What this site keeps about you.

Who keeps it

Me, Ulrich Holtzhausen, in Johannesburg, South Africa. I run toneprobe on my own server. To ask anything about your information, use the contact page.

What’s recorded when you read a page

The server notes every request it answers:

• the time, the page, and whether it was found
• your internet address (IP address)
• your browser, device type and operating system, as your browser announces them
• your country, worked out from your address by Cloudflare, which carries the site’s traffic
• the site that linked you here, if your browser says (just its name, never the full address)
• a visitor code: a scrambled mix of your address and browser, made with a key that’s replaced every day and never stored. It ties together the pages you read that day, so I can see a visit page by page, without a cookie

A small script on each page adds how it was read:

• how long the page was in view, and how far down you scrolled
• which links and buttons you clicked: where they lead, their words, and the heading they were under
• what you typed into the site’s search box, how many results it found, and the one you picked
• your screen and window size, language, time zone, and how long the page took to load
• the toneprobe page you came from, and any campaign tags in the link you followed (such as utm_source)

The script never reads what you type anywhere else, never records keystrokes or mouse movements, and doesn’t look at other sites or tabs. For an email link it only notes that one was clicked, never the address.

While your address is kept, visits from the same address can be matched up across days, and when I look at one visit I can ask the internet’s address book (DNS) what name your address has, such as your provider’s. That question goes to the DNS server my server uses.

If you send a message through the contact page: your name, email address and message, and your internet address, so I can stop abuse of the form.

Why

To see which docs people read and how far they get, find what people search for and don’t find, spot broken links, and keep the site safe from scanners and abuse. My legal basis is legitimate interests (section 11(1)(f) of the Protection of Personal Information Act, POPIA): the stats stay with me, are used for nothing else, and you can stop them at any time.

How long it’s kept

• Your address in the stats: 30 days, then it’s deleted from the log (checked every hour).
• Everything else in the stats: 400 days, so a month can be compared with the same month last year. Then it’s deleted.
• Contact messages, with the address they came from: until I delete them, after I’ve dealt with them.

Who sees it

Only me. It’s stored on my own server in South Africa. It isn’t sold or shared, and there are no adverts or outside analytics. Cloudflare, a US company, carries the traffic between your browser and the server, as any network would; its own privacy policy covers that.

Cookies

• Sign-in (tp_session, and tp_login for the minutes it takes to sign in): only if you have an account and sign in.
• Your stats choice (tp_stats): only once you use the switch below, to remember it for a year.

No advertising or third-party cookies.

Your rights

You can ask what I hold about you, ask me to correct or delete it, and object to it being used. Send your request through the contact page; mentioning your address and the date of your visit helps me find it. If you’re unhappy with how I handle your information, you can complain to the Information Regulator.