This is a static website which means it does not use databases or server-side programming to generate content on the fly. The files that run this website are universal and generated before hand. They are simply delivered to you on demand. As a result of this secure one-way set-up, no personally identifiable data is ever collected or used by this website. Read on for a full explanation or skip to the TL;DR at the end.

Although we have no interest in collecting or using your personal data, this website interacts with third-party services and below is a description of what data is collected and/or used by these services and how. Remember that there is nothing this website can do about data used by third-party services as their use of data is governed by their own terms of service and privacy policies. But first let us talk about our use of service workers.

This website uses service workers. Chris Love explains service workers thusly:

Service workers are this wonderful new web platform feature that lights up some great functionality like URL response caching. This caching is the magic that enables progressive web applications to work offline.

The idea behind service workers is to speed up loading of this website and make past pages available offline. The first part was accomplished by caching before—and still is—but caching gives developers poor control and promises weak persistence of data. Service workers are generally more reliable. The second part is unique to service workers: if you visit a bunch of pages on this website or read a handful of articles, those articles will be available for you to view even when you are offline. Try it now: turn off your internet connection and refresh this page and it will load just fine.

Service workers do not make this site available offline eternally, however. In the interest of updating changes and the possibility that you have lost interest in this site nothing is stored for long after you stop visiting this site. In short, service workers improve your experience on this site without harming your system in any way or invading your privacy.

We use Google Analytics to monitor the popularity and readership demographics of this website. This is used for entirely non-commercial purposes, mainly to ensure the visibility of this website online. Analytics helps ensure that this website is generally accessible to people interested in its content, that it is usable on mobile devices, and that there are no glaring code errors that make it hard to use or index.

We use a tracking cookie i.e. a cookie that helps track user behaviour on the site. These type of cookie is used by nearly every website you visit and, on this website at least, are not of concern as they do not identify you personally. We may find, via analytics, that more people in one country visited this website on a given day than another, but no data on these individual visitors will every be collected or tracked. Further, you are not tracked after you leave this website.

For more information please read the Google Analytics terms of service. Keep in mind that we respect your preferences: if you block tracking at your browser level or operating system level, no Analytics monitoring will occur on this website.

We may embed tweets for which Twitter will serve some of its own javascript. Or we may embed a Youtube or Vimeo video in which case those companies will serve their scripts.

We do our best to ensure that in most cases a tweet and its embedded page on this site are not used for purposes that include personalised suggestions and personalised ads from Twitter. Likewise we do our best to ensure that in most cases YouTube does not store your information on this website for their own analytics and personalised ads unless you play a YouTube video embedded on this site. Unfortunately, YouTube gives neither us nor you enough control in that there is no way to watch a YouTube video if we decline consent to such personalised ads and analytics.

Along the same lines—although much more leniently—Vimeo, Apple (Music) and others have their own terms of use as does any other service platform whose content may be displayed from time to time as necessary on this website. Please consult these third-party services to better understand how they use data as this is not under the control of this website.

If you subscribe to our quarterly newsletter (you can subscribe right now for free if you have not done so already) your e-mail will be processed through, and saved in, the Mailchimp newsletter management suite. This is safe and secure and private (for example, Mailchimp does not use your e-mail to market to you). Every e-mail you receive after subscribing on this website will carry an unsubscribe link that will let you stop subscription and delete your e-mail from the mailing list in a couple of clicks, without having to talk to someone about it. Although you are free to update your subscriber profile via Mailchimp this website never asks for anything but your e-mail address and, in fact, strongly discourages you from building your profile unless you absolutely feel the need to. You need not provide any personal information to subscribe to our newsletter besides the e-mail address where you would like to receive our newsletter.

Here is an honest summary of our privacy policy:

• We do not collect or use your personal data on this site
• We use service workers to cache some core portions of this website, speed up page load times and make parts of this site available to you offline.
• We use Google Analytics to better understand our readership/visitors without ever personally identifying them
• We may embed works posted to social media platforms (e.g. Youtube, Vimeo) or service offerings (e.g. Apple Music) in which case they will serve their scripts and your use of these embeds etc., regardless of your direct interaction with them, will be governed by the policies of their respective platforms of origin
• We use technology as an enabler and try to strike a balance by minimising tracking as this website is fundamentally against privacy-invading features: we try to use session storage over cookies where possible, and prevent tracking except on direct interaction as far as possible, and we use third-party services only when necessary
• If you subscribe to our newsletter, your e-mail will be stored safely and privately with Mailchimp who will themselves never use your e-mail address in any way except to send you our newsletter

At the end of the day, a lot of the features we use are either to improve your experience on this site or to improve the functionality of this website itself. None of it is directly harmful to you as a user or to your system.

Enjoy this website and have a lovely day.