Privacy Policy

Who this is

asheraw.com is my personal site — a blog and portfolio, not a company collecting data at scale. This policy covers everything the site itself collects. It doesn’t cover other websites it might link to.

Information we collect

What you type in yourself

• Contact form: your name, email, phone number (optional), and message.
• Comments: your name, email, and comment text. I store the email so I can reply if needed — it’s never displayed publicly.
• Reply notifications (optional): if you check “email me if there’s a reply” on a comment, that email is used only to send you that one notification, and the subscription automatically expires after 30 days of inactivity. You can unsubscribe with one click from any notification email.

What’s collected automatically

• IP address: logged when you submit the contact form or a comment, purely to catch spam and abuse (e.g. blocking repeat submissions from an address already marked as spam). It isn’t used to track your activity on the site.
• Analytics (only with your consent): if you click “Accept” on the cookie banner, Google Analytics (via Google Tag Manager) collects standard usage data — pages visited, general location (country/city level), device type. This stays off entirely if you click “Decline,” or if you never respond to the banner.
• Heatmaps & session recordings (only with your consent): also gated by the same cookie banner. Microsoft Clarity records how visitors move through and click on the site — used to spot where a page is confusing or a feature is hard to find, not to identify who’s visiting. Clarity masks the contents of text fields (like the comment or contact form) by default, so what you type isn’t captured in a recording even while it’s on.
• Broken-link tracking: if you land on a 404 page, the URL you tried to reach and the page that linked you there get logged, so I can fix broken links. This isn’t tied to you personally in any way — no IP address, no identifying information.
• Whether you accept or decline analytics: clicking either button on the cookie banner logs a plain count of that choice, so I can see the accept/decline split. This happens either way, including on Decline — it has to work outside Google Analytics entirely, since Analytics doesn’t load at all for a Decline click. No IP address, no identifying information, just a tally.
• Which posts get shared, and to where: clicking a share button (X, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Email, Copy Link, or the native share sheet) logs a count against that post and that platform, so I can see what’s actually getting shared. Same reasoning as the accept/decline count above — it works regardless of your analytics choice. No IP address, no identifying information, just a tally per post per platform.
• What you search for on the blog: if you use the search box and pause on something you typed, that search term gets logged (along with how many posts it matched) so I can see what readers are actually looking for — especially searches that come back empty, which tell me what to write about next. Only the text you typed is stored, nothing that identifies you, and it’s logged only after you stop typing for a moment, not on every keystroke.
• JavaScript errors: if something breaks in your browser while you’re on the site, the error message and which page it happened on get logged so I can fix it. No IP address, no identifying information — this reports bugs in the site’s own code, not anything about you.

How this information is used

Only for the reason you gave it to me in the first place:

• Responding to a message sent through the contact form.
• Moderating and, where relevant, replying to a comment.
• Sending a reply notification you specifically opted into.
• Understanding, in aggregate, how the site is used (only with analytics consent).
• Spotting and blocking spam.

Nothing here is ever sold, rented, or shared with advertisers, and there’s no cross-site ad tracking or retargeting on this site.

If a newsletter launches

There’s no email newsletter on asheraw.com today, but it’s a real possibility down the line — so here’s the commitment ahead of time:

• Joining would always be opt-in. You’d type your own email into a dedicated subscribe form — leaving a comment or using the contact form would never add you to it.
• Every issue would carry a one-click unsubscribe link, honored immediately, no login or account needed.
• Sponsoring the newsletter is not the same as selling your data, and I will never confuse the two. If an issue is ever sponsored, that means a sponsor paid to have their own message included in an email I write and send myself — it does not mean they receive your email address, or anything else about you. You’d always be hearing from asheraw.com, never directly from a sponsor. Your email address is not sold, rented, or handed over to anyone, sponsored issue or not.

Once a newsletter actually exists, this section (and the “Third-party services” list below, if a dedicated email-marketing tool ends up handling it) will be updated with the real details — not left as a placeholder.

Cookies

This site uses a small note saved in your browser to remember whether you accepted or declined analytics — that choice is respected until you clear your browser data or change your mind. If you accept, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity each set their own standard cookies to do their job. If you decline (or never answer), neither loads and no analytics cookies are set at all. No cookies are used for advertising.

Third-party services this site relies on

Running a site at all means trusting a handful of infrastructure providers to do specific jobs. Here’s every one of them, and what each actually touches:

• Sanity — stores everything submitted through the contact form and comments.
• Resend — delivers the emails this site sends (a contact form notification to me, a reply notification to you if you opted in). Doesn’t see anything beyond the content of that one email.
• Vercel — hosts the site itself.
• Google Analytics / Google Tag Manager — only loads if you accept the cookie banner. See “Cookies” above.
• Microsoft Clarity — heatmaps and session recordings, also only loads if you accept the cookie banner. See “Cookies” above.

How long we keep it

I keep messages and comments so I can reply to you or moderate spam. They’re not automatically deleted unless you ask me to remove them. A comment moved to Trash is permanently deleted after 30 days if not restored. If you’d like something removed sooner, it’s a quick ask — no forms, just email me.

Your choices

• Turn off analytics: the cookie banner lets you do that anytime.
• Unsubscribe from reply notifications: one click from any email unsubscribes you.
• Want something deleted or corrected: email me — it’s done. Reach me at hello@asheraw.com.

Children’s privacy

This site isn’t for kids. If a child under 13 submits something, let me know and I’ll delete it.

Changes to this policy

If something actually changes here, the date at the top will update. No notification system — just check back if you’re curious.

Questions?

Just ask. Email hello@asheraw.com or use the Connect page.