I recently published the RevolverGuy Privacy Policy. I don’t want this to get lost or overlooked, so I’m also publishing this as a post here. This isn’t boring legalese, so please take five minutes to read through it. If you like what you read, reach out to some more of your favorite sites and ask them if they’re taking care of you, too.
RevolverGuy Privacy Policy
Here at RevolverGuy.com we respect our readership and TAKE YOUR PRIVACY SERIOUSLY! We refuse to sell out our readers to Google or Facebook in exchange for free publicity (aka: “advertising welfare”) and we have no problem letting you know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. If you have questions, feel free to ask – none of us are experts but we will do our very best to answer your question satisfactorily. These are the things that impact your privacy that you should know about:
AFFILIATES: RevolverGuy.com has some affiliate relationships. This means when you click on some of our links, the site you go to knows that we referred you. In exchange for referring you, we get a very small percentage of what you spend as a referral fee. This helps us fund this site (which does cost money to operate, after all) and is, in our opinion, minimally invasive since those sites know where you came from anyway. The companies with whom we have an affiliate relationship currently are listed below. If this changes, (i.e. we add or remove affiliates) or we get advertisers we will update this page and let you know.
- Amazon.com
- Lucky Gunner
- Private Internet Access
ANALYTICS: Most websites (including the vast majority of firearms industry sites) use Google Analytics or something similar to track visitors. There is a legitimate reason behind this – it lets the site’s operator see how many people are coming to the site, where they came from, and which articles they like. Unfortunately, it also gives this information and a heck of a lot more to Google. All of this information is added to all your other browsing data, the calendar appointments, your scraped emails, the location data from your Android phone (or Waze or Google Maps), your voice conversations with “OK Google”, anything you’ve EVER done while logged into a Gmail account, et cetera. Needless to say, this creates a pretty comprehensive picture of you and we don’t like it.
Currently we do not run any analytics at all on RevolverGuy. This means we don’t have any idea who visits this site, how often, or where they came from. We don’t know what articles you like best or how much time you spend on the site. In the future we may add Piwik Analytics. Piwik is a privacy-respecting analytics option that gives us a number of benefits over Google Analytics. It allows us to select what data is collected and what is not (i.e. we can [and will] choose not to collect your IP address and certain other data). Also, we own and control the data, and get to choose what is done with it. I guarantee you that your data won’t be sold, shared, traded, or otherwise disseminated, and this will never change.
I would prefer to continue running no analytics at all, but an inability to demonstrate RevolverGuy.com’s popularity makes it harder for us to get those sweet, sweet T&E guns that you guys want to read about. If and when we add Piwik Analytics, this policy will be updated to reflect the change.
SOCIAL MEDIA: You might have noticed that we don’t have Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of the other accoutrements of a modern-day blog. Again, we refuse to participate in a system that doesn’t respect our user’s privacy, and doesn’t have their best interests in mind. We also refuse to help Facebook enrich itself on the backs of our audience. The concept of collecting the interests of every individual (including their firearms interests and ownership) is antithetical to our views on privacy, the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, and the concept of a national firearms registry. RevolverGuy.com has never had social media, and never will.
HTTPS Connection: Your connection to RevolverGuy.com is always encrypted. This. means your activity on this site is protected from the time it leaves your computer all the way to the site. This protects your traffic from the prying eyes of your internet service provider, cellular provider, the public network you might happen to be on, etc. Your connection is encrypted at all times, on every page here. This isn’t something we are required to do, but we always will.
Be advised: HTTPS doesn’t prevent them from seeing that you are visiting RevolverGuy.com, but it protects them from seeing what you are doing here. If you would like a stronger level of protection that does prevent them from seeing the sites you visit, please consider using a VPN like Private Internet Access [affiliate link].
If you have questions, feel free to ask. Thanks!
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Thanks for posting this. I’ve come to assume that anything I do on the Internet is entirely public, and I still think that is the best assumption, but it is nice to know that you are taking visitors’ privacy into consideration.
Thank you, also, for the mention of Piwik Analytics. I’ve used Jetpack in the past, but it is kind of bloated if you are just looking for analytics and not all the other site customization stuff. I’m going to have to play with Piwik a bit.
Kudos to you!!!!! A very refreshing change from most such policies.
Although you don’t track it (and thank you for that), I am a regular reader and have enjoyed your content very, very much. There’s not many of us revolver guys left in the world!
In fact, there is one tiny bit of privacy I’d be happy to give up to you. It would be great if we could get an email whenever a new article is posted.
Keep up the good work.
David,
I’ll see what I can do about that, sir!
Justin
Ditto to David’s suggestion!
I like you guys even more now! Is that possible?
Great information from stand up people. It couldn’t get any better.
Thanks
BRAVO!