Privacy Policy

KISDigital is a personal site written by Robert Zehnder. This page explains what information the site collects, why, and what you can do about it. It's written in plain language on purpose — if anything here is unclear, email [email protected] and ask.

Information collected just by visiting

Every request to this site — a page load, an image, a search — is written to an access log the site keeps for itself: IP address, user agent, the page requested, and a timestamp. This is first-party only. There's no Google Analytics, no ad network, no third-party tracking pixel anywhere on the site — the traffic numbers shown on posts and the dashboard come entirely from this self-hosted log. Entries are deleted automatically after 90 days.

If you use the search box, the search term and how many results it returned are kept as well, so the site owner can see what people are looking for that isn't turning up anything. Searches aren't linked to your IP address or any other identifying information.

If you sign in to comment

Leaving a comment requires signing in with Google or GitHub. Doing so shares your name, email address, and profile photo from that account with this site, which stores them to identify you as the comment's author and to show your name and photo next to what you write. The comment text itself is stored as you submit it.

You can delete your own comment at any time; it disappears from the page immediately. The underlying record is kept (not shown to anyone) rather than hard-deleted, so a reply to your comment doesn't end up orphaned — the same reasoning Reddit and most other threaded comment systems use. If you'd like your account and comments removed from the database entirely, email [email protected] and it'll be done by hand.

Sign-in is handled by Google or GitHub, not this site — see Google's privacy policy and GitHub's privacy statement for how they handle it on their end. With GitHub, the email used is your account's primary address.

Once signed in, you can add a passkey to sign in next time without Google or GitHub. The site stores only the passkey's public key, a name for it (such as “Mac”), and when it was added and last used. Your fingerprint, face or PIN never leaves your device. You can remove a passkey from your account page at any time.

If you subscribe by email

Subscribing to new posts stores your email address and when you signed up and confirmed. It's used for one thing: sending you an email when a post goes up. Nothing is sent until you click the link in the confirmation email, and an unconfirmed address is deleted after 30 days. The emails are plain text, with no tracking pixels or tracked links.

Every email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing deletes your address. The one exception is an address the mail system reports as bouncing or marking these emails as spam: it's kept, marked, so it's never emailed again.

If you tick “Email me when someone replies” on a comment, the email address from your sign-in is used for those reply emails, each of which has its own link to stop them.

Cookies and local storage

Signing in sets one cookie to keep you signed in — it's marked httpOnly, isn't readable by page scripts, and isn't used for tracking or advertising of any kind. Nothing is set for visitors who don't sign in.

Your light/dark theme choice and a couple of small UI preferences are saved in your browser's own local storage. That data never leaves your browser or reaches this site's server.

Who else sees this data

The site runs on infrastructure operated by other companies, each of whom only sees what's needed to do their job:

• Google and GitHub — sign-in, as described above.
• Cloudflare — sits in front of the site as a CDN, and stores uploaded post cover images.
• Amazon Web Services — delivers the site's emails (Amazon SES), and tells the site when an address bounces.

None of them are given access to this site's data beyond what's inherent to providing that infrastructure, and none of them are paid to advertise or track you here.

Children's privacy

This site isn't directed at children and doesn't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a meaningful way, the date at the top of this page will be updated.

Contact

Questions, or a request to delete your data: [email protected].