What this site knows about you

This site is run by Alice Dumas, who decides what happens to any information collected through it — the data controller, in the wording of UK data protection law. For anything on this page, including asking for your information to be deleted, write to adumas887@gmail.com.

There is no sign-up to read an essay and no account to create. Reading is measured — how that works, and its limits, is set out under how visits are measured below. Nothing with your name or your address on it is collected unless you choose to do one of these things:

• If you leave a comment — the name you type and what you write, with the date. That is the whole record. No email address is asked for, and your IP address is not stored against it. The name can be whatever you like.
• If you subscribe by email — your email address, the date, and a random code that makes your unsubscribe link work. Nothing else.
• If you like an essay — a random identifier is stored in your browser so the like can be counted once and undone if you change your mind. It is not linked to your name, your address, or anything else about you.

Your name is also remembered inside your own browser so the comment box is not blank next time. That stays on your device and is sent nowhere except with a comment you actively post. Clearing your browser data removes it.

This site measures its own readership rather than handing that job to an advertising company. It is worth being exact about what that means, because “analytics” covers everything from a page counter to surveillance.

You are recognised for a day, and then you are not. Nothing is stored on your device to identify you. Instead the server works out a code from your connection — your IP address, the browser string it sends, and the language it asks for — scrambled together with a secret that is thrown away and replaced every night at midnight. Within a day, two page views from you are known to be from the same reader. Across two days they are not, and cannot be made to be: the secret that made yesterday’s code no longer exists, so nobody — including Alice Dumas — can match it against today’s. Your IP address itself is never written down; only a scrambled form of it, under the same secret, with the same daily expiry.

What is recorded. The pages you open and how long you stay on them; how far down a page you scroll, noted at a handful of marked points; a rough location, worked out by the hosting provider from your connection and usually no more precise than a country or a city; the kind of device, the operating system, and the browser with its major version; the size of your screen and window, your language and your time zone; and the site you arrived from, if you arrived from one. Alongside that, a fixed list of things you can do here: opening an essay, reaching the end of one, liking it, opening or sending a comment, seeing or using the subscribe form, reaching the gallery or opening a picture in it, pressing one of the buttons at the top of the homepage, launching the balloons, adding the site to a home screen, and following a link away — for which only the destination site’s name is kept, never the full address.

What is not recorded, ever. Nothing you type, anywhere. Not what you write in a comment, not the email address in the subscribe box, not a keystroke, not the clipboard. No camera, no microphone, no location from your device, no notifications — this measurement never asks your browser for permission to do anything, and nothing it does should ever put a permission box in front of you. Nothing you do on any other website, and nothing from your browsing history. There is no attempt to identify the person behind a visit, and no covert fingerprinting: the code above is the only identifier, and it is built to stop working after a day.

It is kept apart from everything else. These figures live in their own tables with no link to the comments, the email list or anything else that has a name or an address on it. There is no key that would join them up.

If you have asked not to be tracked. A browser set to send “Do Not Track” turns all of this off. Nothing is sent and nothing is recorded.

It is honest to call this personal data. A code derived from your IP address is pseudonymous rather than anonymous, and UK data protection law treats it as being about you. Everything on this page — asking for a copy, asking for it gone — applies to it. It is deleted after ninety days in any case, and the daily reset means anything older than a day cannot be traced back to a particular visit even before then.

Two measurements from the hosting provider also run: an aggregate page-view count and a page-speed report, neither of which sets a cookie or follows anyone between websites. And the provider keeps ordinary server logs for a short period, which include IP addresses, as every web server does — used for keeping the site running and secure, and for nothing else.

This site sets two cookies, both its own, and neither is used for advertising or tracking:

• ad_visitor — a random value, set only when you like an essay, so the like can be counted once. Lasts a year.
• ad_session — set only when Alice Dumas signs in to manage the site. It never reaches a reader.

There is no consent banner, and the reason is specific rather than convenient. UK cookie law is about storing things on your device or reading things off it. Both cookies above are set only to do something you have just asked for — to count your like, or to sign Alice Dumas in — which is the case that does not need permission. The measurement described above stores nothing on your device at all: there is no analytics cookie and no identifier saved in your browser, because the code that recognises you is worked out on the server each time and expires nightly. No third party sets a cookie here.

That was a deliberate choice with a cost attached. An identifier saved in your browser would have made the figures better — it would show a returning reader as the same person over months — and it would have needed your consent, and therefore a banner. The measurement was built the other way round instead: worse numbers, nothing on your device, nothing to ask you for.

Under UK GDPR, comments and email subscriptions are kept on the basis of your consent — you chose to write or to sign up, and can withdraw either at any time. Visitor measurements and server logs are kept on the basis of legitimate interests: knowing whether anyone is reading, which essays are worth writing more of, and keeping the site online and secure. That interest has to be weighed against your privacy, which is what shaped the design — the identifier resets every night, no identifier is put on your device, nothing you type is captured, and the whole lot is deleted after ninety days. You can object to it at any time, and a browser sending “Do Not Track” is treated as having objected already.

It is not sold, rented, or handed to anyone for marketing. It is handled by a small number of companies that run the site’s machinery, and only for that purpose:

• Vercel — hosts the site, stores the photographs, works out the rough location from your connection as the request arrives, and provides the aggregate page-view and page-speed figures.
• A managed PostgreSQL database — where comments, email addresses and the visit measurements are stored, in separate tables that are not joined to one another.
• Resend — sends the emails, and only to the addresses that asked for them.

These providers are based in or process data in the United States, so information may be transferred outside the UK. Each is engaged under contractual terms intended to keep the protection with the data when it travels.

Comments stay until you or Alice Dumas remove them. Email addresses stay until you unsubscribe, which is one click at the bottom of every email and needs no reply from anyone. The likes cookie expires after a year, or sooner if you clear your browser. Visit measurements are deleted after ninety days — not as a promise but as a deletion the site actually runs. Nothing here is kept “just in case”.

You can ask for a copy of anything held about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted — and there is no need to explain why. You can also object to how it is used, ask for use to be restricted, ask for it in a portable form, and withdraw consent at any time.

Email adumas887@gmail.com and it will be dealt with within a month. If you are unhappy with how it is handled you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, though raising it here first is usually quicker.

This site is written for a general adult readership and is not aimed at children. If you believe a child has left personal information in a comment, say so and it will be removed.

If what the site collects changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. There is no archive of previous versions — what is written here is what the site currently does.

The terms of use cover the other side of it: what you may do with the writing here, and what is expected of comments.