What this site collects
Short version: a count of how many people read each issue, nothing that identifies you, no cookies, and nothing handed to anybody else.
Measuring visits
We count visits ourselves. There is no Google Analytics here, no advertising network and no third party of any kind, so nothing about your visit leaves this server. That is also why there is no cookie banner: there is no cookie to ask about.
When a page opens, your browser tells our own server two things: which page it is, and the address of the site that sent you here, if one did. Of that second one we keep only the domain, never the full address of the page you came from. Both are added to a running count for the day. Nothing is kept about you individually and there is no record that can be read back as a visit history.
To tell a second page view apart from a second reader we need something that stays the same for a few hours and is useless afterwards. So your network address and browser description are mixed with today's date and a secret only this server knows, and a short fingerprint of the result is kept. It cannot be turned back into your address, it is different tomorrow, and it is thrown away with the day's file. Your address itself is never written down.
Daily counts are kept for about a year and then deleted.
What the site itself stores
Your choice of light or dark is kept in your own browser. It never leaves your device and we cannot read it.
The server keeps an access log, as every web server does. It holds the address of each request and the network address it came from, and the host rotates it on their own schedule. We do not use it to follow individual readers.
Contact, submissions and problem reports
What you type into those three forms is sent to us as an email and is not written to disk anywhere on this site. We keep it as long as it takes to answer you. The forms also check how long the page was open before you pressed send, which is how they tell a person from a machine, and that measurement is discarded immediately.
Pictures and links
Every story links to the publication it came from, and each picture is the one that publication ran, loaded from their server. Following a link, or loading one of those pictures, is a visit to them and their own terms apply. We ask your browser not to tell them where you came from.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and complain to the Information Commissioner's Office if you are not satisfied with how we answer. Write to hello@vrtrendmagazine.com and we will reply.