🔒 Privacy-First Philosophy
As a site dedicated to teaching about surveillance and privacy, we practice what we preach. We use privacy-respecting analytics that anonymize your data and respect your choices.
What Analytics We Use
We use PostHog, a privacy-respecting analytics platform, to understand how visitors use our site so we can make it better for you. Unlike Google Analytics and other mainstream analytics tools, PostHog:
🔐 Anonymizes Data
Your personal information is anonymized by default. We cannot identify individual users.
🇪🇺 EU Hosting
All analytics data is hosted in the European Union with strong privacy protections.
🍪 Minimal Cookies
We only use cookies necessary for analytics functionality, nothing more.
✋ Your Choice
You have full control. Accept or decline. The site works perfectly either way.
Why We Use Analytics
Understanding how visitors interact with our content helps us:
- Improve Navigation: See which pages are hard to find and reorganize accordingly
- Focus Content: Learn which topics resonate most and need more coverage
- Fix Issues: Identify technical problems or broken links quickly
- Measure Impact: Understand if our privacy education is reaching people
What Data We Collect
📊 With Consent (When You Accept Cookies)
When you accept cookies by clicking "Accept", PostHog collects the following data to help us improve the site:
📈 Product Analytics
Pageviews, pageleaves, clicks, changes of inputs, and form submissions associated with buttons and form elements. (Reference)
🌐 Web Analytics
Pageviews, pageleaves, conversions, and web vitals (performance metrics). (Reference)
🎬 Session Replay
Clicks, mouse movements, scrolling, and snapshots of the DOM (page structure). (Reference)
🐛 Error Tracking
Exceptions thrown in the browser using onError and onUnhandledRejection handlers. (Reference)
PostHog stores this data using first-party cookies to track users across sessions and enable features like session tracking and feature flag caching. (Reference)
🚫 Without Consent (When You Decline or Don't Choose)
We configure PostHog with cookieless mode to respect your privacy choices:
- No Storage: PostHog never stores data in cookies or local/session storage until you opt in. (Reference)
- No Event Capture: No events are captured until after consent is either given or denied. (Reference)
- Privacy-Preserving Counts: If consent is denied, PostHog can still count unique visitors using a privacy-preserving hash calculated on PostHog's servers. (Reference)
🔐 How the Privacy-Preserving Hash Works
The hash is calculated as:
hash(team_id, daily_salt, ip_address, user_agent, hostname)
This hash is not considered Personal Data because:
- It's impossible to obtain any Personal Data from the hash
- The daily salt is deleted after processing, making it cryptographically irreversible
- No identifying information can be extracted from the hash
🍪 How Cookies Are Used
PostHog uses first-party cookies (not third-party tracking cookies) to:
- Store a stable user identifier across sessions
- Cache feature flag values for better performance
- Track session duration to understand engagement
- Enable session replay functionality for debugging
These cookies work across your subdomains (e.g., yoursite.com and app.yoursite.com). (Reference)
🚫 What We DON'T Collect
- We do NOT track you across other websites
- We do NOT collect personally identifiable information
- We do NOT sell or share your data with third parties
- We do NOT use your data for advertising or profiling
- We do NOT keep data longer than necessary
Your Privacy Rights
You are always in control of your privacy on this site:
✅ Accept Analytics
Help us improve by allowing privacy-respecting analytics. Your data remains anonymous.
❌ Decline Analytics
No problem! The site works perfectly without analytics. We respect your choice.
🔄 Change Your Mind
Use the button below to reset your choice and see the cookie banner again.
🛡️ Additional Protection
Use browser extensions like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger for more control.
⚖️ GDPR Compliance & Data Controller Roles
As the site owner, we are the data controller and PostHog is the data processor when we use PostHog Cloud. (Reference)
What This Means:
- We decide what data to collect and why
- We must obtain proper consent from users under GDPR (Reference)
- PostHog processes data on our behalf according to our instructions
- Data is hosted in Frankfurt for PostHog Cloud EU to help with GDPR compliance (Reference)
🛠️ Compliance Tools We Use
PostHog provides several tools to help us stay compliant with privacy regulations:
✋ Consent Management
Opt-in/opt-out methods that respect user choices and comply with regulations. (Reference)
🎭 Data Masking
Filtering and masking options to prevent collection of sensitive information. (Reference)
🚫 Cookie-less Modes
Privacy-preserving tracking when consent is not given. (Reference)
🗑️ Data Deletion
Capabilities to delete user data upon request as required by GDPR.
📋 What You Should Know for Your Own Privacy Policy
If you're using PostHog or similar analytics on your own website, your privacy policy should include:
Required Disclosures:
- Analytics Provider: That you use PostHog for analytics
- Data Collected: What specific data is collected (events, sessions, etc.)
- Cookie Usage: That cookies are used to track sessions and improve the product
- Opt-Out Options: How users can opt out or change their consent
- Data Processing: That PostHog processes data on your behalf
- Data Location: Where data is stored (EU for PostHog Cloud EU)
- Your Role: That you are the data controller making decisions about data collection
🔄 Reset Cookie Consent
Want to change your analytics preference? Click the button below to clear your choice and see the cookie consent banner again.
Transparency & Trust
We run a privacy-focused site. So we play it straight:
- No Surprises: This page explains everything we do
- Open Tools: PostHog is open-source software you can audit
- Minimal Data: We only collect what's necessary to improve the site
- Your Control: You can opt out anytime, no questions asked
- Educational Mission: Our goal is teaching privacy, not exploiting your data
Questions or Concerns?
We keep our privacy practices in the open. Got questions about how we handle analytics, or any privacy concerns? Contact us.
🔍 Learn More About Privacy
Continue your privacy education with our guides: