Privacy policy
1. Who is responsible
The controller for this website under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is [full name or organisation], [postal address], email: [contact email].
2. Reading articles: audience measurement without cookies
To learn which articles are read, and to show the “Most read” list on the home page, we count visits to published articles with our own measurement built into this website. No third-party analytics service is used and no data leaves our server.
This measurement does not use cookies and does not store anything on your device. When you open an article, your browser sends the article, the website that linked to it (domain only), and your user agent. To count each reader only once per day, we compute a one-way hash from your IP address, your user agent and a random value that changes every day. Your IP address is used only for this calculation and is never stored. The random daily value and all hashes are deleted after the day ends, so visits cannot be linked across days or traced back to you.
What we keep long term are only anonymous daily totals per article: number of views, unique readers, completed reads (the article was scrolled most of the way or read for about 30 seconds), traffic source (for example “Google” or “Instagram”) and device type (mobile, tablet or desktop).
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. Our legitimate interest is understanding which content our readers value, in a way that does not identify them. If your browser sends a “Global Privacy Control” or “Do Not Track” signal, you are not counted at all. Visits by signed-in contributors may be counted the same anonymous way; an author’s visits to their own pieces never are. You may also object at any time (see section 7).
3. Server logs
Like every web server, ours records technical access logs (IP address, date and time, requested page, browser type) to operate the site securely and to detect attacks. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. These logs are deleted after [retention period, e.g. 14 days].
4. Fonts
[Remove this section once the fonts are hosted on our own server.] This website loads its fonts from Google Fonts (Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland). Your browser therefore connects to Google servers, which receive your IP address. See Google’s privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy.
5. Reporting an article
If you report an article, we store the reason, your description and, if you choose to give it, your email address, so that we can review the report and reply to you. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (handling content complaints) and Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR for the optional email. Reports are deleted [e.g. 6 months after the report has been resolved].
6. Cookies and contributor accounts
Contributors who sign in with an invitation store their email address, author name, an optional profile photo and the articles they write. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.
This website uses one cookie, named session. Pages that contain a form (for example the report form below every article) store a random security token in it, which protects the form against forged submissions. When contributors sign in, the same cookie keeps them logged in. The cookie is strictly necessary for these functions, contains no tracking information, and is deleted when you close your browser. You can delete your account at any time from your dashboard; published articles then remain online without your name.
7. Your rights
You have the right to access, rectify and erase your data, to restrict its processing, to data portability, and to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 15–21 GDPR). Contact us at [contact email]. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, for example [competent authority, e.g. the Austrian Data Protection Authority, dsb.gv.at].