Privacy

Analytics

This site runs Google Analytics. I use it to see which articles get read and which ones don't, because that changes what I write next. That's the whole reason it's here.

It records the pages you open, roughly when, the site or search that sent you, your device and browser, and a country-level location worked out from your IP address. Google doesn't give me your IP address and doesn't give me your name. What I see is counts and patterns, not you.

To do that it puts a random identifier in your browser so a second page view can be matched to the first. It's a number with no meaning outside Google's system, and I have no way to turn it back into a person.

Google processes this on my behalf, on servers outside Australia, under its own terms and privacy policy. Advertising features, remarketing and Google Signals are switched off, so nothing here feeds ad targeting.

Turning it off. Any content blocker or privacy-focused browser will stop the tag loading. Google also publishes a browser opt-out add-on that blocks it everywhere, not just here. Either works, neither costs you anything on this site, and nothing on the page behaves differently if you use them.

The fonts are served from this site rather than a font service, so opening a page doesn't announce you to a font host on top of everything else.

Writing to me

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, what it's about and a message. All four go to my inbox. The form is delivered by Web3Forms, a relay that turns the submission into an email and passes it on. It's a processor in the middle of the pipe, not a marketing platform, and its copy of your message is purged after seven days. After that the only copy is the one in my inbox.

What I hold

Your name, your email address and what you wrote.

Why

To reply to you, and to keep the thread if the conversation continues.

How long

Seven days at the relay, then it's gone from there. In my inbox, as long as the conversation is live. Ask me to delete it and I will.

Who else sees it

Nobody. It isn't shared, sold or passed to a colleague.

You aren't added to anything by writing to me. No newsletter, no follow-up sequence, no list. If you want to hear when something is published, the RSS feed does that without me knowing you subscribed.

Cookies and what your browser keeps

Five things are written to your device. Here they are in full.

rk-seen

Not a cookie. A value in your tab's session storage that notes you've already seen one page, so the next one skips the opening animation. It's never sent with a request and I never see it.

rk-epoch

Not a cookie. Session storage again: the moment the moving background started, so it carries on from the same place when you change page. Never sent.

rk-drift

Not a cookie. Session storage: where the background had drifted to under your pointer, for the same reason. Never sent.

_ga

Google Analytics. The random identifier that lets a second page view be matched to the first. Expires after two years.

_ga_…

Google Analytics. Holds the state of your current visit for this property. Expires after two years.

That's the whole list. Nothing else is written to your device: no advertising cookies, no third-party cookies, nothing that follows you to another site. Closing the tab removes the first three. Clearing site data for iamramiz.com removes all five, and a content blocker stops the two Analytics cookies being set at all.

What loads from elsewhere

One other server is involved in loading a page. The Google Analytics tag comes from Google. Requesting a file from another server means that server sees your IP address, your browser's user agent and the page you asked from. That's true of every hosted script, and that one is the only one here.

Sending the contact form is the other time your browser talks to someone else: the message goes straight to Web3Forms, as described above. Nothing reaches them until you press send.

There are no embedded videos, no social widgets, no comment system, no chat bubble, no advertising network and no fonts pulled from a font host. If a page ever needs one, it will be named here before it ships.

Server logs

The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like every web host, Cloudflare records the requests it answers: IP address, timestamp, the page requested and the user agent. Those logs exist so the site can be kept up and abuse can be stopped. I don't join them to anything or use them to build a profile of you, and Cloudflare keeps them only briefly.

What you can ask for

Write to me and ask what I hold about you, ask for a copy, ask me to correct it or ask me to delete it. I'll do it, and I won't ask you to prove anything unreasonable first. There's no form and no ticket queue. It's one person and an inbox.

Analytics is the one thing I can't do that with. There's no name attached to it, so I have no way to find your rows and no way to hand them over or delete them on request. The opt-out above is the real control there, and it's a better one.

This site is run by an individual in Melbourne, Australia. If you're in the EU or the UK, the rights the GDPR gives you (access, correction, deletion, objection) are the ones described above, and you're welcome to use those words when you ask.

When this changes

If what the site does changes, this page changes with it and the review date at the top moves. There's no version history to dig through, because there's very little here to version.

Write to me if any of this is unclear, or if you think something on the site is doing more than this page admits to.