This is a personal site that publishes essays and books talks. It runs Google Analytics 4 to count readers in aggregate, and it has one form, which subscribes you to my newsletter on Substack. There are no ads, no retargeting pixels, and nothing for sale here, so there is nothing to sell about you either.
What this site collects
Three things, and that is the whole list. Google Analytics 4 records aggregate traffic: which pages get read, roughly where readers are, which link they clicked to get here, and which buttons they press. It sets cookies in your browser to do that. I use it to decide what to write next, not to identify you.
The subscribe forms send your email address to Substack, which runs the newsletter and holds that address under its own privacy policy.
The Book Russ form on the speaking page sends what you type (your name, email, organization, the event, date, format, budget range and message) to Formspree, which emails it to me and keeps a copy so I can reply. I use it to answer you. Nothing is sold or shared.
That is all. There is no account to create and no payment of any kind.
What this site does not do
No advertising pixels. No retargeting. No session recording or heatmaps. No data broker, no email append, no selling or renting anyone's information, ever. The only third parties that see anything are Google Analytics, Substack when you subscribe, Formspree when you send the Book Russ form, and YouTube on the pages that embed a video. Those videos use YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), but the player loads with the page, so YouTube receives your IP address and browser details when the page opens, whether or not you press play.
How to opt out
Browser-level controls work here and I will not fight them. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, analytics never loads. A content blocker stops it too. Blocking cookies for this domain stops Analytics from recognizing you from one visit to the next. Google also publishes an opt-out add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Nothing on this site breaks when analytics is blocked.
To leave the newsletter, use the unsubscribe link in any issue, which removes you immediately. To ask what is held about you or to have it deleted, including a Book Russ request, reach me through the contact page and say so plainly. I will handle it myself.
Logs and security
The site runs on Vercel, which keeps short-lived request logs (IP address, user agent, URL) to serve traffic and block attacks. That is standard hosting infrastructure, not a product I built on top of. Security researchers: the disclosure contact is in /.well-known/security.txt.