Privacy notice

This site sets no cookies, runs no advertising and has no cookie banner, because it has nothing to ask your permission for. It counts page views without tracking you, and it holds your email address only if you sign up to The Irregular and confirm. Nothing here is sold, shared for advertising or used to build a profile of you.

I’m Paul Taylor, and I’m the person responsible for your data on this site. You can reach me at paul@theaardvark.co.uk.

Why there are no cookies

It was deliberate. I strongly believe the web shouldn’t track you or mine you for any more information than it absolutely needs. Most of the web now follows you around. A single news article can load scripts from dozens of companies, each building a record of what you read, where you were, and what you looked at next, then selling access to that record. The pointless, EU mandated* cookie banner that’s supposed to give you a say usually does the opposite, with a bright “Accept all” button and the real choices three menus down.

I run a personal site. I want to know which posts get read, and that’s all. I don’t need to know who you are, and I don’t want the job of looking after a file on you. Data I never collect can’t leak, can’t be subpoenaed, can’t be sold when a company changes hands and can’t be misused by someone I’ll never meet. It also means you can read a post about pickled onions without a stranger learning something about you.

The same thinking applies to the tools. The stats service doesn’t track individuals, the fonts and scripts come from this site rather than a third party, and I’d rather lose a feature than add something that watches you. If that ever changes, this page changes first.

I can’t say “nothing leaves this site” with a straight face, though. A small number of posts embed content from elsewhere, mainly YouTube videos or my tunes on sales sites, and I explain below why that matters and what I’m doing about it.

Page counts

I use GoatCounter to see which posts get read. It sets no cookies and doesn’t follow you from site to site. It records the page you visited, the referring site, your browser and screen size, and a rough country. It doesn’t keep your IP address or build a profile of you, and it works without asking for consent because it doesn’t track individuals. The counts live at stats.aard.at.

Signing up to The Irregular

If you sign up, I ask for your email address and, if you give it, your first name. Here’s what happens next:

  1. I send you one email with a confirmation link. The link expires after 48 hours.
  2. I don’t store anything on a mailing list until you open the link and click the Confirm button. If you don’t, the address is removed when the link expires.
  3. Once you confirm, your address and first name go to Sender.net, the service I use to send the newsletter. They hold it on my behalf, and I use it for one thing only: sending you The Irregular.

Every email includes an unsubscribe link; using it removes you from the list. If you’d rather I deleted everything, email me, and I’ll do it.

To prevent form abuse, the sign-up page keeps a small record of how many attempts come from your address in a day. The address is scrambled (hashed) first, so the record can’t be reversed to your IP address.

What’s stored in your browser

I don’t set cookies. Two small settings can be saved in your browser’s local storage, and only when you use the feature:

  • Light or dark theme. Saved when you press the theme button, so the site remembers your choice.
  • Your Mastodon server. Saved when you use the Mastodon share button, so you don’t have to type it again.

Neither is sent to me. Clear your browser’s site data, and they’re gone.

The web server

The site is hosted with Krystal in the UK. Like any web host, their server keeps standard access logs (your IP address, the page requested, the time and your browser) for security and fault-finding. I don’t use those logs to track anyone.

Embedded content from other sites

This site has no comments (yet - I’m looking to find a system that’s in keeping with my policies here as I can get). A number of posts do embed content from other services, mostly YouTube videos, with the odd music player. Loading one of those puts a request to that company’s servers from your browser, and they can set their own cookies and record that you visited. I don’t control that, and it’s the one place on this site that isn’t as private as the rest.

YouTube videos now wait for you. Each one shows a plain placeholder with a “Play video” button and a link to watch on YouTube instead, and nothing is requested from YouTube until you press the button. The player then loads from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced address, youtube-nocookie.com. Other embeds, such as music players, still load as soon as the page does, and I’m looking at ways to cut that out too. Those services have their own privacy policies, and the only way to avoid them completely is to skip the posts that have one.

I used to load two Google fonts on one post. Fonts are a quiet way of telling a company which pages you read, so they’re now hosted on this site like everything else.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask to see the data I hold about you, correct it, or have it deleted. For the newsletter, unsubscribing is the quickest route. I hope you won’t ask, because it seems like a whole pile of work I’m not 100% sure how to do. But you’re legally entitled to do so. For anything else, email me. If you’re not happy with my answer, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Changes

If this notice changes in a way that matters, I’ll update the date below.

Last updated: 10 October 2026.

*I’m a big fan of the EU. I was gutted when the UK left. But not all of its decisions, and particularly the ones it makes around tech, are superb.