Satyadarshin

I take your privacy very seriously. Rest assured that any correspondence between us is confidential and that your email address won’t end up on any mailing lists.

However, you might have concerns about the collection of Website metrics. Below is an overview of the practices employed on this website.

Google Analytics

What is it?

This website uses Google Analytics. It’s a free tool from Google that collects and collates statistical data about visits to my site, information like what sorts of Web browsers were used and how long a user spent on any given page. This is much more useful than just how many “hits” I got (which doesn’t tell me much of value). If, for example, I know a percentage of people are searching Google for “Web designer, Bristol”, that they get as far as my homepage, but click away before finding my professional portfolio, I would have good reason to suspect that there’s a problem.

This page on Cookies and Google Analytics gives an account of why Google Analytics needs to use a cookie.

How does it work?

In every webpage on this site there’s a snippet of JavaScript that’s run by your Web browser whenever you load it. This snippet collects statistical information about the context it was loaded into. It doesn’t collect any personal information, identify you, or your computer to me in any way.

“I don’t want that to happen. How do I make it stop?”

If you don’t want your visits to send this sort of statistical information — about this or any other website that uses Google Analytics — the most efficient solution is to download a software extension that disables it. There are a huge number of free browser extensions and plugins, so check out your browser’s gallery and, if you find a suitable one, follow the installation instructions.

Alternatively Google Analytics can be turned off by disabling your web browser’s ability to execute JavaScript. This is a fairly major thing to do with far-reaching consequences: permanently disabling JavaScript means that any website using it routinely will either not function properly or at all.

Managing JavaScript

Depending upon your browser and it’s version, you’ll need to do something like the following (this is a very rough guide only):

In Internet Explorer
Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security; click Internet; scroll down to Scripting and check (tick) Disable.

In Firefox
Go to Preferences > Content and uncheck (untick) Enable JavaScript. Some versions of Firefox also have the option Tell websites I do not want to be tracked under Preferences > Privacy.

In Chrome
Go to Preferences > Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Content Settings. Either click the radio button next to Do not allow any site to run JavaScript or click Manage Exceptions.

In Safari
Go to Preferences > Security and uncheck (untick) Enable JavaScript. Some versions of Safari also have the option Ask websites not to track me under Preferences > Privacy.