Privacy
Last updated: 27 September 2026
This book is a free website, and the weekly digest is an optional email you can sign up for. This page says what each of them collects, why, who else handles it, and how long it is kept.
In short: reading the book needs no account and sends nothing that identifies you, apart from what any website sees (your IP address) and Google Analytics, which you can refuse. The digest stores your email address and the topics you chose, uses them only to send you the digest, and deletes them when you ask.
Who is responsible
Oleksiy Pylypenko, the author of this book, decides how this data is used (the “controller” in GDPR terms). Write to support@zengarden.space with any question or request about your data.
Reading the book
- Hosting. GitHub Pages serves this site. Like any web server, it receives your IP address and browser details when your browser asks for a page; see GitHub’s privacy statement.
- Your reading progress stays on your device. The ticks in the table of contents, your scroll position, and your light or dark theme are kept in your browser’s local storage, and your cookie choice in one cookie; none of them is sent anywhere. Reset Reading Progress in the footer clears the ticks.
- Anonymous reading statistics. While you read, your browser adds to shared counters: time spent and visits per chapter and section, per day. The counters live in Google Firebase (Realtime Database, EU region, Belgium) and hold only totals, with no identifiers and no per-reader records. The “readers online” count works the same way: an anonymous entry exists while a page is open and is removed when you leave. Firebase sees your IP address when your browser connects, as any server does. This is based on a legitimate interest in knowing which parts of the book are read. The numbers are public: Reading Statistics in the footer.
- Google Analytics counts visits and pages, with IP addresses anonymised. It runs unless you choose Reject in the cookie banner, and you can change that choice at any time with Cookie Settings in the footer. Google may process this data outside the EU; see Google’s privacy policy.
- Files from other sites. The diagram library and the cookie banner load from the jsDelivr CDN, the statistics library from Google, and the Buy me a coffee button image from buymeacoffee.com. Your browser fetches these directly, so those services see your IP address.
The weekly digest
What is stored:
- your email address and the topics you chose;
- when you signed up, confirmed, or unsubscribed;
- which issues were sent to your address and which articles they contained, so no article is sent to you twice;
- the one-time links in our emails, stored only as irreversible hashes;
- a list of confirmation and manage-link emails sent to your address in the last 7 days, used to stop anyone from flooding your inbox with sign-up emails.
Why: to send you the digest you asked for. The legal basis is your consent, which you give by clicking the confirmation link; nothing is sent before that.
Where it is kept: on a server run by the author, reached through Cloudflare’s network. The server makes a nightly backup copy, and each copy is deleted after 14 days. The server’s request logs hold IP addresses (never email addresses, and with the one-time links removed), are capped in size, and are discarded every time the server is updated. When you use the sign-up form, your IP address is also held briefly in memory to limit repeated requests.
Who else handles it:
- Resend (Resend, Inc., United States) delivers the emails, so it receives your address and the email content. Transfers to the US rely on the safeguards in Resend’s data processing agreement.
- Cloudflare carries traffic between your browser and the server and sees your IP address.
- Anthropic writes the short summaries of each article with its Claude model. It receives only the public articles, never anything about subscribers.
No tracking. The digest has no tracking pixels and no click tracking. Its images are loaded from the article publishers’ own sites, so when your email app shows them, those sites can see that they were loaded.
How long it is kept:
- A sign-up that is never confirmed is deleted after 7 days.
- An active subscription is kept until you unsubscribe.
- After you unsubscribe, only your address and the date are kept, so that you are never emailed again by mistake.
- Delete my address entirely removes even that: your address, your topics, and the record of what was sent to you. Backup copies roll off within 14 days.
Your controls. Every digest has a one-click unsubscribe link and a link to change your topics or delete your address. If you no longer have an email from us, use Already subscribed? in the sign-up form to get a new link, or write to support@zengarden.space.
Your rights
You can ask to see the data held about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its use, receive a copy, or withdraw your consent at any time. Requests go to support@zengarden.space and are answered within one month. You can also complain to the data protection authority in your country.
Nothing here is sold, used for advertising, or used to build profiles of readers.
Changes
If this page changes, the date at the top changes with it. Changes that affect digest subscribers will be announced in the digest.