Privacy
This site sets out to collect as little as it can and to say exactly what that is. There is no analytics, no advertising network, and no request to any third party from any page you read.
The short version
Reading this site collects nothing about you beyond what a web server unavoidably writes down. There is no analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixel, and no request to any other company from any page here. The only personal data this site holds is an email address you typed in yourself, and only if you asked to be told when the software is released.
What this site does not do
This is worth stating first because it removes most of what a privacy notice usually has to explain.
- No analytics of any kind. Not Google Analytics, not a self-hosted equivalent, not a page-view counter.
- No advertising, no remarketing, no conversion pixels, no social network buttons that phone home.
- No fonts, scripts, stylesheets or images loaded from anybody else's server. The typeface is served from this site's own files, so reading a page here tells no third party that you did.
- No profile is built about you, no data is sold, and nothing is shared with anyone for marketing.
- No automated decision-making, and no attempt to identify you across other sites.
The launch list
If you ask to be told when Orris Bench is released, that is the one place this site holds personal data. It works on double opt-in: you enter an address, a confirmation message goes to it, and nothing is confirmed until you follow the link in that message. An address that is never confirmed never receives anything else.
What is stored against your signup, and why each item is there:
| What | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Your email address | To send the confirmation, and then the one message on release. Nothing else is asked for: no name, no company, no country. |
| A one-way hash of the address | A technical key that lets the database refuse the same address twice. It is derived from the address and is not extra information about you. |
| A random token | What makes your confirmation link and your removal link yours. It identifies the row, not you. |
| Whether you have confirmed | So an unconfirmed address is never sent anything beyond the single confirmation request. |
| The exact wording you agreed to | Stored word for word against your row. Consent only covers what you were actually told, so if that wording is ever changed, existing signups keep the version they agreed to rather than being treated as having agreed to something newer. |
| The IP address the consent came from, and the time | Proof that consent was given, which is what a data protection authority asks for. It is kept for that reason alone and is never used to send you anything, to locate you, or to build any picture of you. |
| Your question or note, if you wrote one | The signup box has an optional comment field. Whatever you write there is kept with your address so it can be answered, and it is deleted whenever your address is. |
The lawful basis is your consent, given by typing the address and confirming it. It is held until the release message has been sent, or until you ask for it to be removed, whichever comes first.
How to have it deleted
Every message sent from the launch list carries a removal link. Following it deletes the row: the address, the comment, the consent record, all of it. It is a real deletion and not a flag on a row that stays.
That is deliberate, and it is worth explaining because it is not what most services do. Keeping an address on a suppression list so it is never mailed again means keeping the address of somebody who asked you to stop holding it. Keeping a hash of it instead is no better, because a hash of an email address is still a way of recognizing that address. So the row goes.
If you have lost the link, ask through the contact page and it will be done by hand.
Cookies
Reading the pages on this site sets no cookies, which is why there is no cookie banner asking you to accept anything. There is nothing to accept.
Two things can change that, and only if you do them. Using the shop sets the cookies a shopping basket needs in order to remember what is in it and to carry you through checkout; those are strictly necessary for a service you asked for. Signing in to an account, if you have one, sets the cookies that keep you signed in. Neither is used to track you anywhere else.
Server logs
This site runs on a rented virtual server, and like every web server it writes a log line for each request: the address it came from, the time, the page asked for, and what the browser said it was. That is how a server is kept running and how abuse is stopped, and it is the unavoidable part of the first paragraph on this page.
Those logs are not read to study visitors, are not joined to anything else, and are not the basis of any statistics published or private. The signup form also counts recent requests by IP address for a short period, so that one machine cannot fill the list overnight.
Your rights
If you are in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the law gives you the right to ask what is held about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to its use, to receive a copy in a portable form, and to withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not make what happened before it unlawful.
Given how little is held here, most of these come down to the same action, and the removal link does it in one click. Anything else, ask through the contact page. You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.
Who is responsible, and how to ask
Orris Bench is a small independent operation in the eurozone. Requests about anything on this page go through the contact page, and are answered by a person.
Changes to this page
This page is kept in the same version control as the software that does what it describes, and it is changed in the same commit as any change to that behavior. It has no separate revision date because it is not maintained separately: if the handling changes, this page changed with it.