Privacy notice

This Web site is owned and operated by me, Jonathan Rothwell, in the United Kingdom. It is hosted by Ghost Foundation on their servers in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Visitors are counted using Plausible which is hosted in Germany.

The last update to this privacy notice was on 6 January 2024.

It will be applied according to the laws of England and Wales. At the time of writing, this includes the Data Protection Act 2018 (the UK's implementation of GDPR). For the purpose of the Data Protection Act, I, Jonathan Rothwell, am the data controller.

You can ask questions about this policy by sending a mail to me at this domain.

Data collected about site members

You can become a member of this Web site, and may do so by entering your email address, which is then stored on file. At this point, Ghost will also collect the country you appear to be in.

Your email address will only be used for the purposes outlined below. It will never be shared with anyone else.

Subscribing (receiving posts via email)

If you choose to receive posts via email ('subscribing') then Ghost will use your email address to email you when a new post is published, as you asked.

You can turn this off at any time by using the Unsubscribe link in the emails, logging into the website and turning email subscriptions off, or deleting your account.

Commenting (writing comments on posts)

You need to become a member of the site to be able to write comments on posts. If you choose to do this, Ghost will also collect:

Your display name, which can be an alias or pseudonym
Your 'expertise', or a subtitle that you can put under your name
The contents of your comment
The Gravatar associated with your email address.

These will be used to display your comment on the Web site.

Your email address will not be made public. However:

Ghost will use it to tell you when someone replies to your comment
I may use it to follow up a conversation thread privately—for instance, if someone is abusing the commenting system and I need to ask them to stop

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Be careful! Although people need an account to write a comment, no-one needs an account to read comments. You should assume that comment you write will be available on the public Internet, along with your display name, 'expertise'/subtitle, and Gravatar photo. Although you can delete the comment from the site (or ask me to do it), since it will have been visible to the public, I cannot guarantee it will disappear from the Internet: it could have been archived or screenshotted elsewhere and stay online forever. Poster beware.

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Abuse Policy: If you abuse the comment system, for instance by posting offensive remarks or harrassing people, I (a) will immediately revoke your privilege to write comments and remove your membership from the site, (b) reserve the right to retain your name, email address, and the offending comments for future reference.

What constitutes abuse of the comment system shall be at my sole discretion as the Web site's owner and operator.

Your options if you are concerned about privacy

You should consider using a free email-forwarding anonymiser service ('burner' email) if you want to sign up as a member but not give me or anyone else access to your usual email address.

You can delete your comments by clicking the ellipsis icon next to a comment and clicking the delete button.

You can delete your data at any time by logging in as an existing user to the Web site and deleting your account.

Data collected in aggregate about visitors

When you visit this Web site, some anonymous usage data is collected by Plausible. This is anonymous. You can review Plausible's data policy here. In the interests of transparency, you can view the dashboard itself here.

Plausible only stores data in aggregate. It does not store IP addresses, user agent strings, or anything else that might be used to identify you. It does not track you, nor does it store any cookies on your computer.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

6 January 2024

Remove a section of passive voice to indicate that Ghost is what sends emails to subscribers when new posts are made
Emphasise that people can use a pseudonym to write comments

23 April 2023

Clarified that what constitutes abuse of the commenting system is at the sole discretion of me as the site owner.
Clarified that I am the data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018.

14 September 2022

Clarified the wording around comment reply notifications (which need people's email addresses.)

30 August 2022

Updated when website commenting was turned on.

12 February 2022

Updated to reflect the addition of visitor counting using Plausible.