Privacy policy.

What we collect

Email address, if you give it to us. When you subscribe to our newsletter, the email address and any other details you enter in the signup form are collected and stored by our third-party form and email provider on our behalf. We use them to send you the newsletter and to respond if you contact us.

Basic technical data. Like most websites, our hosting provider records standard request information such as IP address, browser type, referring page, and time of request. This is used for security and aggregate traffic measurement.

Analytics. We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used in aggregate: which pages are read, how visitors arrive, roughly where in the world they are, and what kind of device they use. Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser and assigns a random identifier to your device. We do not use it to identify you personally, and we have not enabled advertising or remarketing features. IP addresses are shortened by Google before storage.

Information you store in your own browser. We use your browser's local storage to remember whether you have already rated a page, how many pages you have viewed, and whether you have dismissed or completed the newsletter signup. This stays on your device unless a rating is submitted, and it is not an advertising identifier.

What we do not do

We do not sell your personal information. We do not rent, trade, or share your email address with advertisers, campaigns, advocacy organizations, or data brokers.

We do not run advertising on this site, and we do not embed advertising or social media tracking pixels. Our share buttons are plain links; they do not report anything to a social platform unless you click them.

We do not use analytics data to build advertising profiles, and we have not turned on Google's advertising or remarketing features. We do not attempt to connect analytics data to your email address if you subscribe.

Page ratings

When you rate a page as balanced or not, we record the rating and the page it applies to. We do not attach a name, email address, or account to it. Ratings are used in aggregate to identify pages that need editorial review.

Reader polls and the panel

Votes are anonymous. When you answer a poll we increase a counter. We do not record who voted for what. There is no per-person voting history in our systems, and no way for us to reconstruct one.

Joining the panel. To see results you confirm an email address. We store a one-way cryptographic hash of that address rather than the address itself, the date you joined, and your political self-description if you provided one.

Political affiliation is self-reported and optional. We ask; we never infer. We do not analyse your voting pattern, your reading history, or your behaviour on this site to guess where you sit politically, and we do not assign anyone a political score. If you select "Prefer not to say", no affiliation is stored.

How affiliation is used. Only in aggregate, and only to report how readers across the spectrum answered a question. Breakdowns are suppressed entirely where too few people have answered to protect individual anonymity. Aggregate audience composition may be shared with prospective sponsors as a percentage breakdown; no individual data is ever shared, sold, or licensed.

Leaving. Email us and we will delete your panel record. Because votes are stored only as counters, individual votes cannot be withdrawn once cast — there is nothing linking them to you to withdraw.

Third parties we rely on

Newsletter and form provider. Our signup form is embedded from a third-party provider, which receives and stores what you submit and may set its own cookies or storage when the form loads.

Hosting and content delivery. Our host serves the pages and processes standard request logs.

Web fonts. Typefaces are loaded from a third-party font service, which receives your IP address as part of that request.

Analytics and tag management. We use Google Tag Manager to load and manage the measurement tools on this site, and Google Analytics to measure usage. Both receive the technical and usage data described above and process it under Google's own terms. Google Tag Manager does not itself collect personal information; it determines which measurement tags run.

These providers process data on our behalf or under their own policies. We encourage you to review their terms if that matters to you.

Your choices

You can opt out of Google Analytics on every site you visit by installing Google's official browser add-on, or by using your browser's Do Not Track or tracking-protection settings, which many browsers now block analytics with by default.

You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time using the link in any email we send.

You can clear this site's local storage through your browser settings, which resets your ratings and signup prompt history.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information we hold about you, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. We do not sell or share personal information, but you may still make these requests. Email us and we will respond as required by applicable law.

Children

This site is intended for a general adult audience. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, email us at the address below and we will delete it.

Changes and contact

We may update this policy. When we do, we will revise the date shown above.

Questions about this policy, or requests about your information, can be sent to editor@politicalissues.com.