Privacy Policy, Compliance, and Disclosures

Disclsoures

Pursuant to FTC regulations, I’ve put up this handy, all-encompassing page of disclosures so that it’s perfectly clear when I’m writing on behalf of someone else.

People Who Employ Me

I am co-founder and co-owner of Trust Insights. All content which features Trust Insights inherently provides me direct and indirect financial benefit. Clients I represent through Trust Insights will be marked or tagged as clients for disclosure purposes.

People Who Consult With Me

Various conferences and events pay me to speak. If I’m promoting a conference that I’m speaking at, assume I’m being paid to speak and that any promotion of the conference isn’t vain egotism, but is in fact crass commercialism.

  • I am an IBM Champion, which means I receive recognition from IBM and non-financial compensation.

Financial Holdings and Conflicts of Interest

  • I am an investor in T-Mobile (TMUS).
  • I am an investor in IBM (IBM).
  • I hold a variety of index funds for retirement purposes, including an S&P 500 Index Fund, managed by USAA Investment Corporation and Charles Schwab.
  • I hold Creator Coins in $TILT.

Statement on Affiliate Marketing

I’m going to try to make money off of you. Let me repeat that. I AM GOING TO TRY TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF YOU. I’ll post stuff for sale on which I get paid a commission. I’ll post stuff for my employer to benefit my salary, so assume a bias there. I use Amazon, Linkshare, Commission Junction, Shareasale, and anyone else who will shovel cash my way. You should too. Assume that I’m getting paid by someone, though I’ll use in-post disclosures as well.

My only promise to you is that I won’t market crap to you. If I try to sell you something, at least it’ll be the good stuff.

Statement on Content

This is my blog. It’s like my living room, only online. I do with it as I like, as you should do in your own living room. If you were to come into my living room, demand free beer and chips, then crap on the floor and break the windows, I’d probably put your porch lights out, if you know what I mean. If you do the digital equivalent, I’ll do the same.

Plain English: I reserve the right to do whatever I want on my personal blog with content, including updating, editing, and deleting without warning or notice.

Statement on Unsolicited Items

You’re welcome to send them to me, but they’re not coming back. Ever. Especially if the cat gets to it.

By sending me something to review, you understand that I may or may not review it, and I do not guarantee any outcome of the review. I also do not guarantee a review in a timely manner unless you want to pay for a review.

If your product sucks, I’m going to say so in no uncertain words.

If it’s delivered electronically, I may never even see it due to spam filters.

If it’s tangible, there’s a distinct chance it’ll get lost in my office somewhere and I won’t find it until months later, possibly after you’ve gone out of business. I’ll still review it and lament your passing if that’s the case.

If I do review something, I will disclose it, no exceptions.

If it’s great, I’ll tell people about it.

If it’s terrible, likewise.

If it’s mediocre, there’s a good chance it will make so little an impression that I’ll forget to review it entirely.

Be awesome, okay?

Comprehensive Privacy Policy

Last updated 14 March 2022.

Who we are

This website address is: https://www.christopherspenn.com.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Personal information such as email addresses and IP addresses are collected for marketing purposes. Visitors opt-in to my email newsletter and optional fields such as name, title, company, and other information are collected at time of subscription. This information is collected to send a weekly email newsletter and for retargeting purposes for digital advertising.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

This website uses analytics software from Google Inc., principally Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Optimize. Analytics software compliance is governed by these organizations. This website uses the Mautic self-hosted marketing automation software, hosted on servers in the United States of America (processor and controller). This site uses the Matomo self-hosted web analytics software, hosted on servers in the United States of America.

Who we share your data with

Any data collected through this site is shared with Trust Insights, Inc. including anonymous visitor data and information you submit.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. Please use the contact form on this site to request personal data or the right to be forgotten under GDPR.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.