Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2, 2026

The Failure Mode explains how physical and administrative systems come apart. It is a reading site: there is nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for, and no reader account. This page sets out the small amount of data that still moves when a page here is opened, who ends up holding it, and what a reader can do about it. It covers thefailuremode.com, every page and post served beneath it, and the thefailuremodejournal.blogspot.com address that resolves to the same site.

1. Who runs this site

The Failure Mode is published independently by M. Kim. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or speaking for any agency, utility, operator or regulator whose documents it cites. Questions about this page, and any request concerning personal data, go to kimmyounghwan259@gmail.com or through the Contact page.

The site runs on Blogger, a service of Google LLC. That arrangement matters here, because Google acts as the platform operator and handles some visitor data on its own account rather than on instruction from this site. What Google does with it is described in the Google Privacy Policy, and this site has no ability to alter or override that processing.

2. What is collected

Things a reader chooses to send. Reading requires no registration, so personal data arrives only when someone sends it deliberately: an email to the address above, or a comment left under a post. An email address is held only while the matter it raises is still open. A comment is public by design and carries whatever display name its author signed in with; it stays visible until the author or the site removes it.

Things recorded automatically. The ordinary web request log, generated whether or not anyone looks at it:

  • browser and version, operating system, and device class
  • the page requested, and the date and time of the request
  • the referring page or search result, where the browser sends one
  • an approximate country or region, derived from the IP address

What reaches this site from that log is aggregated. It shows that a page was read a certain number of times from a certain region; it does not name anyone, and it is not matched against any other data set.

3. What it is used for

Four things, and nothing else. Deciding which subjects are worth writing about again. Finding pages that are broken, slow or unreachable. Replying to messages. Keeping comment spam off the site. Personal information is not sold, rented, licensed or traded, and it is not used here to build a profile of any reader. It is disclosed only where the law requires it, or to a service provider that has to see it in order to run part of the site.

4. Cookies

Cookies are small files a site or its service providers store in a browser. On The Failure Mode they come from three places: Blogger's own operational cookies, the comment system's cookies where a reader signs in to comment, and the measurement cookies described in section 6. A browser can be set to refuse or delete any of them. Refusing them leaves every article fully readable; the only visible effect is that a signed-in comment session may not persist.

5. Third-party advertising

The site currently carries no third-party advertising, and no advertising cookie is placed by it. If that changes, this page will be updated before the first advertisement is served, and the following will then apply.

  • Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve advertisements based on a reader's previous visits to this site or to other sites.
  • Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve advertisements to readers based on their visits to this site and elsewhere on the internet.
  • Personalised advertising can be switched off at Google Ads Settings, and advertising from participating vendors can be switched off at aboutads.info.

6. Measurement

Traffic here is measured with Google Analytics 4, property G-G4982N0MDX, alongside Blogger's built-in page counters. Analytics sets its own cookies and reports which articles are read, how readers arrive, and where they stop. Readers who prefer not to be counted can install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or block the cookies in browser settings. Note that an advertising opt-out is a separate control and does not stop analytics measurement.

7. Readers in the EEA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland

Blogger displays Google's standard cookie notice to visitors from these regions. Because no personalised advertising runs here yet, this site does not operate a consent management platform; if advertising is introduced, a certified consent tool will be in place before any advertising cookie is set.

Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR, readers in these regions may ask what personal data is held about them, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be erased. In practice what exists here is short: emails that have been sent to the address above, and published comments carrying an author name. Requests go to the contact address and are answered within one month.

8. Readers in California and other U.S. states

This site does not sell personal information, and it does not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are used in the California Consumer Privacy Act. There is accordingly nothing for a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" control to switch off; should advertising practices change, that control will be added at the same time as the disclosure in section 5. Residents of California, and of other states with comparable statutes, may request access to or deletion of personal information by writing to the contact address.

9. Links that leave this site

Articles here link heavily to primary sources: regulations, agency reports, inspection records and statistical releases. Those destinations are operated by other bodies under their own privacy policies, and following a link takes a reader outside anything this policy governs. No responsibility is taken for what a linked site collects.

10. Children

The Failure Mode is written for adult readers and is not directed at children. No personal information is knowingly collected from anyone under 13. If material of that kind is discovered here, it will be deleted; a parent or guardian who believes a child has sent something can write to the contact address and it will be removed.

11. Retention and security

Emails are kept while the matter they concern is open and deleted afterwards. Comments remain published until deleted. Aggregate traffic figures follow the retention schedule of the platform that produced them. The site is served over HTTPS, which protects data in transit. No transmission over the internet is perfectly secure, and readers should not send account numbers, identification numbers, financial documents or medical information through email or the comment form.

12. Changes to this page

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. A material change — the introduction of advertising, or a new category of data — will be described in the section it affects rather than folded silently into the text. Revisions take effect when they are posted.

13. Contact

Questions about this policy, and requests concerning personal data, go to kimmyounghwan259@gmail.com or through the Contact page.

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