(TLDR: I am too busy and tired to sell your personal data. Also, the store works the way it does because I will not fork WordPress or WooCommerce.)
Tilted Windmill Press is a private label press for certain works by me (Michael W Lucas, etc). My family are the sole owners of Tilted Windmill Press, which means I can and do treat your data as I would hope mine would be treated.
Given a choice between “abuse personal information for a nickel” and “write more and better books to persuade you to willingly hand over more of your cash more often,” I always choose the latter.
Your personal data is like medical radioactives in a cancer clinic: necessary, but risky. I don’t want it. Name, addresses, phone numbers, etc are used only to deliver service. I would prefer to not collect addresses for ebook sales, but that would require maintaining a Woocommerce fork and I’m not opening that can of weasels. My readers are highly likely to obfuscate physical addresses at the network level, so I am publicly declaring that I cannot validate addresses or phone numbers. (This is part of why I don’t handle EU VAT.) What customers do with this knowledge is their choice. About a third of my physical shipments require phone numbers for recipients, and chasing people for their phone numbers is more trouble than it’s worth, so I reluctantly require them for physical goods. I’m not gonna share your number or call you.*
If you buy something that includes physical gifts, however (such as Patronage or a sponsorship), I will ship it to your address and give the shipper the phone number you provide. If you claim you live in Outer Farawayistan, packages sent to there instead of your home are not my problem.
Mailing list sign-ups at check-out default to opt-out.
I can access select personal information via Paypal and Stripe, same as any other online vendor. I use this information only to take payments and resolve issues. The only financial data I want is from my payment processors saying that “they paid you, hand over the books.”
If you choose to have the site save your credit card for future purchases, or if you join the Patronizer program, the site retains a payment token as well as the type of card, the last four digits, and the expiration date. Folks far smarter and more educated than I have determined that this provides adequate confidentiality.
Books are delivered via BookFunnel, because they can help you get your books onto your device. I cannot. They also let you redownload books. I pay them for this service; you are not in any way the product.
I’d like to enable guest checkouts, but when I do that the WooCommerce/BookFunnel integration breaks and I can’t deliver your books. If you want to delete your account: there’s a button on the account page, bottom right. If you delete your account, I can’t help you with your purchases. Be sure you have a backup of your books or a BookFunnel account, either way.
Thank you for your support.
* Nothing personal. I don’t want to talk with anyone.
