking).
If you don't want to allow javascript for burtman.net, the main menu will not function on small screens and text formatting helpers won't work (but all text formatting can be done manually). We no longer support crypto, so the crypto functions are no longer present.
Limitation Of Use
All information gathered about you by any means is treated in the strictest confidentiality, at all times, and is only stored for as long as is necessary, in order to serve its purpose.
Publicly viewable information you post remains publicly viewable until you delete it.
All personally identifiable information is permanently deleted from our systems, as soon as it is no longer required for the provision of services. For example, if you delete your account, we will no longer need your email address for sending mailing list updates. Thus, your email address is deleted as part of the account removal process.
We have an anonymous user, whose account is not tied to a real email address, which is used for the purpose of maintaining useful comments after the account that was used to create them is deleted. If you were to post a useful comment, and then request account deletion, that comment would be reassigned to the anonymous user, so that its content could continue to help others, after your account removal. In the case that the comment contained any personally identifiable information, it would be sanitized (that portion of it would be removed or changed).
Transmission And Storage
Burtman.net uses SSL to encrypt data transferred between you and the website. This means that your session, along with anything you send or receive, is private.
Anything Else?
Although we do not currently process any user statistics, the following information is available to all websites you visit, and may be used for anonymous, aggregated statistics gathering, in the future (although there is no plan to implement it, at present):
Referrer
The address of the site that sent you here, if you followed a link, is visible to us.
This could be used to help us determine, for example, the keywords that generate the most interest in burtman.net, on search engines.
Not currently used by burtman.net.
Country
Your physical location is probably available to us, with some degree of accuracy, but there are no functions on this website that make use of it. We do not request access to your location, or to your device, and we never will.
Not currently used by burtman.net.
Browser & Operating System Versions
This information is available to us, and could be used to provide slightly different page rendering methods for devices with rendering anomalies. That would only mean making the website look more consistent across a wider range of devices. However, since development is a one-man project...
Not currently used by burtman.net.
Referral Code
If you followed a personal referral link to sign up for your free account, we use it in the account generation process, so we can reward the referrer, according to how many people they have referred. This information is only needed in order to keep things running smoothly in the referrals department, but we don't use it to infer relationships, nor do we allow anyone else to see that information. Only you and Burtman can see who referred you and who you referred.
That's it.
Well, Almost.
A word on crypto software...
We used to like cryptocurrency, for its fast and cheap transactions, but it since became obvious that cryptocurrency is the precursor to the Digital Beast System I spoke about in my article,
The A.I. Monster, so crypto donations are no longer accepted. You can read more about this, here: CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) - Central banking's authoritarian answer to decentralized, freedom-promoting private currency.
Ok. That Really Is It.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the site!