We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it.
We believe strongly in the importance of voluntary anonymity; you have every right to come and go as you please, and the policies, website behaviours and functions attempt to support that.
- What information is captured?
- How we use your information
- Cookies
- Advertising
- Affiliates and partners
What information is captured?
We collect two types of information:
- Information you voluntarily provide e.g. your email address if you subscribe;
- Information we automatically capture when you visit the site e.g. browser and device details.
1. Voluntary information
You may provide us with information yourself. This can happen in three ways.
- You subscribe
- You leave a comment
- You contact us
You only receive emails if you subscribe. We don’t automatically add you to the mailing list if you contact us or leave a comment. 😇
Subscribing to the site
Many pages have a subscription form. You enter your email address and we send a confirmation email which you have to click a link to complete the process.
You can unsubscribe any time you like.
Leaving a comment
If you leave a comment you must supply an email address and a name. The name is displayed, but the email is not.
The email is stored on our system to provide a pingback if someone responds to your comment.
We do not automatically add emails from comments to our mailing list.
Contacting us
You must use your own email to contact us. We do not store your email if you do so, and we do not add you to our mailing list.
2. Information we collect automatically
Like most websites this site automatically captures some information when you visit.
This includes:
- Your IP address
- Some geographical information
- A timestamp when you visited
- Browser and device details
- The pages you visited
- Length of time on each page
This information is not shared with third parties. The site uses a secure system to log the above information and analyse it internally.
How we use your information
There are two things to understand here:
- Your subscription details;
- Automatic info we collect.
Subscription details
Your subscription information is your email address. When you successfully subscribe we store your email address and use it to send you occasional emails.
You can unsubscribe any time you like
Every email sent contains an unsubscribe link. Clicking this removes you from the list. No information is retained. You are deleted. If you want to get back on the mailing list you have to resubscribe from scratch.
We take unsubscribing seriously. If you unsubscribe we really do blitz everything. We don’t have a secret list of unsubscribed people we try to spam six months down the line. Once you leave you are dead to us. 😵
We store your email
Your email address is processed by a third party company we pay to manage our mailing list.
When you subscribe your email is managed by Convertkit, a company specializing in mailing lists. They don’t do anything except capture and store it.
View Convertkit’s privacy policy »
Your email is not shared or sold
If you subscribe your email address is not shared with anyone except Convertkit. It is never sold on to others under any circumstances.
What we use your email address for
Light spam, in a word. When you voluntarily subscribe you join our mailing list. We occasionally send emails to you, typically to let you know when something has been published.
Every email contains an unsubscribe link.
Automatic info we collect
The other information we automatically collect is stored in log files on our secure servers.
We do not share or sell this information. It is used internally to build a picture of website traffic e.g. how many people visited the site from Europe or North America, what pages are the most popular etc.
Some websites use a third party company to process this data. We don’t. Everything is stored on our own secure servers and analysed in-house. Your data never leaves the building, so to speak.
The information is anonymized wherever possible. Our statistics package aggregates the data to prevent identification of individuals.
Cookies
Most websites use cookies. Cookies are small text files stored by your browser and typically used to improve your experience on the site.
There are two types, session cookies and persistent cookies. We use both.
Session cookies are temporary and wiped when you leave the site. Persistent cookies are saved by your browser for a period of time, and usually help smooth out the website experience for return visitors.
You can delete cookies stored in your browser at any time. See your browser’s documentation for how to do this.
Advertising
There is no advertising on the site.
The closest we get is a link to a story or book. These are internal and a normal part of the site structure to help you find things.
We do not use any form of third-party advertising. Therefore we never share anything with advertisers.
Affiliates and partners
We have no affiliates or partners. We do use Convertkit to manage our mailing list, but this is a paid service. We do not partner with them or receive money in exchange for information etc.
View Convertkit’s privacy policy »
Last updated: 20 November 2020