Cookies

Analytics without cookies

We measure traffic with Vercel Web Analytics, which works without cookies and without persistent identifiers. Per Vercel's documentation, visits are counted with a hash derived from the incoming request, session information is discarded within 24 hours, and the resulting statistics are aggregated, not associated with your IP address. We see that a page got visits; we cannot see that you visited it, and nothing follows you across other websites.

We also use PostHog (hosted in the EU) to understand how pages are used: how far people scroll, which areas get clicked, and anonymised session replays in which anything you type is masked. It runs in memory-only mode: it stores nothing on your device, no cookie and no localStorage entry, so each visit starts from a blank slate and we cannot recognise you when you come back.

One localStorage key

If you take the platform quiz, the site may write a single entry in your browser's local storage, ownletter:event-queue. It is a temporary, best-effort queue of anonymous interaction events (things like "quiz started") used when the analytics endpoint is unreachable. It contains no identifier, no email, nothing that names you; it is capped at 100 entries, never read by any third party, and you can clear it any time from your browser settings.

What happens when you click an affiliate link

When you click a link to a newsletter platform, the platform's own website typically sets a cookie on its own domain so it can credit the referral (45 to 90 days for the programs that publish a window; some vendors do not disclose theirs). That cookie lives on their site, under their privacy policy, not on ownletter.com, and we never see it. Which programs we are in and what they pay is fully disclosed on how we make money.

If this ever changes

Should we ever add a tool that requires consent (we have no plan to), a proper consent banner would ship before the tool does, and this page would be updated with the full list. The date below is your reference point.