That's exactly what we try to avoid, because not only "doing anything we want with users data" is wrong, but also because it's not legal in most countries.
Forcing website owners to inform their users precisely, other than being a legal duty, is how you use transparency to to ensure that users' rights are respected. The moment we forget about informing users and pretending to be informed is the same we start forgetting about privacy rights, and that subtly and slowly leads to huge privacy violations like the whole PRISM shame.
I know that we're still selling stuff, but our hope is to do something good along the way, and a world with more privacy information is surely a better one :)
"La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno" is not a blog, it's a newspaper. The news was reported by other Italian newspapers too, quoting Charles Elachi's words during a speech held in Rome.
Thank you for the question. You need to inform the user about the personal data collected. Examples of personal data are cookie, email, username, name, date of birth. I suggest you to add everything you recognize as used on your website.
If your website has a blog or a form, I also suggest you to create a different privacy policy just for each of them.
Thank you for asking, and let me know if you have any other question :)
Hacker News has long been ok with people posting their own stuff. If you've worked long and hard on something, be proud of it and show it off, within reason (don't post the same thing day in and day out).
What looks more dubious are all the new accounts signing up just to write pithy comments. That'll get you banned if you're not careful, Andrea.
I know that we're still selling stuff, but our hope is to do something good along the way, and a world with more privacy information is surely a better one :)