Who operates this site and what it is
This site is operated as an independent publishing project by Smith Jones, who writes all of its content and handles all correspondence sent to it. Details of the project and its funding are on the about page. It is an informational resource about advertising platforms. It is not an advertising network, does not sell traffic, does not operate campaigns and holds no user balances. It has no relationship with you as a customer, and nothing on it requires you to identify yourself.
Where the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 applies to a visitor, the operator acts as data controller for the limited processing described below. Visitors in California have the rights described by the California Consumer Privacy Act, set out further down. Questions about any of it go to the privacy inbox.
What is collected when you send a message
If you write to one of the inboxes listed on the contact page, the operator receives your email address, your name if you sign the message, and whatever you choose to put in the message itself. Nothing else is requested and nothing is added.
That correspondence is used to answer you and, where a message reports an error, to keep a record of what was corrected and when. It is not added to any mailing list, not used for marketing, and not shared with any advertising platform mentioned on this site.
What is collected automatically
Serving a page produces standard web server log entries.
Each one typically holds the IP address that made the request, the date and time, the address of the page requested, the HTTP status returned, the browser user agent string, and the referring page where the browser sent one. Those records keep the site available and let abusive traffic such as scraping or denial-of-service attempts be identified. They serve no other purpose, they are never enriched with data from anywhere else, and they are never used to build a picture of an individual reader. Nothing in them is sold or licensed to anyone.
Analytics
These pages load Google Analytics 4 under the measurement ID G-0S539ZG66M. It is the only third-party script on the site. It records which pages are opened and in what order, roughly where in the world the request came from, which device and browser were used, and which site or search referred you.
Google receives that data as a processor for the operator and also uses it under its own terms, described in Google's privacy policy.
Analytics 4 does not put full IP addresses into reports. The address is used in transit to derive an approximate location, then discarded before the data reaches the reporting interface.
What is absent matters as much as what is present. No advertising pixel, no remarketing tag, no heatmap or session-recording tool, no A/B testing script, no social embed. Nothing here follows you to another site or builds an advertising profile from your visit. The site also never asks for and never receives payment details, advertising account credentials, campaign data, passwords or identity documents. If a message arrives carrying something of that kind, it gets deleted, not filed.
Cookies
Analytics 4 writes two first-party cookies, and nothing else on this site sets any. The first, named _ga, holds a randomly generated identifier so that repeat visits count as one visitor instead of several; it expires two years after your last visit. The second, named _ga_G-0S539ZG66M, holds session state for the same measurement property and expires on the same schedule.
Neither cookie carries your name, your email address or anything you typed, and neither is readable by another website. No advertising cookie, no remarketing cookie and no preference cookie is set here, and no browser storage is used.
You can refuse both. Blocking third-party scripts or cookies in your browser, running a content blocker, or installing Google's official opt-out browser add-on all stop the measurement, and every page here works normally with it blocked.
Any cookie you encounter after clicking a link away from here belongs to the destination and falls under its policy, not this one.
Outbound links and campaign parameters
Links to advertising platforms carry campaign parameters in the URL.
They identify the referring site, the page topic and the position of the button or link that was clicked, so that a header button can be told apart from a link inside a table. They carry nothing that identifies you. No user ID, no email address, no hashed identifier, no device fingerprint.
Their purpose is attribution. If you open an account on the destination platform, the parameters tell that platform which page sent you, which is how this project is funded. From the moment you arrive there, its own privacy policy governs what it collects about you, and it is worth reading before you create an account.
Links to documentation on regulator, standards body and research organisation sites share one property with those: after the click you are on their infrastructure and under their terms. Those links carry no campaign parameters at all, which is true of every source cited on Popunder Ad Networks as well.
Legal basis for processing
Where the GDPR applies, correspondence is processed on the basis of legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f): you wrote to the operator and expect a reply. Server log processing rests on the same basis, the legitimate interest being the security and availability of the site.
Analytics rests on the same basis: knowing which pages are actually read is how research effort gets prioritised. Where local law requires prior consent for analytics cookies specifically, treat the browser and blocker controls described in the cookies section as the opt-out and use them before browsing further.
None of the processing here serves direct marketing, automated decision-making or profiling.
How long anything is kept
Correspondence is kept while a conversation is open and for a reasonable period afterwards, so that a correction can be traced back to the message that prompted it. Where a message has no ongoing purpose, it is deleted on request without argument. Server logs are short-lived operational records held by the hosting infrastructure and are overwritten in the normal course of hosting. They are not kept as an archive.
Who else is involved
Three parties are involved and no more. The hosting provider processes server logs as an unavoidable part of serving pages. Google processes the analytics data described above. Email correspondence passes through a standard email provider. Beyond those, nothing: no advertising network integration, no data broker, no CRM, no audience-sharing arrangement with any platform covered on this site. Analytics data is never exported to an advertising platform and never matched against what you do after leaving.
Security
Pages are served over HTTPS, so the connection between your browser and the server is encrypted in transit.
The site holds no database, no user accounts and no payment data, which removes the categories of information most often exposed in a breach. Correspondence sits in a mailbox protected by two-factor authentication.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you may request access to the personal data held about you, its correction, its deletion, restriction of its processing and portability, and you may object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interest. In practice, for this site, that means correspondence you have sent. Under the CCPA and CPRA, California residents may request disclosure of the categories of personal information collected and the purposes for collecting them, request deletion, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. This site does not sell or share personal information as those statutes define it, so there is nothing to opt out of, but the disclosure and deletion rights apply as described.
Requests go to the privacy inbox and are answered within 30 days. No fee is charged and no account is required.
If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom and are unsatisfied with the response, you may complain to your national supervisory authority.
Children
This site is written for people buying and selling advertising traffic commercially and is not directed at children. It knowingly collects nothing from anyone under 16, and no part of it is designed to appeal to a child.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the revised version replaces this one on this page and the date in the byline is updated. Adding or removing a measurement tool counts as a change worth publishing, and the analytics section above would be rewritten before the tool went live, not after. All privacy questions go to the privacy inbox. Other routes are on the contact page, the site's editorial standards are described in the editorial policy, and the basis on which the pages are published is set out in the terms of use.