Privacy

Analytics here are self-hosted. The tracker script and the endpoint it reports to are both served from a path on this domain, and the web server passes those two requests to an analytics application on the same machine over a loopback address. No third-party analytics hostname appears in the markup of any page.

Two reasons, and it is fair to state both. One is that a single external hostname repeated across a group of sites is the easiest way for an outsider to link them together. The other is that a first-party tracker means a page view is recorded by the server that served the page, with no request leaving to a company unconnected to this site. The identifier for this website is not a secret: it is an attribute on a script tag anyone viewing source can read.

The analytics application receives what any web server receives: the page address, the address you came from if your browser sent one, your browser's first language, your user agent string and your IP address. Requests reach this site through a content delivery network, so the connecting address is read from the header that network sets. The application derives a visitor identifier by hashing the website, hostname, IP address and user agent together. No name or account is attached, because the site holds none of those about a reader.

Every commercial outbound link leaves through a redirect of the form /go/ plus a brand name. When that address is requested, the server records one event called offer-click, carrying the brand name, the redirect path, the referring page and the same language, user agent and IP fields as above. Then it redirects.

That event is sent from the server rather than from your browser, and the reasons cut both ways. A click handler in the page races the navigation it is attached to, so a share of clicks is lost and that share is neither known nor stable. Any blocker that stops the tracker would also stop the click event, making the count lowest for exactly the privacy-minded readers this kind of site attracts.

The honest consequence, and it belongs here rather than in a footnote: a reader who blocks the page tracker still generates this one event if they follow a commercial link, because the recording happens on the server that issues the redirect. The event is bounded by a timeout of just over a second and every failure is discarded, so a failed recording still sends the reader on.

Nothing in this site's own code writes a cookie or stores anything in your browser. There are no accounts, no logins, no comment forms and no newsletter sign-up, so there is no field on this domain for a personal detail, and no advertising network, pixel or session-replay tool.

We also cannot see anything that happens after you leave. When a reader follows a link to an operator, that operator's own privacy policy applies there. We receive no account information back and hold none.

• No cookies set by this site's code
• No accounts, forms, or newsletter
• No advertising, pixels, heatmaps or session replay
• No third-party scripts loaded from other hosts
• No data sold, shared or used to identify a reader

The editorial address on the contact page is an ordinary mailbox. If you write to it, we hold your message and your address for as long as it takes to deal with the point raised, and longer where it led to a correction, so a change to a page can be traced later. We do not add correspondents to any list, because there is no list.

If you block the tracker, the site works exactly as it does otherwise: nothing here is gated behind analytics. Because it is served from this domain rather than a known analytics host, some blocking lists will not catch it. That is a consequence of self-hosting rather than an attempt to defeat anything, and it is why this page sets out the arrangement in detail.