Privacy
Privacy statement
What this site collects, why it collects it, how long it stays, and what you can do about any of it. Written to be read rather than to be survived.
Last updated 19 September 2026
What we collect
Two things, collected for different reasons and under different rules: what you send us on purpose, and how the site itself gets used.
What you send us
Your name, your email address, your organisation and whatever you write, if you use the contact form or write to us directly. You choose what goes in it. We ask for the minimum that lets us send back a useful answer rather than a brochure.
How the site gets used
Which pages are opened, how long each one holds somebody, how far down it they read, and which links and buttons get clicked. This is collected only if you accept, and it is collected against a random string rather than against you.
We do not collect your name or your location from your use of the site. We do not buy data about you from anybody, and we do not combine what this site records with anything bought elsewhere.
How we use it
Messages you send are used to answer you, and to carry on the conversation if there is one. No mailing list, no newsletter you did not ask for, and no passing your details to anybody who might like to sell you something.
The usage record is used to work out which pages are worth keeping, which are read to the end, which are opened and abandoned, and which routes into a conversation people actually take. It exists so the site can be made better, not so that any one visitor can be followed through it.
It is never sold. It is never shared with an advertising network. No third-party analytics service holds a copy of it.
What each event records
Four kinds of event, and this is all of them. Every one carries the page address, the address you arrived from, the width of your browser window, the language it is set to, the time, and the two random strings from the table above.
| Event | What it says | When |
|---|---|---|
| page_view | A page was opened. Carries the page address and its title. | Every page |
| page_time | How many seconds that page held you, and how far down it you read. The clock runs only while the tab is visible, and stops when you switch away. | On leaving |
| click | A link or a button was clicked. Carries the words written on it and where it goes. | On click |
| enquiry_started | The contact form handed a message to your mail app. Nothing else. | Rare |
What our server adds
The time the event arrived, the user agent string your browser sends, and a country if the hosting platform has already worked one out from the connection. We do not store your IP address.
What is never collected
There is no fingerprinting. Nothing measures your fonts, your canvas, your hardware or your plugins to build an identifier out of them. No event carries your name, your email address or anything you typed into a form.
Your choice
Analytics on this site are off until you turn them on. Nothing is written and nothing is sent before you answer, and declining is a real answer rather than a delay.
A browser sending Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track is treated as having declined, and is not asked at all. Under the laws that recognise it, that signal is binding rather than advisory, and asking somebody who has already answered is the dark pattern.
You have not answered yet. Until you do, nothing is recorded.
Declining after accepting deletes both identifiers from your browser immediately.
Clearing cookies for this site resets the decision, and you will be asked once more on your next visit.
The contact form and the email box
They work differently, and the difference is worth knowing before you use either.
The form
It composes a message and hands it to your own mail application. What you type is not sent to this website and is not stored here. If you decide not to press send in your mail app, we never see any of it. Pressing the button records that an enquiry was started, and only that, and only if you accepted analytics.
The email box
The small box that opens on the contact page is different. An address you type there and send with the button reaches us whichever way you answered the analytics question, because sending it is something you chose to do rather than something we observed. It arrives on its own, with neither identifier attached, and it is used to reply to you.
Requests to other companies
Two things on this site are fetched from somewhere else, and your browser contacts those services directly when a page loads. The typefaces come from Google Fonts, and the photographs are served from Unsplash. Neither is given anything about you beyond what any request to a website carries: your IP address, your browser, and which page asked.
Neither request depends on the analytics decision, because neither is under our control once the page is open. We would rather serve both ourselves, and intend to. Until then it seemed better to say so here than to leave you to find it in the network tab.
Links out to a law, a standard or a publisher take you to that organisation's own site, which has its own terms. Those links open in a new tab, and we are not told that you followed one.
How long we keep it
Usage events are kept for thirteen months and then removed. Thirteen rather than twelve, so that a year can be compared with the year before it.
Messages you send are kept for as long as the conversation is live, and for as long afterwards as any agreement between us requires. Ask for a message to be deleted and it will be.
The cookies expire on their own, on the schedule in the table above, whether or not you do anything.
Your rights
Where data protection law applies to you, and in most places it now does, you can ask what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and object to us holding it at all. Write to hello@alesanalytics.com and you will get an answer.
One honest limit on that. The usage record is tied to a random string rather than to a person, so we cannot find your rows by your name or your address, and we will not ask you for more information than we hold in order to try. The reliable way to remove yourself from it is to decline above, which deletes the identifiers, or to clear this site's cookies.
If you think we have handled something badly, tell us first. You are also entitled to complain to the data protection authority where you live.
Client work
This statement covers the website. Work with a client is governed by what is agreed in writing before it starts, and the environments we build are designed so that the client's data stays inside the client's own infrastructure. That is the subject of most of the rest of this site rather than of this page.
How to reach us
Write to hello@alesanalytics.com about anything on this page: a question, a request, a correction or a complaint. It reaches the people who built the thing being described.
If this statement changes in a way that affects what is collected or why, the date at the top changes with it, and the question is asked again where the change requires it.