Privacy

The short version

There is no sign-up here, no comment box, and no form of any kind — nowhere on the site is there a field for you to type into. Nothing is kept in your browser unless you ask for it: the theme, if you pick one, and your answer to the question below.

Nothing loads from anyone else, either. The fonts, the analytics script and the images all come from this domain, off one server I rent. There is no content delivery network, no tag manager, no embedded player and no social button — so there is no third party in the request for anything to be handed to.

Measured on every visit

Visits are counted by Umami, an open-source analytics tool running on the same server as the site. It is how I know which writing gets read and which does not.

The page

Its address and title, the page that linked you here, your screen size, and the language your browser asks for.

Your country

Worked out from your address against a country database held on the server. The address is used for the lookup and is not kept.

Browser and system

Read from the request and kept as a category — “Firefox on macOS” — rather than as the line it was read from.

You are counted as one visitor within a calendar month and as a stranger the month after: the identifier is a one-way hash whose salt is discarded and replaced every month. That is deliberate. It is also why the monthly numbers here are honest and any rolling thirty-day window is not.

The basis for this part is my own legitimate interest in knowing whether what I write gets read. You can object to it; how is below.

Measured only if you say yes

The switch in the footer controls one extra report, sent once per visit. It is off until you turn it on, and everything above keeps working either way.

Your browser's full identification

The user-agent line itself, plus the exact version numbers that modern browsers no longer put in it.

Time zone and languages

Your IANA time zone, and the whole list of languages you accept rather than only the first.

Device class

Processor cores, memory tier, touch points and pixel density.

Automation signals

Whether the browser reports itself as being driven by a script.

Together these describe a device closely enough to recognize it again, which is precisely why they sit behind a question rather than in the section above. I use them to tell a reader from a crawler wearing a browser's name, and to see real version numbers instead of the categories the tool infers.

The basis for this part is your consent and nothing else, which is exactly why it starts switched off and why saying no costs you nothing.

The server's own log

The web server writes one line per request, as web servers do: the time, the path, the response code, the page you came from and your browser's identification. The address on that line has its last part zeroed before it is written, so the log records the network you arrived from and not the machine.

It is kept because it is the only place bots, broken links and outright errors are visible at all — analytics never sees them, because a crawler runs no scripts. The log rolls over as it fills rather than growing without end.

Where it lives, and for how long

Everything sits on one server I rent in Frankfurt, Germany, with its own database on the same machine. Nothing is copied anywhere else, and no processor is involved beyond the hosting company.

Analytics rows are deleted once they turn twenty-four months old, on a schedule, and a backup is taken immediately before each clearing. Server log lines roll over long before that, as the log fills.

Turning it off

Each of these switches off more than the one before it, and the site behaves identically whichever you use.

The extra report

The switch in the footer, on any page. Off is the default.

A browser-level opt-out

If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, or the older Do Not Track, you are never asked and the extra report never runs.

Analytics altogether

Set umami.disabled to 1 in this site's local storage and the script reports nothing at all. Any content blocker does the same.

None of it is needed for the site to work. Blocking all of it costs you nothing, and costs me only the numbers.

What you can ask for

Where the law behind this page applies to you, these are yours by right and not by my goodwill. All of them reach me the same way — by mail, at the address below.

Access

A copy of whatever is held that relates to you.

Correction and erasure

Fixing anything wrong, or deleting it outright.

Restriction and objection

Stopping a particular use, or objecting to the legitimate interest the everyday measurement rests on.

Portability

The same copy in a form you can take somewhere else.

Withdrawing consent

The switch in the footer, at any moment. It stops what happens next rather than undoing what already went, and nothing else on the site changes.

Complaining about me

If my answer does not satisfy you, take it to the data protection authority where you live. You need no agreement from me to do that.

Who is behind this

The site is run by one person, who is also the controller of everything described above: Dmitrii Utmanov (Dmitrii Cooler), coolerov333@gmail.com

Asking me about it

If you want to know what is held about you, or want it deleted, write and say so. coolerov333@gmail.com