Privacy Policy

The Chess Herald is a small chess news site run on a non-profit basis. It doesn't sell anything, doesn't run ads, and has no accounts to sign up for. This page sets out the data that does get collected, who receives it, and how to stop it.

Who is responsible for this site

The Chess Herald is a non-profit publication operated from Finland, and is the data controller for the purposes of the GDPR. For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights listed below, use the contact form — it reaches the person who runs the site directly.

What gets collected

Analytics

This site uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which articles get read. It sets cookies in your browser and collects your IP address, approximate location, device and browser type, the pages you view, and the site you arrived from. This is used only to understand what's worth writing more of. It is never used to identify you personally, and it is never sold or shared with anyone beyond Google.

Google acts as a processor for this data and may transfer it to the United States under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Google's own handling is governed by Google's privacy policy, and how long the data is kept is set by the retention setting on the Analytics property. The Chess Herald does not keep a separate copy.

If you'd rather not be counted, there's a switch under How to opt out below that turns analytics off for good. It stops the script from loading at all, rather than loading it and discarding what it sends.

Article photos

Photos used in articles are sourced from Wikimedia Commons, but a copy is downloaded once when the article is written and served from this site from then on — your browser doesn't request anything from Wikimedia just by reading an article. The only time it does is if you click a photo's small credit link through to its original Commons page, which is a normal off-site link like any other in an article. Wikimedia's handling of that click is covered by the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy.

Hosting

The site is hosted on GitHub Pages. GitHub receives and logs the usual server request data, including IP addresses, as part of serving the pages. See GitHub's privacy statement.

The contact form

If — and only if — you submit the contact form, the name (optional), email address, topic and message you type are sent through Web3Forms, which forwards them to a private email inbox. That's used to reply to you and nothing else. Messages stay in that inbox until they're deleted; ask via the form and yours will be removed.

Your theme preference

Choosing light or dark mode saves a single value (chessherald-theme) in your browser's local storage so the site remembers it next time. It never leaves your device, isn't a cookie, and isn't seen by anyone. It goes away if you clear your browser data.

What is not collected

• No accounts, logins or passwords — there's nothing to register for.
• No advertising or advertising trackers.
• No social media pixels or embedded trackers.
• No fonts loaded from third parties — they're served from this site, so nothing is sent to a font provider.
• No payment data of any kind.

Legal basis

Hosting logs and the contact form rest on legitimate interest: serving the site securely and answering people who write in. The theme preference is strictly necessary for a setting you asked for. Analytics can be turned off at any time using the switch below, and stays off on this browser once you do.

How to opt out

The switch below is the direct route: turn it off and this site stops loading Google Analytics for you entirely, so nothing is requested from Google and no data about your visit leaves this page.

These all work too, and don't depend on this site honouring anything:

• Block or clear cookies for this site in your browser settings. Nothing here breaks if you do.
• Use a browser that blocks trackers by default — Brave, DuckDuckGo, or Firefox with Enhanced Tracking Protection set to Strict. These stop Analytics outright.
• On a desktop browser, install Google's Analytics opt-out add-on, which applies to every site using Analytics. There's no mobile version.
• Private browsing helps, but less than it looks: it clears the cookies afterwards rather than preventing the data being collected in the first place.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask for a copy of your data, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, object to it being processed, or ask for processing to be restricted. Use the contact form and it will be handled without charge, normally within a month.

If you aren't satisfied with the response, you can complain to the Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman (tietosuoja.fi), or to the data protection authority in your own EU country.