Who runs this
This site is operated by the author writing as Barnaby Sterling (a pen name), who is the data controller for anything collected here. For any privacy question or request, email hello@barnabysterling.com. A human reads it, usually with tea.
The letters
If you join the letters, the record starts with the one thing you provide: your email address, plus a note that you signed up here on the website.
On top of that, Kit — the service that sends the letters — automatically logs the IP address your signup and email opens come from, and derives an approximate location from it: city, region, and country at most, often just your internet provider's nearest hub. Nobody asks for this; it is inferred from the connection and used only for security, deliverability, and a rough sense of where readers are. It cannot pin down a street, a home, or a person.
The list is processed by Kit (kit.com, formerly ConvertKit), a U.S. email service provider, under Kit's data-processing terms, including standard contractual clauses for transfers out of the EU/EEA. The legal basis for the letters is your consent: signup is double opt-in, so nothing is sent until you confirm from your own inbox. The technical data Kit records automatically rests on the legitimate interest of Kit and the author in keeping the list secure and delivered; you can object at any time via hello@barnabysterling.com.
Your address is used for about one letter a month and the occasional book announcement. It is never sold, rented, traded, or shared with anyone beyond Kit's role in sending the emails.
Every letter contains an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing works immediately, no questions asked. If you'd like the record fully deleted rather than just unsubscribed, email hello@barnabysterling.com and it will be.
Analytics
The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and does not fingerprint or track individuals. It produces aggregate counts — visits, pages, referrers, countries — and no profiles of any person.
On your device
No cookies. No trackers. No local storage. Fonts are self-hosted. Until you submit the signup form (which goes to Kit), these pages make no third-party requests at all.
Hosting
The site is served by Cloudflare Pages. Like any host, Cloudflare processes standard technical data (such as IP addresses in server logs) to deliver and protect the site.
Your rights
If you're in the EU/EEA, UK, or anywhere with similar rules, you have the right to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your data, to object to or restrict its processing, and to withdraw consent at any time (the unsubscribe link is the fastest route). Email hello@barnabysterling.com to exercise any of these. You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority, though in the Cove we'd rather sort it out over the garden fence first.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version appears here with a new date. The current version is the one you are reading.