Privacy on this weblog

This is a personal weblog. It has no ads, no comment system, no forms, no newsletter signup, no social media buttons, and no tracking pixels. The one thing that measures visitors is Google Analytics, set up as narrowly as Google allows. This page lists everything, in plain English. It was last updated on October 16, 2026.

Google Analytics

I use Google Analytics 4 to see how many people read the site, which pages they read, and roughly where they come from. That is the whole purpose. The setup:

  • No advertising features. Google signals and ad personalization are switched off, and the ad-related consent settings are denied for everyone. Nothing here is used to target ads at you.
  • Visitors in the EU, the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland get no analytics cookies. Google's Consent Mode keeps analytics storage switched off in those countries, so the browser stores nothing, and Google receives only cookieless pings it can't tie to a returning visitor.
  • Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track are honored. If your browser sends either signal, analytics cookies stay off for you wherever you are.
  • Everyone else gets Google's first-party analytics cookies, named _ga and _ga_KWXM1ZX7WQ, which let it count a returning reader once instead of twice. Google says GA4 does not log or store IP addresses.
  • It loads late. The analytics script waits until you scroll, tap, or press a key, or until four seconds after the page loads, so it never slows the reading down.

You can block it entirely with any content blocker, or with Google's opt-out browser add-on, and the site works exactly the same. Google's own policy is at policies.google.com/privacy.

What stays on your device

If you press the dark or light button, your choice is saved in your browser's local storage under the name weblog-theme so the next page matches. It never leaves your device, and clearing your browser data removes it.

Embedded video

Some posts show a YouTube video. Until you press play, the page shows only a still image and a link, and nothing loads from YouTube's player. When you press play, the video loads from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode, under Google's privacy policy. The still image itself comes from YouTube's image server.

Hosting

The site is static files served by GitHub Pages. GitHub may log visitors' IP addresses for security, as described in GitHub's privacy statement. The domain's DNS is at Cloudflare in DNS-only mode, so Cloudflare does not sit between you and the pages. There are no web fonts or scripts from anywhere else; apart from Google Analytics and the YouTube stills described above, everything comes from this site.

Email

If you write to cja@well.com, I keep the message like any other email. I don't add anyone to a list, and I never share or sell addresses.

Links in posts, the blogroll, and the wiki go to sites with their own policies. Amazon links carry my Associates tag, which Amazon uses to credit purchases to me; see Disclosures.

Your rights

I don't sell or share personal information, and I hold none beyond email you send me. If you want something deleted or have a question, email me and I will answer.