What Rowsmith keeps, and who can see it

The tools keep nothing

The Even Spacer, Gauge Converter, Yarn Amount and sizes pages work out an answer from what you type and keep nothing. What you type travels in the page address, so it is in your browser’s history and in the server’s access log (see below), like any web address.

What a Workbasket holds

• The basket’s name, if you give it one.
• For each project: its name, knitting or crochet, and the needle or hook, yarn and pattern notes you type; your notes; your counters (name, count, repeat length); and your swatches (needle or hook, stitches and rows over 4 inches, washed or not, a short note).
• When the basket and each item were made, last changed and last opened.

There are no accounts. Rowsmith never asks for your email address and never sends email.

Who can see a basket

• Anyone who has the basket’s private link can see and change it. The link is long and random, and Rowsmith stores only a fingerprint of it, so the link cannot be read back from the site’s database. Keep it to yourself; if you think someone else has it, the basket page can replace it with a new one at once.
• WeldonPC, which runs the server, can reach the database to maintain it and to make backups. It does not look at baskets except to fix a problem with the site.

Basket pages tell search engines not to index them, send no address to other sites when you follow a link, and are not stored by your browser’s cache. No ad and nothing from any other site loads on them.

How long it is kept

• Delete now: the box at the bottom of the basket page removes the basket, its projects, counters, notes and swatches from the site at once.
• Unused baskets: a basket nobody opens for 365 days is deleted automatically. Once payments open, a basket with a paid-up Pass is kept until its paid time ends.
• Rowsmith’s own backups: the site’s database is copied every night, and just before and after each software update. These copies stay on the server, and a nightly clean-up deletes each one after 14 days.
• Server backups: WeldonPC also backs up the whole server four times a week, the database and that day’s access log included (see below), and keeps those backups for about four weeks.
• All backups stay on WeldonPC’s own servers and backup storage, readable only by WeldonPC’s administrators. A deleted basket can stay in a backup until that backup is deleted: at most about four weeks after you delete it.

Cookies

Pages with a form that saves something (starting a Workbasket, and the basket pages) set one security cookie that stops other sites from sending those forms for you. Rowsmith sets no other cookie: no sign-in cookie, no tracking or advertising cookie. The tool pages set none.

Addresses and logs

To stop abuse, Rowsmith counts how many baskets come from each internet address per day and how many changes each basket gets per hour. It keeps only a scrambled form of the address with the count, and deletes the counts after two days.

Like any web server, the server also keeps a standard access log: the address, the time, the page asked for, the page you came from (when your browser says) and the browser. For a basket page, the page asked for is its private link, so the log holds that link; for a tool, it holds the numbers you typed. The hosting software reads the log once a day to count traffic and make visitor statistics (AWStats, Webalizer and Analog), and then deletes it; Rowsmith’s hosting account keeps no archive of it. A server backup made that day holds a copy of the log, which is kept with the backup for about four weeks. The statistics list the pages asked for, so they can include private links too, and the hosting software keeps them with no set end date. Only WeldonPC’s administrators can see the log, the backups and the statistics. If you think a link was seen by someone it should not have been, make a new one from the basket page: the old link then opens nothing.

If a page fails with an error, the site writes the error, the time and the page’s address to its own error log, with any private link’s key taken out first. Error logs are deleted after about a month.

The server’s web application firewall also keeps a security record of requests it blocks as possible attacks (the address, the time and the request). Only WeldonPC’s administrators can see it.

Advertising

Rowsmith’s public pages (the home page, the four tools, pricing and about) show one banner ad from AdEngine (adengine.us), the small ad network run by WeldonPC, the company behind this site. For now the ads are for WeldonPC’s own services. Workbasket pages, this page, the terms and error pages never show an ad.

To show an ad, your browser loads a script from adengine.us, asks it for one banner, loads the banner image, and reports once that the page was viewed and once that the banner was shown. Like any website, adengine.us receives your IP address, your browser type and the address of this site with those requests.

• No cookies, no profile. AdEngine sets no cookies, gives you no ID and does not track you from site to site.
• How your IP address is used. adengine.us looks up the approximate city for your IP address in a location database kept on its own server (nothing is sent to anyone else), so that ads meant for one area are shown only there. It also uses the address to count each ad view or click only once and to leave out robots and WeldonPC’s own office traffic. The address is not stored with the counts; the temporary entries made from it expire within six hours and are cleared from the server within two days.
• What is kept. Daily totals only: page views for this site, and views and clicks for each ad. The adengine.us web server also keeps a standard access log (IP address, time, address requested, referring site, browser) for security; it is deleted on a rolling schedule.
• Clicking an ad passes through adengine.us, which counts the click, and then opens the advertiser’s site, which has its own privacy policy.
• Nothing about you is sold or shared.

Apart from that ad on the public pages, everything Rowsmith shows comes from this site itself: its fonts, drawings and scripts are served from gallivantus.com.

Children

Rowsmith is a general tool for adult makers and is not directed at children. It never asks anyone for a name, an email address or an account.

Payments

Payments are not open yet (preview). When they open, the Pass will be paid through PayPal. Rowsmith will keep the plan, its status, PayPal’s subscription number and the date paid up to; it will never see or store card or bank details.

Nothing sold or shared

Rowsmith does not sell, rent or share what is in any basket, and uses it only to show your basket to you and to whoever you give the link to.

Questions

Rowsmith is run by WeldonPC.com. Questions about this policy or your data: weldonpc.com/contact.