Privacy policy

This privacy policy is version 1, dated 7th January 2018.

The Stories Unread newsletter is proudly published by Bright Flair Ltd, who take the privacy of the newsletter subscribers and visitors to the website very seriously. We only take absolutely vital information required to offer the service to the subscribers and visitors, and this data is handled extremely carefully, as described below.

What data we collect

We have no interest in finding out demographic analytical information about our subscribers, so we do not use any analytics services. We specifically ensure that the only third parties that we deal with are hand picked, necessary for the function of the newsletter, and heavily vetted before using their services.

There are only two data points we collect of our subscribers and visitors:

1. Upon subscribing, the visitor will provide us their email address to send the newsletter to. We pass this information to our email provider (see below) and we only store it temporarily in a file on our server for one hour to provide a double opt-in mechanism.
2. When visiting the website, the web server will log the access which includes the IP and user agent of the browser being used. We store no more information than what is the default for a web server's normal operation.

Did you notice how we didn't force you to accept confusing cookie consent popups when you visited our website? That's because we do not track visitors in any way. We do not use tracking cookies in any way. No information about visitors' browsers is recorded or sent anywhere. We are an email newsletter about technology, not an evil marketing corporation.

The email address that is supplied by subscribers is sent to our email processing service, as described below.

What data we store, and where we store it

We do not keep persistent records of email addresses on our own systems. When a new subscriber provides their email address to us, we temporarily store the email address in a file on our server for up to one hour to provide a mechanism for double opt-in. If the subscriber doesn't double opt-in (by following a link sent to their email address), we delete the record of their subscription. If the subscriber completes the double opt-in, we pass the email address to our email provider (see below) and remove the email address from our own server.

Every time the web server serves a page or other asset, a log is made on our web server. The information that is logged is not used for analytical purposes, but does include the IP address and user agent of the web browser that was used to access the website. This is default behaviour for all web servers and provides the proper function of the server and protection against malicious use.

When a newsletter is sent, our third party email provider serves images within the content of the email that are used to know when an email's content has been downloaded. This information is used to estimate the number of active subscribers to the newsletter. This number is shared with our sponsors.

The third party email provider will store inactive email addresses for up to six months, at which point they will be removed. If email addresses are deemed as active (by downloading the content of the newsletters sent to them), they will be kept in the system forever that they continue to be active.

Unsubscriptions are handled by the third party email provider. Once a subscriber unsubscribes, their email address is completely removed from the system. There is no other data recorded, so an unsubscription can be seen as the method for completely removing your data from our systems.

Our third party e-mail provider

The name of the email service we currently use is Mailjet. We do not expect to change providers at any point, but if we do, this document will be updated accordingly, and timestamped.

This privacy policy document covers how Bright Flair uses your data. Mailjet's privacy policy covers how the third party protects the privacy of your data we provide to them.

The only information we provide to the email provider is the email address of a subscriber when they subscribe via the website.

The email provider adds a link to each sent email's footer to unsubscribe. Following the link removes your email address from the system and in turn removes all of your information stored anywhere in our systems.

Ask a question

Feel free to ask us a question regarding our privacy policy. If there is anything unclear, we want to improve and ensure everything is as clear as possible.

Send an email to stories@storiesunread.com for more information.