Privacy
Plain English, because a policy nobody can read protects nobody. Last updated .
Business message workspace
Your offer, draft versions and reader notes are stored in this browser when storage is available. They are not sent to a generative AI service or our server. Shared tool links contain the route, not your entries. Downloaded briefs and page outlines include what you entered; review them before sharing. Use Clear my work in the workspace or clear site storage to remove the saved project. Do not record identifying or sensitive reader information.
HTML and CSS page editor
The editor keeps a separate HTML and CSS project in this browser when storage is available. Your code is not uploaded or sent to an AI builder. The preview blocks scripts, active links and external files. Downloaded pages may load HTTPS images you included when opened. Copying for an AI builder places your code and instructions on your clipboard; you decide where to paste them. Exported files contain your text and code. Start over replaces the editor with a starter page; clear site storage to delete the saved editor project completely.
Continuing in an AI chat
Ask AI prepares a context message on this device. You can review and edit it before copying or downloading it. Reader notes and page code are optional. We do not send this context to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Provider links open their websites without your figures or text in the link. If you paste the context there, that provider receives it under its own privacy terms. Their accounts and usage limits are separate from Plain Reckoner.
Book recommendations
Some guides contain clearly disclosed Amazon affiliate links. If you follow one, Amazon receives the request and applies its own privacy terms. We may earn a commission from a qualifying purchase. This does not send your locally saved workspace brief to Amazon.
Reading preferences
If you change the article text size or font, we save that choice in your browser. It is not sent to us. Your personal highlights and focus mode last only on the current page. Clear site storage to reset saved preferences.
Manual research reviews
If you request a manual review, we keep your email, optional name and question in the research-request queue so a person can answer. We email an acknowledgement and notify our own contact inbox. This does not subscribe you to marketing. Please do not submit passwords or sensitive reports. Contact us to request deletion; we retain these details in the active request queue while handling the request. Answered queue records and requests older than 90 days are removed by daily cleanup. Copies of correspondence in email systems are separate from the active queue.
Manual request corrections
After a successful manual review request, this browser page receives a private edit capability valid for up to 24 hours while the request remains unanswered. It permits corrections to the name, email and question on that request. Keep this page open to edit it; the capability is not placed in a public link. Closing or reloading the page ends access to its editing controls. We record the correction and notify our team without starting a new request or adding you to a mailing list.
Language preferences
You can choose English, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish or French. Your explicit language choice is stored locally in this browser. Auto follows the ordered language preferences supplied by your browser, with English as the fallback when none is supported. It does not use your IP address or country. A manually selected language stays selected until you choose Auto again. You can change language at any time. Translations are generated from public English content during publishing; your questions, calculator inputs and imported files are not sent to a translation service.
When you explicitly switch language inside the planning, business-calculator, period-comparison or network-screening tools, a temporary same-tab copy transfers the numeric fields and traffic-unit choice to the translated page. It is removed when that page reads it and rejected after two minutes. Emails, questions and imported file contents are excluded. These figures are not sent to a translation service.
Who runs this site
Plain Reckoner is operated by the Plain Reckoner team. We handle the information described on this page. For privacy questions or requests, contact contact@plainreckoner.com.
The short version
- You can read public pages without an account or submitting your email.
- Page views are counted without analytics cookies. Hosting and email requests involve the technical data described below.
- Newsletter subscriptions require email confirmation. A manual review request gets a direct reply without subscribing you.
- Advertising is currently disabled. If enabled later, Google and its partners may use cookies as described below.
- We do not sell personal information.
What we collect, and why
When you read a page
A page view is counted by Cloudflare Web Analytics: the page, the referrer, a country and a device type. It sets no cookie, stores nothing on your device, and uses no cross-site identifier, so there is nothing that follows you between visits or between sites. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in knowing whether anybody reads this (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)).
When you subscribe
Your email address, the page you subscribed from, the exact wording you agreed to, and the date. The list lives in our own database, not a newsletter provider's. We store a one-way hash of the address, plus the address itself — which is unavoidable, because mail cannot be delivered to a hash — and a confirmation link expires after 48 hours. Daily cleanup removes expired signup records even if nobody else signs up. Resend puts the message on the wire and receives one address at a time to do it; it never holds the list. The legal basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), and you can withdraw it at any time from the link in every email.
When you use the dashboard
The tools at /app/ calculate in your browser without an account. The benchmark panels save their figures and prior site-check summaries on your device. Edited store cost scenarios and saved comparisons stay in the current browser tab for up to 24 hours. They can be reused across the compatible store tools. A scenario file is downloaded only when you choose.
The guided analysis keeps your chosen business type, reporting month, public website address, entered figures and limited public-check results in this browser tab for up to 24 hours. It sends only the public website address to our checker. Unknown inputs remain blank. A new analysis replaces workspace figures; repeating the public check preserves your edited store scenarios. Use Clear workspace to remove this context and any prepared manual-review question, while keeping theme and language choices.
We do not upload that saved history. Figures in the legacy publisher benchmark tools also appear in the page URL: copying the address bar can include those figures. The Share control starts with a clean link and includes figures only if you choose. Loading a link with figures sends its URL to our hosting service. Public site checks send the site address to our inspection service, as described below. You can remove all of it at any time with the “Forget everything” control on the dashboard, or by clearing site data for this domain. Your browser may also remove it without asking: Safari deletes script-written storage after seven days of use without a visit to the site, and any browser may discard it when the device is short of space.
“Ask the research” matches questions against published findings in your browser. It downloads a public answer index when first used; the question text is not sent to our server, placed in the URL, saved to device storage or sent to an AI provider. Its conversation exists only on the current page and can be cleared. It returns source excerpts, not a live human or generative AI response.
Gross ad revenue and monthly net profit are kept as separate figures. Separately, the figures you type appear in the address bar so a result can be shared as a link — which means they are also in your browser history, on this device, the same as any other page you visit.
When you come back to the dashboard, it reads the most recent site you inspected once more — its public homepage, up to two linked public pages, robots.txt, ads.txt, privacy policy and a relevant public seller roster — so it can tell you what changed since you last looked. That request goes from our servers to that site, exactly as it did when you first typed the address, and nothing about it is stored on our side. It happens for one site, only when the last reading is more than six hours old, and you can switch it off on the dashboard, beside the list of sites.
When you run a public site scan
The instant scan fetches the address you enter, up to two public pages linked from it, its privacy policy and relevant public publisher files. Store checks read product and offer markup and look for shipping, return and cart links. The scan does not follow cart links, submit forms, run store scripts or access private sales. It runs without accessing private analytics or logging in. The report is returned to your browser; scan results are not saved on our server. A salted hash of the requesting IP is kept briefly to limit scan abuse.
When your browser reaches our server
Your IP address and the page you asked for reach Cloudflare, which serves this site. That is unavoidable — it is how the request arrives. We do not keep our own copy.
When you submit a subscription or review request, a hash of your IP address is used to limit repeated submissions. Newsletter consent also records that hash as evidence of the signup. Short-lived rate-limit records are removed by daily cleanup after 24 hours. The address itself is never stored.
If you ask us to look at your site
The calculator page offers to look at a site and write back. If you use it, we store the address of the site and the email address you gave us, for the single purpose of sending you that answer.
We also fetch one or two public pages of the site you named— its homepage and, if it links to one, its privacy policy — the same way any visitor would. Nothing behind a login, no crawl, and we identify ourselves in the request as PlainReckonerAudit.
Daily cleanup removes answered requests and requests older than 90 days from the active queue. Email correspondence is separate. Asking for a look does not add you to the mailing list; that requires email confirmation.
If you email us
Mail sent to contact@plainreckoner.com is stored so it can be read and answered — the sender, the subject, the date and the plain-text message. Not attachments, not formatting.
Daily cleanup removes inbox messages older than 90 days. Copies in your own email system are outside our control. To request earlier deletion from our inbox, contact us.
Advertising and cookie settings
Advertising is currently disabled. We do not load advertising tags or ask for advertising consent in this state. Before advertising is enabled, a published Google-certified consent platform must be configured for applicable regions. Theme, language and reading choices are stored on this device when you use those features.
When advertising is enabled, Google AdSense may set cookies or read device identifiers to select ads and measure them, and Google is a separate controller for that processing — what it does is governed by Google's own policy.
If advertising is enabled, third parties, including Google and its advertising partners, may be placing and reading cookies on your browser, or reading a device identifier, to select and measure the ads you see. This is data collection, sharing and usage that happens as a consequence of this site using Google products, and it is the only advertising processing that takes place here — there is no other ad vendor, no data broker and no audience list built from your visit.
When advertising is enabled, visitors in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland are asked for consent through Google’s consent message before advertising cookies are used. Your choice does not restrict access to the site. When advertising is enabled, the privacy settings control lets you revisit that choice. Outside those regions you can opt out of personalised advertising at Google My Ad Center.
Who else receives data
| Who | What for | What they get | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buttondown | Would have hosted the newsletter list — not used; we host it ourselves | Nothing. No data has ever been sent to them. | Not yet in use |
| Resend | Delivers subscription messages, review acknowledgements and team notifications | Your email address, and the contents of the email we send you | In use |
| Cloudflare D1 (our own database) | Stores subscriptions, research requests and incoming contact emails | Email addresses, consent records, site URLs, request or message text and abuse-prevention hashes, as described above | In use |
| Google AdSense | Shows the advertising that pays for this site | Your IP address, device and browser, and advertising cookies where you allow them | Not yet in use |
| Google Privacy & messaging (CMP) | Asks for your consent before any advertising cookie is set | Your consent choice, stored in your own browser | Not yet in use |
| GoatCounter | Counts page views so we know which tools are used | Page URL, referrer, country, and a daily rotating hash — no cookie, no cross-site identifier | Not yet in use |
| Cloudflare Web Analytics | Counts page views so we know whether anybody reads this | Page URL, referrer, country and device type — no cookie, no storage, no cross-site identifier | In use |
| DigitalOcean | Runs the server this page was served from | Whatever your browser sends to reach us, including your IP address | Not yet in use |
Rows marked not yet in use are listed in advance so this page is never behind the site. Nothing is sent to them until the status changes.
How long we keep things
| What | Stored as | Kept for |
|---|---|---|
| Unconfirmed signup | A hash of your address, plus the plaintext held only until you confirm | Confirmation expires after 48 hours; expired records are removed by daily cleanup |
| Confirmed subscriber | Your email for delivery, its hash, and the date and wording of consent | Delivery address removed on unsubscribe; the consent and opt-out record remains to prevent further mail |
| Calculator inputs | Benchmark figures and site-check history in your browser; store scenarios on the current page unless exported | Use Forget everything or clear site storage; browsers may evict saved data sooner. Exported files remain wherever you save them. |
| Hosting request data | Cloudflare processes technical request information, including IP addresses, to deliver and protect the site | Managed by Cloudflare under its privacy policy and the applicable service settings; not a browser-only record |
| Which audio or video was played | The note, the voice, and how far in — no IP, no cookie, no identifier of any kind | Daily cleanup removes records older than 180 days |
| A ?ref= tag you arrived with | The tag and the page — no IP, no cookie, no identifier of any kind | Daily cleanup removes records older than 180 days |
| A free audit request | The site you asked about, your address, and a hash of your IP used only to stop one person filling the queue | Removed from the active queue by daily cleanup after being marked answered, or once 90 days old |
| A request for the data behind a page | Your address in plain — a person has to reply to it — the dataset you asked for, and a hash of your IP used only to stop one person filling the queue | Removed from the active queue by daily cleanup after being marked answered, or once 90 days old |
Your rights
This site is operated from Brazil, so the LGPD(Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados, Lei nº 13.709/2018) applies to everything described above. Under it you may confirm that we process your data, access it, correct it, ask us to delete it, ask what we share and with whom, request it in a portable form, and withdraw consent at any time. Brazil's supervisory authority is the ANPD, and you can complain to them about us.
If you are in the EEA or the UK, the GDPR gives you the same set of rights, and you may complain to your own national data protection authority. If you are in California, the CCPAgives you the rights to know, to delete, and to opt out of sale — we do not sell data, so there is nothing to opt out of.
Email contact@plainreckoner.com and we will answer within 30 days. One honest limitation: because subscriber addresses are stored as hashes, we find your record by your address — so a deletion request has to come with the address it concerns. You can also complain to your national data protection authority.
How long we keep a record of your consent
If you unsubscribe we stop emailing you immediately — not within some number of working days. We do keep the record that you once consented, and its date and wording, for about three years. That is not us relying on your consent after you withdrew it: it is a separate legal basis (GDPR Article 6(1)(c) and (f)), because if anyone ever asks whether we had permission to email you, the only way to answer is to have kept the proof. We are telling you now rather than in a footnote later.
Children
This site is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
Changes
We publish material changes on this page before new data collection begins. Where appropriate, we also display an on-site notice or email affected users. You do not need to subscribe to read this policy or its updates.