This describes how Parameter handles personal data. It is written in plain language on purpose. Where this document and applicable law disagree, the law wins.
Parameter has readers in the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, so this policy is written to meet the GDPR, the UK GDPR and the CCPA/CPRA. Where one of those gives you a stronger right than this page describes, you have the stronger right.
Who is responsible
Parameter is the data controller for this site. Data protection enquiries go to editorial@parameter.news.
What we collect
When you simply read the site
Reading does not require an account and we do not ask for personal information. Our hosting provider processes the technical information any web server receives — IP address, user agent, requested URL and timestamp — to serve pages and protect against abuse.
We keep an aggregate count of page views per article per day. It is not tied to an identifier and cannot be traced back to an individual.
When you subscribe to the Daily AI Brief
We store your email address, the date you subscribed and which page you subscribed from. We use it to send the newsletter and nothing else. Every email contains an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes you from the sending list immediately. We do not sell, rent or share subscriber lists.
When you search
Search terms are logged without any user identifier, so we can see which topics readers look for and what we are missing. Because nothing links a query to a person, these logs cannot identify you.
When you email us
We keep the correspondence so we can act on it — particularly for corrections, where we need a record of what was reported and what was changed.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics to measure how many people read what. It is configured to be privacy-preserving: IP addresses are anonymised where the provider supports it, and no cross-site advertising identifiers are used. Analytics are not used to build profiles of individuals.
Cookies
The site itself sets no tracking cookies. Your theme preference (light or dark) is stored in your browser’s local storage, never sent to us, and cleared when you clear site data. Signing in to the newsroom admin area sets a strictly necessary, HTTP-only session cookie; that area is for staff, not readers.
The site carries advertising, served by A-ADS in a sandboxed iframe. A-ADS does not use cookies or collect personal data for ad targeting, and the advertisement you see is not selected using anything we know about you.
Who we share data with
We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Data is processed by the service providers needed to run the site: our hosting provider, our database provider, and our email delivery provider, plus the advertising network named above, plus the analytics provider named above. Each acts under contract and only for the purpose we engaged them for. If you want the current list of processors by name, ask us at the address above and we will tell you.
How long we keep things
- Newsletter subscriptions: until you unsubscribe, plus a short suppression record so we do not re-add you.
- Search logs: rolling window, de-identified throughout.
- Aggregate page counts: retained as statistics, with no personal data in them.
- Email correspondence: as long as needed for the matter it concerns, longer for correction records.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, to object to processing, and to complain to a data-protection authority. To exercise any of these, email editorial@parameter.news. For newsletter data, unsubscribing handles most of it instantly.
Children
This site is intended for a general adult audience and we do not knowingly collect data from children.
Changes
Material changes to this policy will be reflected in the “last updated” date above. Editorial practices are covered separately in our editorial policy.