Privacy Policy
In Baum's story the Emerald City is not green: everyone at the gate is handed a pair of green glasses, and the city looks green because of them. Every measured number works the same way. This page is the pair I hand you - what is recorded, who else sees it, and how to give it back.
Who is responsible
The wizard in the story turns out to be a man from Omaha with a set of levers (sorry for any spoilers). So here: no company, no department, no data protection office - one person, and you can write to him.
This site is run by Oleksii Zharii, writing as OZtheWizard. Anything on this page - a question, a request, a complaint - goes to hello@ozthewizard.com, and it reaches me directly. Or just send it from here:
What is recorded, and why
There are two reasons anything is recorded at all. One is to understand what on this site is worth more of and what gets in the way - which pieces get read to the end, where people leave, what the site is slow at - so that the next thing I write and the next change I make are better than guesses. The other is to answer you if you write to me.
Measurement happens on the server. Your browser loads no tracking script, and no other company receives a request from your browser. When a page is served, the server records:
- the address of the page, the address you came from, and the time;
- your IP address, and the country and city your network resolves to;
- your browser and operating system, as your browser reports them;
- your screen size and language;
- whether you chose the light or dark theme, and which language you read;
- how long the page stayed active and how far you read it;
- a number of things people do on a page - following a link, switching the theme, opening a screenshot, starting the contact form, and others like them. They are what tells me which parts of this site earn their place and which get in the way. Each is recorded as the bare fact that it happened, with the name of the thing you touched - never with what you typed.
No account, no name, no email address - unless you send one yourself through the contact form, in which case the message and the address go to me by Telegram so that I can reply.
The lawful basis
For cookies and anything read from your device, the basis is your consent. For a message you send through the form, the basis is that you asked for an answer: without an address there is no way to give you one.
Cookies
All of them are set by this site - some by the server as it sends you the page, some by your own browser once the page is open. The server then renews the browser's ones on later visits, so a choice you made does not quietly expire while you keep reading. None are advertising cookies, and none can be read by another site.
| Name | Recipient | What it is for | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|
_ga | Google Analytics | Tells one browser apart from another so a returning reader is not counted twice. Written by my server, in the format Google Analytics expects. | 400 days |
_ga_CVFELT5065 | Google Analytics | Holds when this visit began, how many visits there have been and whether this one counts as engaged. The window is thirty minutes from the last page. | 400 days |
_ozb | This site | Screen size and the browser's own description of itself. My server cannot see these, so the page puts them here once and every later visit carries them. | 30 days |
_ozu | This site | The theme and the screenshot view you chose. It is here for my numbers, not for the site: the page remembers your choice on its own, without this cookie. | 400 days |
_ozc | This site | The choice you make in this window, so I do not ask again on every page. Nothing else is stored with it. | 400 days |
_ozr | This site | The number of the record that holds your answer, so it can be shown to you later or deleted if you ask. Your browser sends it only when you answer this window or look at your record - never while you read the site. | 400 days |
Exactly one of them is strictly necessary: the one that remembers what you chose in the consent window, so that the window does not open again on every page. It is set whichever way you answer - including when you refuse, because a refusal has to be remembered too. Everything else in the table is measurement and waits for your consent.
The theme cookie looks necessary and is not: the page remembers your choice by itself, without it. That cookie exists so the choice shows up in my numbers, which makes it measurement like the rest.
Who else receives it
| Who | What they get | Where they are |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics events: the page, the referrer, your IP address, your browser and screen, and how long you stayed. | United States | |
| Stape | Runs the measurement server that forwards those events to Google. It sees the same data on the way through. | Outside the EU |
| Cloudflare | Serves this site, runs the measurement code, and holds the raw log of requests. | Storage is pinned to the European Union; the code runs at the edge, wherever you are. |
| Telegram | Delivers the message you send through the contact form, including whatever you typed into it. | Outside the EU |
Not all of them are in the European Union. Google and Cloudflare are both certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and that is what transfers to them rely on.
Nothing is sold. Nothing is shared for advertising. There are no advertising tags on this site.
How long it is kept
Cookies expire on their own, and the table above says when. The server's record of requests is kept for as long as this site runs and the numbers are still worth having. There is no fixed date, and I would rather say that plainly than name a deadline that nothing enforces.
Two things follow from it, and both are commitments rather than intentions. If this site is shut down, the record goes with it. And if you ask for what is held about you to be deleted, it is deleted, whatever the general rule says - that is your right, not my discretion.
Automated decisions
A scarecrow is not a person: it was put in a field to tell what had landed there and shoo the crows off. Rules do the same job here - they look at every request and say whether it is a person or a machine.
One judgement is made automatically: every request is scored as likely a person or likely a machine, so that robot traffic can be kept out of the numbers. It decides nothing about you and has no consequence for you - you are not shown anything different either way. It is mentioned because staying silent about it would be less honest than naming it.
Your choices
The glasses come off whenever you want them off. That is the whole of it: the cookie window - the one that asks whose glasses you are wearing - takes your answer, and the answer holds until you change it.
The window records what you choose, and you can change your answer at any time: the Manage consent link at the foot of every page opens the same window again. Withdrawing is meant to be exactly as easy as agreeing was.
Your rights
You have all six of these, and they cost you nothing to use:
- Access - ask what is held about you.
- Rectification - have wrong details corrected.
- Erasure - have it deleted.
- Restriction - have its use paused while something is disputed.
- Objection - object to it being used at all.
- Portability - get a copy in a form you can take elsewhere.
The first of them takes no waiting at all: show my consent record tells you, right now, what this browser answered, when, and which version of the window it was shown. Nothing is stored with that record beyond what it says.
Write to hello@ozthewizard.com for any of them. The answer comes within a month; if a request turns out to be complicated, the law allows two months more, and I would tell you inside the first month that it is taking longer.
You can withdraw consent at any moment, and that has to be as easy as giving it was. You can also complain to the data protection authority of the country where you live or work.
Is any of it required
None of it is required to read this site. The contact form is the one place where something is genuinely needed: without an email address there is no way to answer you.
If this changes
If data starts being used for something not described here, that will be said on this page before it happens, not after.