Privacy
My commitment to privacy
I believe individuals on the internet have a fundamental right to privacy.
By default, you should be able to browse the web without worrying about invasive behaviour identifying you and tracking your activity. If you have an account or agreement with an online service, you should be able to understand what data is being collected about you and how it is being used.
While I can’t directly stop activity that goes against these values, I can at least uphold them on my own website.
I’ve put this document together to be open about how I operate and the steps I take to uphold privacy principles.
Browsing nicholas.cloud
I use a number services to operate my website.
Plausible Analytics
I’ve started self-hosting a Plausible Analytics recently because I’m interested in finding out more about my website’s visitors. Their data policy describes the data this self-hosted instance collects and how it’s used.
While they have a strong stance on end user privacy, you can opt out of these analytics by adding the domain plausible.nicholas.cloud to your adblocker, or disabling JavaScript while you browse my site.
Cloudflare
All traffic to my website travels through Cloudflare. You can find more about how they operate and the data they collect in their privacy policy, particularly around data collected about “End Users”.
Reading my newsletter
I send out a semi-regular newsletter to readers who opt in to receive it. Every newsletter includes a link to unsubscribe.
Mailgun
I use Mailgun to send these newsletters, and manage the list of subscribed readers. You can read their privacy policy to understand how they manage data stored on their platform.
I only keep a record of email addresses that have subscribed/unsubscribed. I don’t use tracking pixels or targeted links to track reader activity.