What this site collects

What this site does not do

It is worth listing, because most sites do all of it and this one does none of it. There are no analytics. No visitor counting, no heatmaps, no session recording, no dashboard anywhere showing what you read or how far you scrolled.

There are no cookies. Nothing is written to your browser's storage, so there is no cookie banner, because there is nothing to consent to. There is no advertising, no retargeting pixel, and no tracker of any kind. Nothing you read here is shared with anybody.

This is not a policy position so much as a description of the code. You are welcome to check it: open the page source, or your browser's network tab, and see what loads.

If you give me your email address

There is one form on this site, on the book page, and it does one job: it takes an email address so I can tell you when the book is published.

• What is stored. The address you type, and the date you gave it. Nothing else. I do not ask for your name, your employer, or anything else, and there is no hidden field collecting something the form does not mention.
• What it is used for. Two emails: one straight away asking you to confirm the address is really yours, and one when the book launches. It is not a newsletter, there is no sequence, and the list is not used for anything else. That count is printed next to the form and it is meant literally.
• Who else sees it. The list is held with Buttondown, an email service, because the address has to live somewhere. They process it on my instruction and do not use it for their own purposes. Nobody else has it, and it is never sold, rented, or shared.
• How long it is kept. Until the launch email goes out, or until you ask me to delete it, whichever comes first. There is no reason to keep it after that.

Getting your address back out

The unsubscribe link in the email removes you immediately, and you can use it the moment it arrives. You can also write and ask me at any time to tell you what is held, correct it, or delete it, and I will do it without asking why.

Depending on where you live you may have those rights in law rather than as a courtesy. It makes no difference to how I will answer.

One thing your browser does reach for

In the interests of not glossing over the awkward bit: the three typefaces this site uses are loaded from Google Fonts. That means your browser makes a request to a Google server when a page loads, and Google can see your IP address as a result. It is not something I ask for and I receive nothing from it, but it is a third party your browser contacts on this site's behalf, and this page would be dishonest if it did not say so.

If this changes

If this site ever starts collecting something else, this page changes at the same time as the thing that collects it, not afterwards. If you have given me an address and the change affects it, you get told.