In short
- You can read Ruspiracy without an account and without giving us any personal details.
- We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, and our pages do not load scripts, fonts, embeds or other content from third parties.
- We process personal data only to deliver the site, to run moderated comments and to answer messages sent through the contact form.
- We do not sell personal data or share it for marketing.
Who is responsible
Ruspiracy is the controller of the personal data described on this page. You can reach us through the contact form; for anything about your data, choose “Privacy request”. We do not publish an email address.
When you read the site
Ruspiracy is delivered through Cloudflare, which handles the encrypted (TLS) connection to your browser, caches public pages and protects the site against attacks. To do this, Cloudflare processes your IP address and technical details of each request, such as the address of the page, the time and your browser's user agent.
Cloudflare also asks browsers that support it to report network errors (Network Error Logging). A report is sent to Cloudflare only when a request fails, and is used to detect connection problems.
Our server keeps technical logs, such as error reports and records of unusually slow requests. A log entry can include the address of the page requested, the time and your browser's user agent. We use these logs only to keep the site running and secure.
When you search, your query is sent to our server to find matching articles. We do not keep a record of searches. Results can be held briefly in server memory to answer repeated searches faster, and a query can appear in an error log if a search fails.
We count how many times each article is viewed. The count is a single number per article and is not linked to you.
Cookies
Ruspiracy sets only the cookies that forms and sign-in need to work:
- a security cookie that protects forms against cross-site request forgery. It is set when you open a page with a form, such as the contact form or a comment form, contains a random value, cannot be read by scripts and expires at the end of your browser session;
- a sign-in cookie for the site's administrators. Readers never receive it.
We set no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. If Cloudflare's security checks are triggered, Cloudflare can set its own cookie to remember that your browser passed the check.
Comments
If you comment on an article, we store:
- your name, which is published with your comment;
- your email address, which is never published. We use it to recognise your comments and, if necessary, to block an address that is used for abuse;
- the text of your comment, which is published once a moderator has approved it;
- the IP address and the user agent (browser and device details) of your request. They are stored with your commenter record and updated each time you comment, so that we can deal with spam and abuse. Moderators can see the IP address next to your comments.
We process these details on the basis of our legitimate interest in running a moderated discussion and preventing abuse. Published comments stay with the article. A comment that is rejected or removed is no longer shown, but its record stays in our database until you ask us to erase it.
To slow down abuse, our server also counts recent submissions from each IP address in its memory for a few minutes. These counters are not stored.
Contact form
When you send a message through the contact form, we store:
- the topic you chose, your name, your email address and your message;
- the date and time the message was sent;
- the user agent (browser and device details) of your request;
- a pseudonymous fingerprint of your network address instead of your IP address itself.
The fingerprint is a keyed hash (HMAC-SHA-256) of your IP address; for an IPv6 address only its network part, the first 64 bits, is used. The key is random, exists only in our server's memory and is replaced every day (UTC) and whenever the server restarts. The fingerprint shows us that several messages came from the same network on the same day. It cannot be turned back into your IP address, and fingerprints from different days cannot be linked to each other.
We use these details to read and answer your message, to handle correction and privacy requests and to recognise abuse of the form. We use your email address only to reply to you. Messages are kept in the editorial desk's inbox on this site, and we delete a message once we have dealt with it. As with comments, our server counts recent submissions from each IP address in its memory for a few minutes.
We process these details on the basis of our legitimate interest in answering messages and keeping the form free of abuse and, for privacy requests, to meet our legal obligation to respond.
Who else processes data
- Cloudflare provides the network, caching and security service in front of the site. It operates a global network, so this processing can take place outside your country, including outside the European Economic Area.
- Comments and contact messages are stored in the site's database on the server that runs Ruspiracy.
- If we reply to you by email, our email provider processes your address and our correspondence.
Your rights
Data protection law, including the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), gives you the right to:
- find out whether we process your personal data and get a copy of it;
- have inaccurate data corrected;
- have your data erased;
- have its processing restricted;
- object to processing that is based on our legitimate interests;
- receive data you gave us in a portable format, where that right applies.
To exercise any of these rights, use the contact form and choose “Privacy request”. Enter the email address your request is about, so that we can find the data and reply. We may ask you to confirm that the address is yours before we act, and we respond within one month, as the GDPR requires.
You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the country where you live or work or where you believe an infringement took place.
Changes to this policy
We update this page when the way we process personal data changes. The date at the top shows when it was last revised.
More about Ruspiracy
- About Ruspiracy: what we cover and how our analysis is written
- Editorial policy: sourcing, corrections, updates and comment moderation
- Contact: questions, correction requests and privacy requests