Privacy

Short version: I have no idea who you are, or where you're from.

Analytics

There aren't any. No Google Analytics, and nothing tracking individual users. 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. Mainly to make sure I wasn't completely wasting my time writing posts no one ever read. I don't care any more.

I do use Google Search Console to see how this site appears in Google search. It shows me totals for searches and clicks, never anything about individual people, and nothing is added to this site to make it work.

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 and CRAN. 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.

Email

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.

Mailing list

I don't have one. I used to have a (woefully underactive) email list via Buttondown. I've closed it and deleted it, along with everyone's details, because it turns out I am terrible at writing newsletters. (I only wrote three. The first one was quite good. The second one was to apologise for being so slow to follow up on the first one. The third one was even slower, and shut the whole thing down).

I absolutely do not have a mailing list with TinyLetter. If you are on what looks like my site, and there is a sign-up for a mailing list via TinyLetter, you are on the wrong site. See this post for more explanation.

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 15 October, 2026.