Privacy Policy

I run Bulkified Thinking myself. I am Andrii Sukhetskyi, based in Ontario, Canada, and I am the person responsible for the personal information described here. If anything below is unclear or you want something done about your data, email ansukhetskyi@gmail.com and you will be talking to me, not a ticket queue.

This policy covers www.bulkifiedthinking.com. It does not cover other sites I link to.

The short version

If you just read articles, I collect anonymous traffic statistics and nothing else. If you subscribe, I have your email address. If you comment, other readers see your name and what you wrote. I do not sell anything about you, I do not run advertising, and there are no third-party tracking scripts on this site.

What I collect, and when

When you subscribe. Your email address, and your name if you choose to give one. This is stored by Ghost, the platform this site runs on. I use it to send the newsletter and to recognise you when you sign in.

When you comment. Your name, your comment, and your profile picture if you have set one. Comments are public — that is the point of them. I can see the email address attached to your account.

When you send a tip. Payments go through Stripe. Stripe handles your card details end to end; I never see or store a card number. What reaches me is the amount, the currency, and whether it succeeded.

When you read. This site uses Ghost's own built-in analytics. It records page views, which page referred you, roughly which country you are in, and what kind of device you used. It is first-party — the data is not shared with an advertising network, and it does not follow you to other websites. There is no Google Analytics, no Tag Manager, no advertising pixel of any kind on this site.

When I send you an email. Newsletter emails record whether the message was opened and whether links in it were clicked. This tells me which topics are worth writing more about. If you would rather not be measured this way, unsubscribing stops it entirely.

Your browser's own storage. Two small values are saved in your browser and never sent anywhere: appearance-preference, which remembers whether you picked light or dark mode, and posts-last-seen, which remembers which short posts you have already scrolled past so the site can stop pointing at them. Clearing your browser storage deletes both, and nothing breaks.

Server logs. Ghost's hosting keeps standard web server logs, including IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting. These rotate out on the host's own schedule.

Other companies involved

Only four, and each does one job:

• Ghost hosts the site and stores subscriber accounts, comments and analytics. Ghost acts on my instructions as a data processor.
• Stripe processes tips and holds the payment details I never see.
• YouTube serves embedded videos, and only after you press play. Embeds use youtube-nocookie.com, so nothing is requested from YouTube until you actually choose to watch.
• GitHub is contacted by your browser, not by my server, when you open the Open Source page — that is how the live star and fork counts appear. GitHub therefore sees your IP address on that page. I mention it because most sites in this position quietly do not.

Why I am allowed to hold any of this

If you are in the UK or the EU and want the formal grounds: consent for the newsletter, which you can withdraw at any time; legitimate interests for analytics, security and keeping the site working; and performance of a contract for your account and any tip you send.

If you are in Canada, this is handled under PIPEDA, and the newsletter follows CASL — I only email people who asked for it, every message says who it is from, and every message has a working unsubscribe link.

How long I keep it

Subscriber records last as long as you are subscribed, plus a short window afterwards so an accidental unsubscribe can be undone. Comments stay until you or I delete them. Analytics are aggregated and are not tied to a named person. Payment records are kept as long as tax and accounting rules require.

What you can ask me to do

Ask for a copy of what I hold. Ask me to correct it. Ask me to delete it. Ask for it in a portable format. Withdraw consent. Object to how it is used.

I honor these requests from everyone, wherever you live — it would be strange to give readers in one country fewer rights than readers in another. Email ansukhetskyi@gmail.com and I will respond within 30 days. I will not charge you and I will not make the process deliberately tedious.

Unsubscribing does not need an email to me at all: there is a link at the bottom of every newsletter, and it works immediately.

Where your data goes

Ghost and Stripe both operate outside Canada, so your information is stored and processed in other countries — and while it is there, it is subject to the laws of those countries. Both companies are bound by contract to protect it. If that is not acceptable to you, the practical answer is not to subscribe; you can read everything here without an account.

Children

This site is written for working software professionals. It is not aimed at children, and I do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given me their details, email me and I will remove them.

Changes

When this policy changes materially, I will update the date at the top of the page, and for anything significant I will say so in the newsletter rather than hoping nobody notices.

If you are unhappy

Tell me first — most things are a misunderstanding and I would like the chance to fix it. If that does not resolve it, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca. Readers in the UK or EU may instead complain to their own national data protection authority.