Privacy
Short version: I have no idea who you are, or where you're from.
Analytics
There aren't any. 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. I can see search terms that direct people to this site, and that's about it. Although, in the AI age, hardly anyone visits websites any more, so currently, the number of clicks can be counted on one hand.
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. 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. There are ordinary links out to GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky and CRAN. Those do nothing until you click one.
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.
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).
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).
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. And don't try signing up to my newsletter on that site, because (a) TinyLetter no longer exists and (b) I don't have a newsletter. And also, (c) that's not my site. I hope this is clear.
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 21 October, 2026.