Privacy Policy — openlinuxlab.com
Last updated: August 2026
A blog with ads touches your data in four places: advertising cookies, analytics, comments, and forms. This page explains each one in plain language — what we collect, who processes it, and what you can do about it. It covers the whole openlinuxlab.com site, including its Spanish version. If you are in the European Union, the GDPR applies to you; if you are in California, the CCPA/CPRA does. We wrote this policy to satisfy both — and to be honest with everyone else.
What We Collect, and Why
We run a security-education blog. That means no account system, no payment processing, and no reason to know who you are. The data we touch falls into two buckets:
- What you give us voluntarily — an email address when you write to us or join the newsletter, and the handle you use when you comment.
- What is collected automatically — cookies and usage data from Google AdSense and Google Analytics, described below.
We do not sell personal data. We do not rent it, trade it, or hand it to anyone except the service providers named on this page. We do not collect names, postal addresses, phone numbers, or payment details — ever.
Google AdSense and Cookies
This site runs Google AdSense, which serves ads through Google and its partner networks. When you visit a page with ads, Google may drop cookies on your browser — including DoubleClick cookies — to measure ad performance and to serve ads based on your prior visits to this site and other sites on the internet. That is how personalized advertising works, and it is the standard model for ad-funded sites.
You stay in control of it. Google's own requirements for publishers (the "Required content" page in AdSense Help) ask us to tell you three things, and here they are:
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to this website or other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
- You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings (or this alternative link). You can also opt out of some third-party vendors' cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info.
For the full picture of how Google uses cookies in advertising, see Google's "Advertising cookies" page. If you are in the EEA or the UK, we serve ads in line with Google's consent requirements — which means personalized ads only appear where consent allows.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to understand what people actually read — which articles get traffic, where visitors come from, and what devices they use. That data shapes what we write next. GA4 collects aggregated behavioral data: pages visited, time on page, referrer, browser and operating system, and approximate geographic location. It does not log or store IP addresses at all; location data is derived from IPs that Google discards immediately after geolocation.
Retention: Google Analytics keeps event data for the period configured in the property (2 months by default, 14 months if raised) and then deletes it automatically. We never merge analytics data with personal information.
If you would rather not be counted, block Google Analytics collection with the official Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or with any privacy extension that blocks tracking scripts. Google's own privacy practices are described in the Google Privacy Policy.
Comments
Comments on this blog run on Blogger, a Google service. To leave a comment you need a Google account (including a Gmail address) — that is Blogger's requirement, not ours. When you comment, we see the handle you use, your avatar, the comment text, and a timestamp. We do not see your email address, and Google does not show it to us.
Google processes comment data according to its own Privacy Policy, and Blogger's spam filter runs automatically on every comment. We moderate comments manually and remove spam, abuse, and off-topic noise. If you want a comment removed, email us — contact details at the bottom of this page.
Newsletter and Contact Form
If you subscribe to our newsletter or send us a message through the contact form, you are voluntarily giving us your email address. We use it for exactly one thing: answering your message, or sending the newsletter you asked for. No selling, no sharing, no third-party marketing lists. Every newsletter email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can ask us to delete your address at any time.
Third-Party Links
Our articles link to external sites — tool documentation, distro repositories, security references. Once you leave openlinuxlab.com, this policy stops applying. We do not control those sites' cookies or data practices, and we recommend a quick look at their privacy policies before you hand them anything.
Your Rights: GDPR and CCPA/CPRA
Depending on where you live, you have legal rights over the data described here.
If you are in the EEA or the UK (GDPR): you have the right to access, correct, and delete your personal data; to restrict or object to its processing; to data portability; and to withdraw any consent you gave. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. To exercise any of these rights, email us — we respond within 30 days.
If you are in California (CCPA/CPRA): you have the right to know what personal information we collect, to request its deletion, to correct inaccurate information, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising — there is nothing to opt out of — but the right to know and the right to delete still apply. California law also protects you from discrimination for exercising these rights. The California Attorney General's CCPA page explains the law in detail.
To exercise any right, contact us at the address below. We will verify your request and act on it — no fine print, no "we'll get back to you in six months."
Data Retention and Security
We keep data only as long as it serves a purpose: analytics events for the configured retention period (2 months by default, 14 if raised), comments until you ask us to remove them, and email addresses until you unsubscribe or request deletion. Site backups may retain data briefly after deletion — that is how backups work — and we purge them on a rolling schedule.
On the security side: the site runs over HTTPS, we collect the minimum data possible, and access to anything personal is limited to the people who run the lab. No credentials, no passwords, no payment data ever touch our servers. That said, no system is unhackable, and we will not pretend otherwise — if a breach ever affects your data, we will tell you, and we will tell you what we are doing about it.
Children's Privacy (COPPA)
openlinuxlab.com is a technical blog about Linux, security, and penetration testing — it is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has submitted personal data to us, contact us and we will delete it promptly. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's COPPA rule page explains the law behind this.
Changes to This Policy
If we change how we handle data, we will update this page and change the "Last updated" date at the top. Material changes — new data collection, new third parties — get a more visible note on the blog itself. The version on this page is always the current one.
Contact Us
Questions, requests, complaints, or just checking whether this policy is real: email us at pentestoffice@gmail.com. We read everything, and we answer.
This page is informational and does not constitute legal advice. For questions specific to your situation, talk to a lawyer. Last updated: August 2026.
Postscript: one thing we almost forgot — the privacy tools above (Ads Settings, the Analytics opt-out, aboutads.info) are all free and take about thirty seconds. Do it once, and you have done it for every site that uses Google's ad stack, not just this one.
