This site makes use of various third-party tools, including:

• Google AdSense (for advertisements) – Privacy Policy, Google Ad Privacy page
• Google Analytics (for site stats) – Google Privacy Policy, Google Analytics Privacy Page
• A number of social sharing buttons at the bottom of each post
• FeedBurner for my RSS/Atom feeds, also governed by the Google Privacy Policy

These third party tools may perform tracking of your browsing, set cookies, etc. Especially due to the Google Ads, I have little to no control over what third-parties insert into page content. If you’re concerned, there are many good resources such as networkadvertising.org (which has a Consumer Opt-Out service) and The Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I personally (as opposed to the third parties described above) use very little visitor information. I do not disclose identifying information in any way. I have access to Google Analytics, and retain server access logs including IP address, user agent string, referrer, etc. (standard combined log format). I use this only to track which content is the most popular, what areas of the world my visitors are coming from, and general site popularity. I rarely process the server access logs, but occasionally do to try and get an idea of how many people have javascript turned off or are otherwise missed by Google Analytics.