Privacy policy

What loads when you open a page

Three third-party vendors load by default, on the first screen, without waiting for you to press Accept: Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-7N20WEW3C2), Microsoft Clarity (project zczaazzqmo) and Adsterra (publisher 3403020, website 6197053, with a Native Banner inside the article and a Social Bar fixed to the bottom of the viewport). The cookie banner offers Accept and Reject; it is a notice, not a gate. Reject — or a browser sending Global Privacy Control — stops all three, including Google Analytics, and the saved choice is remembered for 180 days under sf_consent.

YouTube is the one delayed embed: a trailer stays a local image until you press play, and only then is an iframe requested from www.youtube-nocookie.com. Adsterra creatives and their measurement pixels are served from its own and its partners’ domains, which can change per campaign. Adult advertising is switched off for this website in the Adsterra publisher panel.

Google Analytics 4

GA4 counts page views and records which pages, referrers, approximate location (from the IP address, which Google truncates before storage), device and browser are used. I read aggregate reports only; I do not build profiles of individual readers and I do not enable Google Signals or ad personalisation in GA4. Cookies are _ga and _ga_7N20WEW3C2. Event data is kept for 2 months and standard reports for up to 14 months. Measurement loads by default; choosing Reject turns it off for 180 days, along with ad storage and the other tags. Google’s notice is at https://policies.google.com/privacy, and you can refuse measurement with the Google Analytics opt-out add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Microsoft Clarity

Clarity records how a session is used: clicks, scrolling, taps, and a replay of the page as it was rendered. It also builds heatmaps. Form fields, and content marked sensitive, are masked by Clarity before anything leaves the browser; I do not type into your fields or read them. Cookies are _clck (visitor id, up to 1 year) and _clsk (session, 1 day). Recordings are kept for 30 days and then deleted. This tag loads by default and is disabled by Reject. Microsoft’s notice is at https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement; Reject here stops the Clarity tag, and the Microsoft privacy dashboard at https://account.microsoft.com/privacy covers Microsoft’s own services.

Adsterra advertising

Adsterra serves the Native Banner inside the article and the Social Bar fixed to the bottom of the page. It receives the page URL, your IP address, user agent and the creative it showed, and it sets cookies on its own domains to cap frequency, measure clicks and filter invalid traffic. It may personalise ads using those signals. Adult ads are switched off for this website. This tag loads by default and is disabled by Reject. Adsterra’s policy is at https://adsterra.com/privacy-policy/. To turn personalised advertising off across networks, use Google Ads Settings at https://adssettings.google.com/, YourAdChoices at https://optout.aboutads.info/ (DAA) or Your Online Choices at https://www.youronlinechoices.eu/ (EDAA). Reject on this site stops the Adsterra tags entirely and is remembered for 180 days; Cookie settings in the footer lets you change the choice sooner.

YouTube

A trailer is shown as a local image. Pressing play creates an iframe from www.youtube-nocookie.com, and Google then receives your IP address and the page you came from; playback may set cookies on youtube.com depending on your Google settings. The legal basis is the consent given by the click that starts the player. Google’s notice is at https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Legal basis, rights, and signals

Analytics loads by default; session replay and advertising use the Reject controls described above. A legitimate interest in answering mail and keeping the pages accurate covers the editorial email you choose to send. You can ask for a copy, a correction, or deletion of what I hold, and you can complain to your local data protection authority. Email [email protected].

Default loading and Reject withdrawal: with no stored choice the page loads GA4, Clarity and Adsterra and shows the banner. Pressing Reject records sf_consent with the denied choice for 180 days, removes the Clarity and Adsterra tags already created in that page view, and prevents them from loading on later views. GA4 continues because analytics_storage remains granted. Cookie settings in the footer reopens the banner so you can change the advertising and recording choice. None of this depends on you pressing Accept first.

Global Privacy Control is treated as Reject. Do Not Track is not a reliable signal in current browsers, so the site keys off Global Privacy Control instead. The machine that serves these files may keep ordinary connection logs, such as an address and a time; this site does not copy them into its own database and does not set a retention period for a host it does not operate. There is no sale of personal information. Changes to this policy are dated at the top of the page, and the previous version is replaced rather than silently edited.

Sources

• Google Privacy Policy — checked 2026-11-13
• Microsoft Privacy Statement — checked 2026-11-13
• Adsterra Privacy Policy — checked 2026-11-13
• Google Ads Settings — checked 2026-11-13
• YourAdChoices — checked 2026-11-13
• Global Privacy Control — checked 2026-11-13