“My policy is simply to treat my customers the way I wish to be treated.”
—This is True Founder Randy Cassingham
First Things First: Your Privacy
I not only will not provide your email address to any advertiser or data broker, I actually work rather hard to keep it secret. Your address will not be provided to anyone who is not an employee (contract or direct) of This is True unless I have your permission or am required to do so by law, with the exception of the details in Registration, below.
I further protect your privacy and email security in general by requiring that new subscribers “confirm” or “verify” their subscription request. This prevents people from harassing others by subscribing them to something they may not want. When you subscribe, it generates a message asking you to confirm your subscription. You must click the link in this message before your subscription will be activated. Of course, you may always cancel (or “unsubscribe”) at any time: there is a link at the bottom of every issue to make it easy (details).
In addition, since the company’s formation in 1983 it has also been my policy to never sell customer postal addresses either. So if you buy Premium subscriptions, book collections, or any other item, the information you provide to deliver them is also kept confidential. I miss out on profit opportunities by not selling my customer addresses, but that’s how I want to be treated by the companies I do business with, so that’s how I treat my customers. Simple, eh?
GDPR, CCPA, LGPD, Etc. Privacy Acts
I consider my policies to be stricter than the California Consumer Privacy Act …even though I’m not required to follow that law (my gross revenues are far less than the $25 million minimum cutoff; I don’t buy or sell the personal information of any consumers or households, let alone 50,000 of them; and I earn nothing, let alone more than half of annual revenue, from selling consumers’ personal information). My policies apply to all customers, not just those covered by the CCPA, the GDPR, Brazil’s LGPD (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados), or any other privacy law that comes along from time to time. And that has been my policy since the start — well before any of these laws took effect.
Registration and Personal Information
- Free subscribers: I do not collect personal information unless you choose to subscribe to my mailings, in which case you must of course provide an email address for delivery of such mailings and, optionally, your name. To protect me, I keep a permanent record of such subscription requests. Free subscriptions are processed by a third-party “Email Service Provider” to distribute the newsletters, which has its own privacy policy. Once you “unsubscribe,” the subscription record I have access to on that provider’s site is deleted within one year, and usually much sooner. If you prefer it to be deleted sooner you can contact me with the request, which must specify the exact email address used or I won’t be able to find it.
- Submitted Comments: All comments, whether sent to me directly or posted on this site or any of my other sites, become the property of ThisIsTrue.Inc and may be published. Comments will be published at my sole discretion. Once published, any editing of comments shall be at my sole discretion, including removing comments for any reason. I ask that you include your first name and general location with your comment, and these may be added by me if you fail to do so. Publication in my newsletters may include your first name and location, but will not include your email address, and may (or may not) be edited for length or clarity. Comments on the site will be removed in the case of spam, off-topic posts, “flaming,” invasion of others’ privacy or other legal reasons, or if they do not materially contribute to the discussion at hand.
- How Do I Get My Photo/Avatar on Comments? You’ll notice some have photos. The comments use Gravatar to pull up user photos. Register there if you already haven’t; it uses your email address to associate your comments with your Gravatar account, and then it’s automagical on any site that uses Gravatar (which is a lot). To not get a photo/avatar on a comment when you are registered on Gravatar, add +nopic to your email address like this: myname+nopic@domain.com. Using your real address in this way allows you to subscribe to comment notifications.
- Paying customers: Registration on This is True’s Shopping Cart is optional unless you set up a “recurring” (automatic subscription renewal) option. If you prefer such an account be removed, contact me as above with your clear request. As required by tax authorities, I keep a permanent record of all purchases. Some paid subscriptions are handled by the ESP described above, but for the most part are handled on either one of the thisistrue.com servers, or another more-tightly-controlled ESP, to give me even more control over your privacy.
Terms of Service
This is True’s email newsletters and notifications are offered without charge for your personal use. In return for your free subscription, you agree to abide by the terms of the copyright notice included in each newsletter, and you agree that you are responsible for maintaining your own subscription(s), including changing your own address or stopping your subscription when you choose. Unsubscribe links are included in every issue.
Underage Subscribers/COPA Information
This is True is designed for adults and well-educated, older teens. Kids under 13 will not likely get the humor or irony, and for longer than COPA has existed I have not knowingly accepted subscriptions for pre-teens without explicit parental permission. Any pre-teens discovered on the distribution will be deleted. Any particularly brainy pre-teens who want to read True should ask a parent to subscribe, and then ask to read their parent’s copy.
Cookies
My sites — and any advertisers who make the free services possible — may use cookies or “trackers” to get statistics on who sees what ads, whether you click on the ads, etc. My sites also use cookies to (for instance) stop showing you “hovering” subscription forms when you dismiss them. I have no way to personally identify any specific person from these cookies.
Third-party advertising companies may also use cookies to serve ads. These companies may use information about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of specific interest to you, and their privacy policies apply.
On some of my sites, Google may be one of these third-party vendors, and they use cookies to serve ads. Google uses a special DART cookie that enables it to serve ads to you based upon your visit to this site and others that you visit.
If you don’t want to have this DART cookie on your computer, you can opt out.
How to Include Your Photo on Comments
Comments use Gravatar to pull up user photos. Register there if you already haven’t; it uses your email address to associate your comments with your Gravatar account, and then it’s automagical on any site that uses Gravatar (which is a lot). Gravatar user but don’t want your photo to appear with a comment? Then add +nopic to your email address, such as: example+nopic@example.com.
eCommerce Policies
Order Entry Security: ThisIsTrue.inc uses industry-standard SSL security on every page of every site, not just online order forms. Orders will show on your credit card statement or Paypal history as “This is True” (or “THISISTRUE.COM“).
Refund Policy: All actual products (such as printed materials) have a 30-day return policy if defective. If you find a problem with a product, explain the problem via the Contact Form on this site. Since I am rather open with “free samples” (you know what you are getting before you pay for it), there are no refunds on Premium subscriptions should you unsubscribe for any reason. If in any event I do choose to refund an order that is due to your own decision, you agree that I may keep the portion of your payment that represents the costs of the original payment processing, since this is not refunded by the processor.
Note Regarding Online Credit Card Security: All credit card data entered by customers, including account numbers, are processed immediately and are not kept on file by ThisIsTrue.Inc for any length of time. I cannot “look up your number” to process a renewal for you even if you give me permission to do so: I am quite serious about the security of your data, and use the best methods available to safeguard you. I simply use what I expect from the online merchants I buy things from.
Affiliate Relationships
You should assume that any links on this site, or in emailed newsletters, is to a site that has an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned, and I may be compensated when you purchase from such a provider, which does not change the price you pay. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone — via the Internet or offline.
Amazon requires this nonsensical disclosure: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.” What this actually means: A small percentage of the links on this site go to Amazon, and if you click such a link and buy something on Amazon, I may earn a commission on that sale, which does not affect the price you pay.