Privacy policy

What this covers

This site (ashishvrm.com) is run by one person — Ashish Verma, not a company with a data team. This page explains, plainly, what information gets collected when you read, get in touch, or subscribe, and what happens to it afterward.

Information collected

Just browsing

No account is required to read anything on this site. Visits are measured with Google Analytics 4, loaded through Google Tag Manager. Analytics records the pages you view, how you arrived (for example from a search engine or a link), your approximate location (country or city, worked out from your IP address — Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses), your device and browser type, and interactions such as scrolling, clicking a call to action or submitting a form. It never receives your name, email address or message text.

Analytics cookies are only used where that is allowed without asking first:

• Visitors from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and anyone whose browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, are measured without analytics cookies. Google's consent mode sends anonymous, cookieless pings instead.
• Advertising features are switched off for everyone: no ad personalisation, no remarketing, and no analytics data is shared for advertising.

There are no advertising networks, retargeting pixels or cross-site advertising trackers anywhere on this site.

If you press Accept in the consent banner, the site also uses Microsoft Clarity, which records anonymised session replays and heatmaps (clicks, scrolling, mouse movement, the pages you view) so I can see where pages confuse people. Anything you type into a form is masked. Clarity never loads if you decline, ignore the banner, or send a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal.

Using the contact form

Submitting the contact form sends what you type (your name, email address, organisation if you add one, and your message) to Web3Forms, which emails it to me. The page you sent it from is included so I know where the message started. A copy is also saved in a private database on Cloudflare D1, which only I can open, so I can keep track of replies. Saved messages are deleted automatically after 24 months. If spam protection (Google reCAPTCHA) is switched on, Google checks the submission for automated abuse under its own privacy policy.

Visit statistics kept on this site

Besides Google Analytics, the site keeps its own simple visit statistics in the same private database: the page viewed, how you arrived (a search engine, a link or campaign tags), a rough location (country and region), the type of device, and a visitor code. The visitor code is a one-way hash of your IP address and browser details mixed with a secret and the date, so it changes every day and cannot be turned back into your IP address. Your IP address itself is not stored. These records are deleted after 400 days.

Subscribing to the newsletter

Subscribing sends your email address, and which part of the site you signed up from, to Web3Forms, which emails it to me. Every newsletter includes a way to unsubscribe.

How this is used

• Responding to whatever you wrote in the contact form.
• Sending the newsletter you explicitly asked for — never anything else.
• Understanding, in aggregate, which pages and posts are useful to readers and where the site is hard to use.

What is never done

• Your data is never sold, rented, or shared with data brokers.
• No advertising or retargeting trackers are embedded on this site, and Google Analytics advertising features are switched off.
• Analytics is never used to identify you personally.

How long information is kept

• Contact-form messages (the copy in the database) are deleted automatically after 24 months.
• Visit statistics kept on this site are deleted after 400 days.
• Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe.
• Microsoft Clarity recordings are kept for the limited period Microsoft sets for the project; they are not kept by this site.
• Google Analytics keeps event-level data for the retention period set on this site's account (Google offers 2 or 14 months); only aggregated reports remain after that.

Where this runs

• The site itself is served from Cloudflare Workers.
• Analytics: Google Analytics 4 through Google Tag Manager (Google LLC).
• Session replays and heatmaps, only after you accept: Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Corporation).
• Contact form and newsletter signups: Web3Forms, delivered by email.
• Saved contact messages and visit statistics: Cloudflare D1 (database), part of the same Cloudflare account that serves the site.
• If spam protection is switched on for the contact form, it runs through Google reCAPTCHA and follows Google's privacy policy and terms.
• If error monitoring is active, technical crash reports (not form content) may pass through Sentry to help find and fix bugs.

Your choices

• Session replays: press Decline in the consent banner, or clear this site's cookies to see it again. A Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal also keeps Clarity switched off.
• Opt out of analytics: turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser (built into Firefox, Brave and DuckDuckGo, among others), install Google's Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or block cookies for this site. Nothing on the site stops working.
• See the cookies policy for every cookie this site can set.

Your rights

Wherever you are — this isn't limited to any one jurisdiction's residents — you can ask to see what information is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted outright. Email the address below and expect a response within 30 days.

Readers in India

If you are in India, this page is my notice under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. I collect your name, email address and message only to reply to you, and I rely on your consent when you submit the form or subscribe. You can withdraw consent, or ask to access, correct or erase your information, at any time by emailing the address below, and I will answer within 30 days. Complaints about how your information is handled go to the same address.

Children

This site isn't directed at children, and no information is knowingly collected from anyone under 16.

Changes to this policy

This page will be updated if what's collected or how it's used changes in any meaningful way. The "Last updated" date at the bottom reflects the most recent revision.

Questions

For anything not answered above, use the contact form or email the address below directly.