Privacy Policy

PMU does not need a privacy policy.  There is no tracking or collection of any kind. There are no advertisements, insidious social media integration, and embeded trackers that track, profile, and catalogue you without your consent.

This policy has always been my priority when I first ran PMU.  I was never comfortable with being treated like “Data Cattle” for corporations to collect information about me.  Why should I do that to the people that visit PMU?

How can you verify that you are not tracked?

If you’re an advanced user, you can review the code of this Web page.

If you are less advanced or a novice, your modern internet browser will tell you what trackers are installed.  If you use Firefox to browse the internet, you can see the Shield Icon next to the URL bar which tells you what trackers and integrations are present on the page.

You will find none here.  You are not Data Cattle, nor will you ever be treated like one here.

Does PMU collect any information about you?

No.

I miss the old internet, before pervasive social media took it over.  The internet was the “wild wild west” back then.  It was decentralized.  You were warned consistently to guard your privacy, never give out personal information, and be anonymous. You were warned to be careful and safe.

Social media transformed the internet.  Now, people willingly identify themselves.  They share personal information and stress the importance of building a “brand” for yourself.  The internet has become centralized.  Misinformation is now more easily spread, because the misinformation now comes directly from your trusted peers and contacts.  Social media, while initially conceived to be “good” and help people connect, have now become dangerous tools through the manipulation of the Like and Share button.  Through the new internet, people are now more easily manipulated and taken advantage of.

Not only do people identify themselves online, but their devices and the places they visit track, profile, and catalogue them without their consent.  And they accept this because of the “convenience” of opening Facebook, the “convenience” of having targeted advertising that is relevant to them, and the “convenience” of getting a quick fix of humour through a 20 second Instagram or TikTok.  After that quick fix, the app is closed, and a minute later, reopened again.  We have been trained and reprogrammed for the quick dopamine hits of social media.  Frankly, people like conenience, and they do not care what liberties they give up for this convenience.  Corporations, after all, do not make it clear to the user how they use you.

None of that happens here.  I’m keeping PMU as “wild wild west” as possible.  You will not find social media here.  You will not find predatory tracking and monetization here.

How is PMU funded?

Donations.

I’m thinking of potentially expanding some content into YouTube where I can monetize videos to help pay server costs.

I will not and do not ever plan to integrate advertising and analytics into PMU.  Any analytics that I may need to collect in the future will be sourced the old-fashioned way: through surveys and polls.

Back in the old PMU days, I had polls and surveys to collect your feedback so I knew what new areas of content to begin writing.  Bowser’s Column was inspired through some of the feedback of my fans back then.

I will never have embedded analytics that tracks your mouse clicks, what areas of PMU you are visiting and clicking into, what browser hardware information, or what Web sites you were at previously that brought you to PMU.  I don’t care about all that because I respect a human’s right to their privacy.

Privacy is a human right.

PMU is not a corporation.  It’s a fan site.

How can I donate to PMU?

I’m working on figuring that out.  I’d like to remove the friction of intermediaries like PayPal, but I understand that not everyone uses or trusts frictionless cryptocurrencies yet since there are so many scams out there.

I may first introduce the ability to provide donations to PMU through Bitcoin and Monero.  And then for the convenience of the majority of people out there, probably set up a PayPal donation link.

As I think about the direction of PMU, I’d prefer to have this site paid for through monetization on YouTube for example. But these are all things I’m still pondering.

PMU does not exist to generate money.  The goal for any donations is to help pay server costs, and it is never expected from our visitors and fans.