What Do I Collect?
I use Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand my visitor traffic. This tool shows me each visitor's requested paths, IP address, referer, browser, and operating system. That data is mine, I don't share it with anyone, including Cloudflare; Cloudflare Web Analytics does not collect or use your personal data.
Why Use Analytics?
If you want to be a better writer, the most common advice is: know your audience. For a personal site like this one, that might mean knowing how many people are coming from Google vs from Twitter, understanding what kinds of articles are the most popular, learning how long they spent reading an article, or seeing what countries visitors' requests come from. I can use that information to build a more engaging website. As far as sharing that data with third parties goes, the closest I get is when I test my friends' and family's patience by talking about my website traffic.
Why Have a Privacy Statement?
Maintaining your privacy online should be a normal topic of conversation, not something only crazy people and neckbeards talk about. You absolutely have the right to not care about your privacy online, and most people don't. But you should know what information you're volunteering and when you're volunteering it. In that spirit, I'm happy to explain what information I collect on this website and why.