Privacy Policy.

1. Who we are

TechReaderDaily ("we", "us", "the site") publishes daily technology journalism at www.techreaderdaily.com. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. For data-protection inquiries, use the contact form at /contact.

2. What we collect

Information you give us directly

• Newsletter subscriptions: the email address you submit, the source page, the timestamp, and a one-way hash of your IP (abuse prevention only — we do not store the raw address). Unsubscribing at /unsubscribe.html deletes the record entirely, immediately.
• Contact form submissions: your name, email, optional subject, your message, and a one-way hash of the submitting IP (abuse prevention only — the raw address is not stored).
• Account credentials (staff only): username and an argon2id password hash. We do not store plaintext passwords.

Information collected automatically

• View counters: when you read an article (the counter fires only after several seconds of engaged reading, not on page load), we record the time, the article slug, a keyed one-way hash of your IP that is scoped to the current UTC day, the referring host (e.g. google.com), and a coarse country/continent derived from your IP address — the raw address itself is not stored. The hash uses a secret server-side key and changes every day, so it cannot be reversed to your IP and cannot be used to link your reading across days or articles. It exists only to deduplicate views within a 24-hour window.
• Article images: some article images are served directly from the news or stock-photo site they came from, rather than copied onto our servers. When your browser loads such an image, that third-party host receives your IP address and the request, exactly as it would if you visited that site. Images load regardless of ad consent because they are part of the article you asked to read.
• Server access logs: the Cloud Run platform records standard HTTP access information (timestamp, path, status, user-agent, IP) for operational and abuse-prevention purposes. Logs are retained for 30 days.
• Google Analytics: we use Google Analytics (GA4), which uses cookies and collects usage data (pages read, approximate location, device/browser information) processed by Google. How it is enabled depends on where you are: in the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland it loads only if you opt in via the consent banner or the Cookie preferences page, and until then the script never loads and nothing is sent to Google; everywhere else it is enabled by default and you can turn it off at any time on the Cookie preferences page. Turning it off deletes the analytics cookies.
• Cookies: see Cookies and similar technologies.

What we do NOT collect

• We do not require an account to read the site.
• We do not run our own behavioural advertising trackers.
• We do not store credit card information.
• We do not sell personal data to anyone, for any purpose, ever.

3. Why we collect it

• To deliver the service — serving articles, managing newsletter subscriptions, responding to messages you send via the contact form.
• To understand traffic patterns — anonymous, deduplicated view counters and referring-host classification, used for aggregate traffic statistics and to spot abuse; plus Google Analytics where you have consented to it.
• To run advertising — see Advertising partners.
• To comply with legal obligations — for example responding to lawful requests.

Our legal bases (where the EU GDPR applies) are: contract (delivering content you requested), legitimate interest (our own cookieless first-party traffic counters and abuse prevention), consent (newsletter sign-up, Google Analytics, and other non-essential cookies), and legal obligation (responses to lawful requests).

4. Cookies and similar technologies

We use a small number of cookies. The complete list, what each cookie does, and how to opt out of optional ones live on our Cookie preferences page. In summary:

• Essential: a session cookie (trd_session) used only when staff sign in to the admin area.
• Advertising: cookies set by Google AdSense for ad delivery and measurement, only after you consent. See the next section.
• Analytics: cookies set by Google Analytics (_ga and related). In the EEA, UK, and Switzerland these are set only after you opt in; elsewhere they are set by default and you can turn them off at Cookie preferences. Advertising and Analytics are controlled separately.

Our own view counter is server-side and uses no cookies. Where opt-in applies (EEA/UK/Switzerland), declining Analytics means the Google Analytics script never loads and no analytics cookies are set.

5. Advertising partners

We display advertising via Google AdSense. Google and its partners may set or read cookies on your device to serve and measure ads, including personalised ads where you have consented (or non-personalised ads where applicable law requires).

• Google's privacy practices for advertising: policies.google.com/technologies/ads.
• You can opt out of personalised advertising in your Google account at myadcenter.google.com.
• For aggregate ad-industry opt-outs: aboutads.info/choices (US) or youronlinechoices.eu (EU).

Ads run only with your consent. Advertising is enabled only when you turn on Advertising on the Cookie preferences page (the first-visit banner covers analytics, not ads). Until then the site makes no ad requests at all: no ad slots are created, no advertising cookies are set, and nothing is sent to Google's ad servers. You can withdraw consent at any time on the same page, with immediate effect.

Web fonts are served from our own servers, not from Google Fonts, so simply reading the site does not transmit your IP address to any third-party font service. Google Analytics runs only after opt-in in the EEA/UK/Switzerland, and by default (opt-out) elsewhere.

6. Who we share data with

We share data only with the small set of service providers that make the site work. Each is bound by their own privacy terms.

• Google Cloud (Firestore, Cloud Run, Cloud Build, Cloud Scheduler, Secret Manager): hosting and storage. Data is processed in Google's US data centres.
• Google AdSense: ad serving, only after you consent (see above).
• Google Analytics: audience measurement, only after you consent. Google processes this data under its privacy policy; you can also block GA everywhere with Google's opt-out add-on.
• Bing / IndexNow: we ping search engines with new article URLs so they can crawl them; only the article URLs and our IndexNow key are sent.

Transfers to the United States (Google Cloud, and Google AdSense once you consent) rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, to which Google LLC is certified, and on the Standard Contractual Clauses included in Google's data-processing terms.

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal data. We may disclose data if required by law, a binding court order, or to protect against fraud, abuse, or security threats to the service.

7. How long we keep it

• Newsletter subscriptions: until you unsubscribe — unsubscribing at /unsubscribe.html deletes the address immediately and permanently. If you ever receive a Daily Brief email you did not sign up for, the unsubscribe link removes you in one click.
• Contact messages: kept until a staff member deletes them from the newsroom inbox; we remove messages once the matter they concern is resolved, and you can ask us to delete yours sooner via the contact form.
• View counters: each view row contains the view timestamp, the article slug and its author's byline handle, a day-scoped keyed IP hash, the referring host, a coarse country and continent (code and name) derived from the IP, and internal markers used to exclude staff and suspected automated (bot) traffic from statistics; the day-scoped hash cannot identify you or link across days. Rows are retained for aggregate traffic statistics; rows marked as automated traffic are kept for abuse forensics and are never counted.
• Access logs: 30 days.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, port, or object to processing of your personal data. To exercise any of these rights, use the contact form. We respond within 30 days. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling certain requests.

If you are in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.

9. Children

The site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has submitted personal data to us, contact us and we will delete it.

10. Changes to this policy

When we make material changes, we update the effective date at the top of this page and post a brief note on the homepage. Previous versions are available on request via the contact form.

11. Contact

For any privacy-related question, including data-access or deletion requests, write to us via /contact. Messages land directly in the newsroom inbox and are read by a human.