What is recorded about the reader

This site counts the pages it serves, and whether the browser reading one has been here before. It runs no third-party script and sends nothing to anyone. The counting is done by the site itself, on the same machine that serves it, and the whole of what it keeps is described here.

On a reader’s first page it sets one cookie, named visitor. It holds a random value the site made up, and nothing about the reader. It expires 13 months after it is set and is sent back only to this site. Search crawlers are not given one. Its only use is to tell a returning browser from a new one.

For each page served the site records the path, the hour, the referring site’s host, any campaign tag in the link, the browser’s identification, and the visitor cookie’s value if the browser sent one. It does not record the reader’s IP address. To tell two readers apart within a day, including browsers that refuse the cookie, it also stores a one-way digest of the IP address, the browser identification and a random value generated fresh each morning. The random value is deleted two days later, and from that point the digest cannot be matched to any IP address by anyone, including the author and including anyone who takes the database.

Per-page records are deleted after 90 days. What survives is a count per day: how many pages were served, how many readers they were served to, and how many of those readers were new or returning. For each visitor cookie a browser sends back, the site keeps the first and the last day it was seen, and deletes that record 13 months after the first, when the cookie has expired. The browser identifications are deleted with the page records that carried them.

To stop being recognized, delete the visitor cookie in the browser’s settings: the browser is then new to this site, and its old record is still deleted 13 months after the first day it was seen. To have the record deleted now, write to the author with the cookie’s value, as the browser shows it, and it will be removed.

The games under /games set two more cookies, and only on the pages a game is played on. One protects the game’s forms and expires 6 hours after it is set. The other keeps a phone’s seat in a room and expires with the room. The room and the names typed into it are deleted 6 hours after the room’s last change. Nothing about a game reaches the page counts.

A reader who leaves an email address on the signup form is kept as that email address and the lists they ticked, and nothing else: no name, no IP address, and nothing that ties it to the pages they read. Loading the form sets one more cookie, which holds the form’s protection against forged submissions, is sent back only to the form, and ends when the browser closes. No page but the signup form sets it. Nothing is sent to the email address until a list launches, and then only a request to confirm it, from that list. An email address that does not confirm is taken off that list, and is deleted when it is on no list. A list that is never launched is deleted, with every email address on it alone. To have an email address deleted sooner, write to the author from it, and it will be removed with its lists.

A reader who sends in a window on Cheap Date’s tip form is kept as what they typed and the time it arrived: what it is, where, the city, how much, who it is for, the source, and the email address if they left one. Nothing else: no name, no IP address, and nothing that ties it to the pages they read. The email address is not added to any list, and nothing is sent to it in bulk. The author writes to it once, by hand, about that tip. The tip is deleted, with its email address, once it has been handled, and nothing keeps a copy. Loading the form sets one more cookie, which holds the form’s protection against forged submissions, is sent back only to that form, and ends when the browser closes. To have a tip deleted sooner, write to the author from the email address on it.

Every form a reader can send limits how often one IP address may send it. The count is kept for ten minutes under a one-way digest of the address, made with a key only the site holds, and never under the address itself. The digest is deleted within a month.

The count is of requests, not of people, and it undercounts. A reader whose browser answers a second time from its own cache does not reach the server at all and is not counted again. Automated visitors — search crawlers and the like — are recorded and marked as such, and are excluded from every reader figure on the strength of a list of names the author maintains and knows to be incomplete.