Privacy policy
Who and what
You are reading the privacy policy for https://theapiarist.org
I (David Evans) am the site owner. If you have a problem with any privacy issues on this site, please email me directly.
What personal data is collected and why?
The only personal data I collect and am interested in is that needed to make the newsletter subscriptions work and to count page visits to this site. Therefore, if you register as a subscriber (free) or sponsor (paid) the only data I collect is:
- your email address
- your name
- your membership status (free or paid) and whether you have opted in to receive newsletters
- the date you registered
- the email open rate. This is the percentage of email ('newsletters') that are received and opened. I need to know which posts are popular and determine if I am sending emails which are never opened.
- the country you signed up from (determined from your IP address)
- Stripe (my payment processor) records additional details needed to process your card payment
Items 1 and 2 are provided by you if/when you register, 3 and 4 are recorded by Ghost during registration, and items 5 and 6 are determined from your visits to the site.
If you email me, I record the email address you provide.
If I didn't, how would I reply?
What do I do with this personal data?
Other than use it to ensure the functionality of the site, nothing.
I do not share or sell any of your personal data, either individually attributable or cumulatively.
Advertising and affiliate links
This site carries no advertising and there are no affiliate links. There is no sponsorship. In addition, there are no guest posts.
Site visitors, whether subscribers or not, have the option to support my writing by 'Buying me a coffee' via embedded links on the site. The privacy policy of Buy me a coffee can be viewed here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/privacy-policy.
Analytics
I use first-party, cookie-free analytics to understand how visitors and members interact with content on this website. When you’re logged in as a member (subscriber or sponsor), we may record which posts you view to help improve your experience and better understand what content is most engaging.
In addition, I use Goatcounter (again, cookie-free) to count visitors for comparison with historic data. Goatcounter collects no personal data, it does not track you from site to site, and only records page views, country of origin, operating system, screen size and browser type. All this data is cumulative and cannot be attributed to individual visitors.
None of this data is ever shared with third parties.
Ghost
This site runs on Ghost. You can see Ghost's privacy policy here: https://ghost.org/privacy/.
Comments
Many posts have a comments section at the end. I use a third party commenting system (FastComments). Only signed in subscribers (free) and sponsors (paid) can read or leave comments. Your email and name are automagically used to log you into the commenting system. You should read the FastComments Privacy Policy if needed.
I reserve the right to edit or delete comments that are inappropriate, contain personal information, or are otherwise unsuitable. Any comments that contain advertising or are obviously generated with AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini etc) will be deleted. I will not engage in correspondence to justify why a comment has been deleted, other than to state that 'it was considered unsuitable'.
All comments are moderated before they appear online. If you edit a comment after publication, it will join the queue to be moderated again.
Stripe
Sponsor payments are handled by Stripe. Stripe uses cookies and its cookie policy is here: https://stripe.com/gb/legal/cookies-policy. Sponsors might also want to view Stripe's Privacy policy, https://stripe.com/gb/privacy.
Stripe monitors suspicious or suspected fraudulent use of credit/debit cards, and flags suspicious activity. If this happens with your payment it will probably be refunded, and you will be blocked by Stripe, rather than entering into a lengthy (and costly) dispute resolution.
Embedded media
Posts on this site may include embedded content (videos, images, articles, etc.).
Embedded content from other websites behaves in the same way as if you visit the origin website directly.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies and embed additional third-party tracking. They may monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
I cannot control this, but do my best to minimise this type of embedded content.
How long do I keep your data?
If you leave a comment here, the comment is retained indefinitely, even if you stop being a subscriber or sponsor.
If you register as a subscriber or sponsor, I store your name, email address and the other data mentioned in the list above (items 1 to 6) as a user profile. Additional details may also be recorded by Stripe for card payment processing.
You can unsubscribe at any time. All emails and newsletters carry a link to unsubscribe.
When you stop being a registered user, the user profile is deleted and cannot be recovered.
What rights do you have over the data?
The only data recorded is what is listed above. If you want to check, I'm happy to send you a copy of what is on file. You can also request that I erase your data at any point. Doing so will unsubscribe you.
That's it.