Privacy & Cookies

This is a personal site. It exists to start a conversation, not to build a profile of you. Nothing that measures or tracks you loads until you say yes, and saying no is one click that costs you nothing.

1. Who is responsible

Doron Segal is the data controller for this site (and, in the language of the US state privacy laws, the "business"). The fastest way to reach me about anything on this page — a question, a request, a complaint — is doron@segaldoron.com.

There is no dedicated Data Protection Officer, because this is a one-person site that does not carry out large-scale monitoring or process special categories of data. If that changes, this page changes with it.

2. What happens before you choose

Before you touch the consent banner, three things happen, none of which profile you:

• Hosting. The site runs on Cloudflare Pages. Like every web server on earth, it processes your IP address, the page you asked for, your user agent and a timestamp in order to deliver the page and to absorb attacks. Cloudflare keeps these logs briefly for security and abuse prevention. This is not optional — without it, there is no way to serve you a page at all.
• Fonts. The typeface is loaded from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com), which means your IP address is visible to Google when the font is fetched. No cookie is set by this request. If you would rather this did not happen, a content blocker will stop it and the site falls back to your system font with no loss of function.
• Your own browser storage. The consent decision itself, and a note that you dismissed the "book a call" nudge, are stored locally on your device. They are never sent anywhere.

That is the whole picture until you make a choice. No analytics identifier is created, no advertising cookie is set, and no request is made to Google Analytics.

3. Cookies and similar technologies

"Cookies" here is shorthand for cookies, localStorage, sessionStorage and anything else that reads from or writes to your device.

Always on — strictly necessary

These are exempt from consent because the site cannot honour your wishes without them. They do not track you across sites and are never shared.

Only after you opt in — analytics

Choosing Analytics loads Google Analytics. It sets the cookies _ga and _ga_WLC8ZH24QM, which give your browser a random identifier so repeat visits can be counted as one person rather than several. Google's documented lifetime for these is up to two years. What it records is what the banner says: which pages are read, which links and downloads are clicked, and which site or search sent you here. Concretely that is three events — a page view, a field-guide download (file_download), and a click on a booking link (book_appointment) — each tagged with the section of the site and the language you are reading in. I use this to learn which writing is worth continuing — not to identify you.

Only after you opt in — advertising

Choosing Advertising additionally permits marketing tags to set advertising identifiers (for example _gcl_au, typically 90 days) and to measure campaigns. This category is off by default, is never bundled into the analytics choice, and stays off entirely if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal.

4. Google Analytics and Consent Mode

Google Analytics 4 (property G-WLC8ZH24QM) is the only measurement tool on this site. There is no tag manager, no heatmap tool, no session recorder and no advertising pixel. It is wired so that:

• Google Consent Mode v2 is initialised in the denied state — ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization, analytics_storage, functionality_storage and personalization_storage all off — before any tag can read it.
• gtag.js is not even downloaded until you grant at least one category. Most sites load it immediately and rely on Consent Mode alone to hold the data back. This one does both, so a visitor who says no makes no request to Google at all.
• Your decision is pushed to the data layer as a consent_state event, so anything added later inherits the same gate rather than needing to be remembered.

Where Google acts as my processor it does so under Google's data processing terms; where Google acts as an independent controller for its own advertising purposes, that only becomes possible if you switch on the advertising category.

5. If you subscribe by email

The subscribe box is the only place this site asks you for anything. If you use it:

• Your email address, the page you subscribed from and a timestamp are stored in Cloudflare Workers KV.
• A notification is sent to me through Mailgun so I know someone signed up.
• A hidden field in the form catches bots, and an hourly per-IP counter limits abuse. Both exist to protect the form, not to profile you.

I use the address for one thing: sending the essays you asked for. It is not sold, rented, or shared for anyone else's marketing. Email me and I will delete you from the list — no dark patterns, no "are you sure" chain. Otherwise the address is kept until you ask for it to go or the list is retired.

6. Why we are allowed to do this

Under the GDPR and UK GDPR, every use of your data needs a legal basis. Here they are, plainly:

• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — analytics, advertising, and sending you the newsletter. Freely given, specific, informed, unambiguous, and withdrawable at any time without penalty. Withdrawing does not undo what was lawful before you withdrew.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — serving the pages, keeping the site up, and stopping abuse of the subscribe form. My interest is running a working, non-abused website; the impact on you is minimal and no profiling is involved.

There is no automated decision-making and no profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

7. Where the data goes

The providers behind this site — Cloudflare, Mailgun and, if you allow it, Google — are US-headquartered and operate global infrastructure, so data may be processed outside your country, including in the United States. Those transfers rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, where the provider is certified, the EU–US, UK and Swiss Data Privacy Frameworks. You may ask me for details of the safeguards that apply.

8. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask me to do these things. There is no charge and no form to fill in — one email to doron@segaldoron.com is enough, and I will answer within one month.

• Access — get a copy of what I hold about you.
• Rectification — have anything inaccurate corrected.
• Erasure — have it deleted.
• Restriction and objection — tell me to stop a particular use, including any use resting on legitimate interests.
• Portability — receive it in a machine-readable form.
• Withdraw consent — at any time, from the Privacy choices button on any page. It takes one click and is as easy as giving consent was.

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland and think I have got this wrong, you can complain to your national supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office. I would rather you told me first, but you are not required to.

Equivalent rights apply under Brazil's LGPD, Canada's PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25, South Africa's POPIA, Japan's APPI, and Australia's Privacy Act. The process above is the same for all of them.

9. If you are in the United States

Under the CPRA in California and the comparable laws in Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana and other states, you have the right to know, delete, correct and obtain a portable copy of your personal information, and to opt out of its sale, its sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising, and targeted advertising.

• I do not sell your personal information and never have, in exchange for money or anything else of value.
• If — and only if — you switch on the advertising category, the advertising tags could constitute "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising as California defines it. That category is off unless you deliberately turn it on, and the Do not sell or share my personal information control in the preferences dialog turns it off again immediately.
• Categories collected: identifiers (IP address, an analytics identifier if you opt in, and your email address if you subscribe) and internet activity (pages viewed). No sensitive personal information is collected, so there is nothing to limit under the CPRA's sensitive-data right.
• I will never treat you differently for exercising any of this. Reject everything and the site works exactly the same.

You may use an authorised agent to make a request; I may need to verify that they act for you.

10. Global Privacy Control

If your browser or extension sends a Global Privacy Control signal, this site treats it as a binding opt-out of sale and sharing, as California, Colorado, Connecticut and Texas require. In practice: the advertising category is forced off, "Accept all" cannot switch it on, and the banner tells you it has been honoured. A legacy Do Not Track header gets exactly the same treatment, even though no law obliges it.

11. Children

This site is aimed at founders and operators. It is not directed at children, and I do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent me something, email me and I will delete it.

12. Changes to this notice

If the categories or the tags behind them change, the consent version is bumped, previously stored decisions stop counting, and everyone is asked again. Small clarifications get a new date at the top of this page. Nothing new starts collecting your data on the strength of an old yes.