Reading the site
- The site sets no cookies and uses no analytics, advertising or tracking.
- Every page, font, script and the search index are served from this site itself, so reading it makes no request to another company. Search runs in your browser; what you type is not sent anywhere.
- The site’s web host receives the technical details that every web request carries, such as your IP address and the page asked for.
- The filters on the question and evidence pages keep your choices in the page address only, so you can share or bookmark them.
- Links to original sources take you to other sites, which have their own policies.
Forms and email
- What you send through a form (and your name and email address, if you give them) is stored in the site’s database at Google Firebase, the site’s host, and read by the editors. Messages are never published, and email addresses are never shown on the site; a name appears in a change log only if you ask for credit.
- Your email address is used only to send a receipt and a reply about your message, or, if you follow a question, to confirm the address and to tell you when that question’s status changes. It is not added to any newsletter and not shared.
- Emails are sent from the editors’ mailbox at Spacemail, the site’s email provider. Mail you send to the editors is stored there and in the same database.
- Instead of a third-party captcha, the form has your browser solve a small computing puzzle, so a form loads nothing from another company.
- To limit abuse, your IP address is turned into a one-way code to count submissions, and that code is deleted after two days; the address itself is not stored.
- Messages are deleted a year after they have been dealt with, and unconfirmed follow requests after seven days. Every follow email has a link to stop, which deletes your address for that question.
Before anything changes
This page will be updated, naming the service, before a newsletter sign-up or analytics is added.
Questions about privacy: write to the editors.