Privacy Policy

If you accept analytics: Google Analytics 4 counts page views and the site's own events (which links get clicked, which filters get used), with IP anonymization and a 14 month retention window. If you decline: no analytics script ever loads, and nothing is collected.

There are no reader accounts, no comments, and no forms that submit data. The future newsletter, when it ships, will collect only the email address you hand it, with double opt-in.

Analytics and advertising run under Google Consent Mode v2 with everything denied by default. The consent banner appears on first visit, offers two equal choices, remembers your decline, and can be cleared from your browser storage at any time.

This site does not currently run display advertising. If and when display advertising (such as Google AdSense) is enabled, third-party vendors, including Google, would use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites, and Google's use of advertising cookies would enable it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the Internet. The consent banner you see on this site governs that day too: advertising scripts load only after you accept, and a decline keeps every advertising cookie off your browser.

You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings at adssettings.google.com. To opt out of third-party vendors' cookies generally, visit aboutads.info/choices. If you decline consent on this site, no advertising cookie loads here at all; non-personalized advertising, when it serves, carries no cookie-based profile.

This site is an Amazon Associate. When you click a product link, Amazon may set its own cookies on its servers to operate the shopping cart and affiliate attribution; that is Amazon's processing, governed by Amazon's Privacy Notice, and this site receives a commission report that contains no personal data about you. Product links are always labeled as product links before you click them.

You can request a copy of any data connected to you (for the future newsletter: your email, subscription date, and event history) or its deletion by emailing editor@ratedhive.com. Export arrives within 30 days; deletion executes within 30 days and is confirmed by email.

GDPR and CCPA both find the same posture here: minimal collection, consent-gated analytics and advertising, named third-party cookies with opt-out paths, and a contact route for every right. Under CCPA you may opt out of the sharing that personalized advertising performs by declining consent or using the opt-out links above; declining never degrades the site's content.

This site itself sells nothing and shares nothing: no data sales by us, no data sharing by us for cross-context behavioral profiling, no sale of personal information as CCPA defines the term by us. The third-party advertising described above is the only cookie-based personalization on the site, it loads only with your consent, and it stops the moment you decline.

This site is written for adults who buy and maintain the equipment it covers. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Product links point to Amazon, which runs its own privacy practices once you arrive. Source links point to the publishers whose records we cite. Neither relationship shares data back to this site.

When this policy changes, the change is committed to the site's git record and the earlier version stays available by email request. The policy is reviewed against the AdSense and Associates program requirements at every change.