Privacy, Ads & Data

Advertising, sponsorship, promotion

Ads aren't just annoying, they commonly invade your privacy and track your digital activity. I also believe advertisements masquerading as content is dishonest and dangerous. Therefore, I don’t get paid, accept things for free, or use referral links to earn a commission on anything on this domain. Everything here is an honest recommendation, mentioned because I see what the company is doing, have experienced their customer service or products, and think you would get some value from them also.

Selling my opinion for cash or freebies is not, and never will be, on the cards. I think people who accept these things to provide a so-called recommendation, even when they’re transparent about the fact they’ve received compensation, are boasting that their integrity and honesty depends on remuneration.

Privacy

I find the ongoing assault against privacy an affront which is why I've taken a stand and made this website without any kind of ad beacons or social media icons that send your data back to tech-oligopolies with only de-facto consent. When using embeds, I always opt for privacy-enhanced options like YouTube No Cookie.

I use a privacy-friendly analytics company – Fathom – which does not collect any personal data of any kind. Fathom is anonymises visitors through complex hashes and does not use cookies to store anything. It runs via a custom CNAME record, cephalopod.adamstoner.com, which bypasses most tracking filters but will allow you to block it if you deem it necessary.

Some people say they collect hosts of information about you – from your location to the devices you're on – to 'help improve their service' so maybe my website will be shitty forever, but I'd much rather be shitty than spy on you. Fathom tells me how many visitors my website gets, what the most popular pages are, and who the top referrals are. That's it.

Membership, newsletters

To receive my newsletter you must be a member.

When you become a member, two things happen:

1. You create an account on my website. This account gives you access to member-exclusive posts that are otherwise hidden from view. When you create an account, the only data I collect is your confirmed email address. As above, I do not run analytics on members.
2. You are subscribed to email updates from me. You can unsubscribe from my newsletter at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive. Unsubscribing from the newsletter does not delete your account. Please email me if you wish to delete your account.

My newsletter sends via the open-source publication platform I use, hosted by the can't-be-sold not-for-profit Ghost Foundation. Your data resides on that publishing platform under my control and is not – nor will it ever be – sold, traded, or given away. You are not for sale.

Files

If you commission me to do some work for you, I'll share your files on a unique link via the end-to-end encrypted, zero-knowledge cloud storage provider Tresorit, based in privacy-friendly Switzerland.