Privacy
Short version: I have no idea who you are, or where you're from.
Analytics
There aren't any. No Google Analytics, no Plausible, no goatcounter, nothing at all. I don't know how many people read this, which pages they open, or where they came from. When I first started blogging, I used to care about this stuff. If you were that solitary reader in Peru back in 2017, then you made me feel good because my words had travelled a long way. I hope you're still out there. I genuinely don't know.
Cookies
None. This site doesn't set a single one.
What does get stored
IF you click the dark mode button, your choice is saved in your browser's local
storage, under theme-mode, so the site looks the way you left it next time.
It stays on your device. It never reaches me or anyone else, and nothing but
this site can read it. Clear your browser data and it's gone.
If you don't click it, nothing is stored at all.
Third parties
There are none inside the page. No fonts from Google, no scripts from a CDN, no embedded video, no share buttons, no comment system. Every file a page loads comes from this domain.
There are ordinary links out to GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, CRAN and Buttondown. Those do nothing until you click one, and after that you're on their site under their privacy policies.
Server logs
The site is static files hosted by Netlify, a US company, and web servers generally keep logs. Those sit on Netlify's infrastructure. Here is their privacy policy which covers what they do with that information.
Netlify also provides an analytics product. I don't use it.
Mail to john@johnmackintosh.com is forwarded by Namecheap, the domain registrar, so it passes through their servers on the way to my inbox.
Once it's there, and I manage to find it in amongst the spam, bills, and content creators trying to sell me stuff I don't need at prices I can't afford, I'll respond, and usually that will be that. (Unless it's about a very specific plot I made in ggplot2 years ago, that one always seems to generate an email trail). Anyway, the point is it's a personal communication between you and me, your email address is not forwarded on anywhere else.
I do have a (woefully underactive) email list via Buttondown. Your email doesn't get added to it unless you actively subscribe to it. At present, I do not have the live subscription link on this site, because it turns out I am terrible at writing newsletters. (I've only written two, and the second one was to apologise for being so slow to follow up on the first one).
Comments
There's no comment system, so there's nothing to moderate and nothing to store.
If I find a privacy respecting system that works for me, this may change. Until then, email remains the way to get in touch.
If this changes
If I ever add analytics, this page will be updated to reflect that.
Last updated 5 September, 2026.