As some visitors are aware, I used to have a Facebook Page for Ate Up With Motor, which was deactivated when I closed my Facebook account for good in December 2018. I had thought that I downloaded an offline copy of all the data from the Page along with the personal data from my account, but I recently discovered that I was mistaken, and in fact I actually retain very little of the content, comments, and messages from that Facebook Page. Since my account has long since been removed, it’s much too late for me to try to download that data again.

How that happened is a long, dumb story, but the bottom line is that if you sent me messages through the Facebook Page for Ate Up With Motor, left comments or posted on that Page, and/or shared media there, it is likely that I no longer retain or have access to that data. I retain a smattering of information in the form of old notification emails (and some bits and pieces of information that I saved or recorded separately for some specific reason, such as if someone provided research suggestions or article corrections), and I DO have an archive of comments and messages I sent or received directly (that is, as Aaron Severson rather than as Ate Up With Motor), but that’s about it. While people did sometimes share car photos and/or videos on the Facebook Page, I made a point of NOT downloading offline copies of that media unless the photographers had expressly authorized me to use their images on the Ate Up With Motor website (and I didn’t always get around to it even then, for which I’m now kicking myself).

It seems likely that Facebook still retains at least some of that information — for instance, if you are a Facebook user and left comments on the Facebook Page for Ate Up With Motor at some point in the past, those comments are probably still listed in your Activity History. Questions about what data Facebook retains and/or what options you may have for accessing or deleting it should be directed to Facebook, as that is beyond my control. (I almost certainly lack the legal standing to compel Facebook to delete someone else’s data.)

ETA: I have also discovered that the archive I’d made of the long-defunct Ate Up With Motor blog on the LiveJournal platform was no longer accessible. Again, I may retain certain related information in other forms (e.g., notification emails), but most of the data has now been deleted, and the blog itself was purged in 2014. I don’t know if LiveJournal retains information about comments or messages still-active users sent to blogs that have since been purged; I haven’t used that platform in many years because I refuse to accept their current TOS, the only binding version of which is in Russian.

I imagine that some of you have been wondering, “Whatever happened to Ate Up With Motor? Is it dead or something?” If you are curious about this subject, you’ll find an explanation under the cut.
Continue Reading Whatever Happened to Ate Up With Motor?

I just made another technical update that I’m hoping won’t break anything.

Many of the links on the site are designed to open in a new browser tab or window. This is sometimes convenient, but can apparently be exploited for an obnoxious browser hijack unless you add a special attribute to the link (rel=”noopener”). I’ve attempted to add that throughout the site, which should not affect any normal function — unless I made a syntax error somewhere, in which case there may be some broken links.

If you find a link that doesn’t work or does something weird, please let me know! You can reach me through the Contact Form or by leaving a comment on the item where you found the bad link. Thanks for your patience.

I’ve just added a note to the Privacy Policy that bears some explanation.

Ate Up With Motor has lots of photos. Most of them were taken in public places, sometimes by people other than me — at car shows, on the street, and so forth. Inevitably, some of those photos have people in the background. Now, generally, under U.S. law, this kind of editorial usage is not a big deal, since people in public places usually don’t have a “reasonable expectation of privacy”; otherwise, newspapers and news shows could never run crowd shots. However, under the EU’s new GDPR directive and associated local law, any recognizable image of a natural person may be considered personally identifying information, which becomes messy.

The plain reality is this: I usually do not have any reasonable way to know the identities of people who may be visible in the backgrounds of photos (especially in big crowds), nor am I usually able to associate their images with any other information I might have about them. If you’re a regular visitor to Ate Up With Motor and you popped up in the background of some photo taken at a car show five years ago, I probably don’t know it! Also, while some photographers make an effort to obscure the faces of bystanders — I started doing this with my own photos about seven years ago — that isn’t always possible, or successful. (I’ve seen a number of photos where the photographer or editor overlooked the face of someone leaning out a window in the background or something like that.) If a photo isn’t mine, I may not have the right to modify it in that way, and even if I do, the original online source may still have the unmodified, un-obscured original. There’s not usually anything I can do about that.

So, all I can reasonably do is note in the Privacy Policy that this is something that may occasionally happen, and ask that if you see yourself (or some information about you) in a photo and feel bothered by it, you contact me to discuss how best I can alleviate your concerns. Also, please understand that if you request your information under the GDPR, I probably don’t have any way to associate your comments or other data with the tiny figure in the background of a car show photo!

While fussing with the Terms of Use to go along with the GDPR stuff, I realized I should update the Comment Policy regarding changing or deleting comments. Normally, after you post a comment, WordPress gives you a window of 15 minutes in which you can edit or delete the comment. However, since I have comments moderated, these options generally aren’t available.

So, if you have a previously published comment you’d like to change or remove, the simplest thing to do is to reply to it, asking me to change or delete it. Your reply goes into the moderation queue, so I will see the request and can easily figure out which comment you’re talking about.

If you ask for an edit rather than a deletion, just please try to be clear whether you want me to publish your reply or just change the original comment.

Throughout this week and perhaps for at least the next few days, you may encounter some odd stuff on Ate Up With Motor, such as different privacy notice banners. This is because I’m still trying to update things for greater compliance with the European GDPR rules taking effect on Friday. Unfortunately, there is no one plugin or tool that provides all the functionality I need, and many are in a rudimentary state as their developers scramble to get them working properly as half the world’s WordPress users have a simultaneous meltdown. Some of the work therefore involves a high level of technical complexity that is at the ragged limits of my understanding (if the phrase “function hooks” leaves you scratching your head, you’re not alone!). Some things I don’t know how to do, and entities to whom I’ve reached out with technical support questions are all swamped. I’m hoping that by next week, I’ll have it in some kind of workable order, but there’s an awful lot. My apologies for the inconvenience!

ETA: I also want to apologize for the “our privacy policy has changed” prompt screen that keeps coming up. One of the GDPR’s requirements is that if the policy changes in any substantive way (“substantive” meaning basically anything other than fixing a spelling or punctuation error), you MUST prompt users to review and consent to the policy again. This is well-meaning, but obviously can get very frustrating for visitors.

I have been, and probably will for the next few days, fussing more with the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use as part of an ongoing effort to make this site more compliant with the imminent EU GDPR directive.
Continue Reading Further Business

I’ve updated the site Privacy Policy regarding Google Analytics, which Google is now updating based on a new EU privacy law. The gist as I understand it is this: As of May 25, 2018, Google is introducing new data retention settings that determine how long Google Analytics will retain the data it gathers for the site. I’ve set it to automatically delete data after 26 months.

I’ve also clarified that although Google Analytics has a User-ID tool that can attempt to identify a unique user across devices, I have deliberately never enabled that tool. I’ve now disabled the setting to include the Users metric in the analytics reports. (I’ve never looked at that tab in the reports, so I’m not entirely sure if it was even putting anything there with User-ID turned off.)

To be candid, I am not comfortable with online tracking and analytics services except of the most rudimentary sort. I need to know aggregate data — e.g., how many people visited the site last month — and it’s often helpful for me to see where referral traffic is coming from, but I don’t consider it appropriate or ethical for websites to develop behavioral profiles of their users. I’m a writer, not an intelligence officer or a cop!

If you have any questions about the policy or Ate Up With Motor’s use of analytics, please let me know via comment or the Contact Form. Also, if you have specific concerns or recommendations regarding Google Analytics settings (which I must confess are often at the ragged edge of my technical understanding), I am certainly open to suggestions.

As you might have noticed, I have implemented an SSL (secure socket layer) certificate on the site, so the address bar in your browser should now say https rather than http — hopefully without any little yellow triangles or other warning indicators.

I decided to go to HTTPS for four reasons: 1) Search engines are beginning to favor secure sites over ones that are unencrypted; 2) it’s better for security; 3) it’s better for your privacy; and 4) it’s better for my privacy.

The caveat is that setting up HTTPS is complicated even if you are a computer nerd, which I most assuredly am not. It appears things are now working properly and non-secure (http) links are automatically redirecting to secure ones (https), as they should be, but there may be other hiccups I haven’t yet noticed. If you experience any problems, such as your browser warning you that parts of the page are not secure (what’s called a “mixed content” error), please let me know (and be sure to specify what browser you’re using!).

In the meantime, if you have bookmarks to Ate Up With Motor or to specific pages or articles, I would recommend that you update them to the new https addresses at your convenience. Again, the old links should still redirect, but going directly to the secure versions will help the site run faster and encourage search engines to get on the same page.