Privacy

Analytics

I use Fathom Analytics to see basic traffic numbers like page views and referrers. Fathom is built around privacy: no cookies, no tracking you across sites, and they don't sell data. They do process your IP address and user-agent to count visits, which they treat as personal data under GDPR. For the specifics, read Fathom's privacy policy.

In your browser

A few of your own choices are saved in your browser's local storage rather than in cookies: whether you chose light or dark, which skin you picked, whether you turned animation off, and which posts you have liked. None of it is sent to my server, none of it identifies you, and clearing this site's data in your browser removes all of it.

Server logs

My web server writes a standard access log for every request: the page, the time, your IP address, your browser's user-agent, and the referring page if there is one. I use it to debug 404s, watch for malicious bot traffic, and check performance. Those lines are also copied over an encrypted connection to a machine in my own home, which is where I read them. They go nowhere else, are never shared, and are never used for marketing. The copy on the web server is discarded after about 30 days and the copy at home after 90. A nightly job condenses the logs into per-hour counts first, so I keep some sense of traffic history after that; those counts hold no IP addresses, no user agents, and nothing per-visitor.

Email subscriptions

If you subscribe by email, I store your address and a random unsubscribe token on my server. I use them only to send you new posts and process unsubscribe requests. I do my best to keep your address secure, and I will never share or sell it. The unsubscribe link in any email removes your data immediately.

Likes

Liking a post with the thumbs-up button stores nothing about you. To stop the same person liking a post over and over, my server keeps a one-way, salted hash of your IP address, never the address itself. Your browser also remembers your own likes locally so the button stays filled when you return. Likes are anonymous and show up as a generated icon, not a name or face.

Comments

If you leave a comment, I store the name you enter and an optional website, both shown publicly, plus an optional email that is never shown and only used so I can reply. Comments are moderated before they appear. To limit spam I use a hidden honeypot field and the same salted IP-hash as above, never your raw IP. If you give a website, I fetch your avatar from it and host it myself so the page makes no third-party request. If you don't have one, I generate it.

Webmentions

Replies, likes, reposts, and mentions of my posts can show up under the relevant post, whether they were sent directly from another website or made on Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixelfed, Flickr, Lemmy, Hacker News, or the Home Assistant community forum. This is public activity you chose to make, and only public activity is collected: direct messages and followers-only posts never are. They arrive either as a webmention to my own server or by my site checking those accounts for responses to my posts; I display the author's name, avatar, and any reply text. I download and host those avatars myself so the page makes no third-party request. If you delete a reply or undo a like or boost on one of those platforms, it disappears here too, usually within a day. A webmention from a website goes away when the page is deleted and the webmention is sent again. If you would rather your interaction not appear here at all, let me know and I will remove it.

Changelog

• 10/04/2026 Webmentions: list every network interactions come from, state that only public posts are collected, and that deleting a reply or undoing a like removes it here
• 09/20/2026 Add a browser-storage section (theme, skin, motion, likes); correct Server logs: access logs run continuously rather than being turned on occasionally, are copied to a machine in my home, and are kept 30 days on the server and 90 days at home
• 06/26/2026 Clarify email addresses are kept secure and never shared; correct Analytics claim (Fathom processes IP/user-agent as personal data)
• 06/10/2026 Add Likes, Comments, and Webmentions sections
• 04/05/2026 Add email subscriptions section
• 02/01/2026 Remove Buttondown; add technical logging section