Privacy Policy

Reader data, in three columns

There are only three kinds of information about you that reach us, and each is handled differently.

Correspondence

What: your email address and whatever you write to us. Why: to reply. How long: while the exchange is live and a reasonable period after.

Comments

What: the name you enter, your email address, and the IP address the comment was sent from. Why: to publish the comment, to reach you about it, and to block persistent spam and abuse. How long: as long as the comment is published. Remove the comment and the rest goes with it. The email address is never published.

Technical trail

What: pages opened, roughly how long, the referring site, and a general indication of browser and device. Why: to see which subjects deserve more reporting and to notice when the site breaks. How long: only as long as it is useful, then discarded.

What we do not do

We do not build profiles of individual readers, do not attempt to identify you, and do not sell reader data. We do not hand data to anyone unless the law requires it.

Cookies

Functional only — remembering that you have dismissed a notice, and similar. Your browser can block or clear them whenever you like; the articles read the same either way.

Processors

Our hosting provider and our analytics and advertising partners process some of this on our behalf, each under its own agreement with us.

Exercising your rights

Depending on where you live you can ask what we hold, ask for a correction, or ask for deletion. Write to [email protected] and we will deal with it. We take sensible technical and organisational precautions with everything above; no website can promise perfect security and we will not claim otherwise.