mob-rule.com privacy policy

This is a hobby site dedicated to people like myself who want to track and map the counties¹ that they have visited. This page describes the "policies", such as they are, about what information the site collects and uses about its visitors.

for registered users

When you log in to the site with your account credentials, this site must give a cookie to your web browser so that it can remember who you are as you move from page to page.

This site keeps backups of the database tables used to run the site. This includes geographical data about the counties and user data about counties visited, map customizations, etc. Those of you who have been with the site for a while know how handy those backups have been. Database backups may be kept indefinitely.

When you created an account, you sent me an email with your name, hometown, and email address. I probably still have that email. I may use that email and any other correspondence for things like verifying a request to change your password. Otherwise I have no interest in using your name and email for any other purpose, and I will not give or sell this information to anybody else. Unless I already know you personally or we are engaged in some previous email correspondence, I will not contact you by email. If you do receive an unsolicited email from me or this site, treat it suspiciously.

You may request changes to the way you are represented on the site, including your name. You may make changes to your hometown on your user page. You do not need to provide your real hometown. You may request changes to the name that is presented on the site for you or your password by sending me an email. You do not need to use your real name, and may use initials or a fake name. You may request that this site delete all of the data collected about you, or you may request a copy of all of the data the site has collected about you. Email me with any such requests.

I do not intend for any of your personal data, such as it is, to be misused but I do not take extraordinary measures to safeguard it. In particular, the site does not always use HTTPS (secure HTTP) and there is a remote chance that your password for the site or the cookie used to authenticate you to the site could be intercepted and used to, I don't know, make you visit some places that you didn't really visit. But seriously, don't reuse, like, your bank password on this site. Email me at any time if you would like to change your password.

for registered users and unregistered treasured guests

The site does not use cookies for visitors who have not created an account and logged in.

This site, like most sites, logs some information about each page request including IP address, request time, response status, user agent (i.e., what kind of browser you are using), and referring page, if any. Here's an example of what the logs look like.

68.134.64.136 www.mob-rule.com - [15/Aug/2018:01:51:18 +0000]
  "GET /gmap HTTP/1.1" 200 3050 "https://www.google.com/"
  "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0"

In most cases, the log data is overwritten after a few weeks and never seen again. In any case, this log data is not shared with anyone (well, except for that one line up there) and is not used for any purpose except to evaluate and improve the site.

With some enhancements released in August 2022, on mobile devices the site's slippy maps are capable of displaying your current location. This site does not track, log, or share your real-time location.

Please contact me at mobrule@gmail.com with any questions about these policies or this site.

¹ and "county equivalents"