Privacy policy.

What we collect

The website runs on three data surfaces, and we describe what each captures:

Newsletter subscription

When you subscribe via the form at /newsletter or elsewhere on the site, we store:

• Email address. The one you enter.
• Source of signup. Which form on which page you used (e.g. homepage hero, article footer). Helps us know which content drives subscriptions.
• Referrer URL + locale. Where you came from (the page that linked you to us), and your browser language setting. We use this only to thank the referring site, and to eventually offer non-English editions if warranted.
• IP hash. Not your IP address — a one-way hashed value, salted with a key that rotates daily. Used to rate-limit signup abuse. We cannot reverse the hash back to an IP.
• Subscription status + timestamps. Confirmed / unsubscribed / bounced, when each state changed.

Contact / inquiry form

When you submit an inquiry via /about/brief-us, we store your name, email, organization, the inquiry type (enterprise / custom brief / partnership / press), and the message body. Same IP-hash rate-limit as above.

Email engagement (via Postmark)

Postmark, our email delivery vendor, records per-message: whether it was delivered, bounced, opened, or clicked, and which links were clicked. We ingest these events via webhook to display engagement stats on our admin dashboard and to maintain list hygiene (suppress bounced / complained addresses).

Website visits

We run no third-party analytics scripts (no Google Analytics, no Mixpanel, no Segment, no Facebook Pixel, no LinkedIn Insight Tag). Our server logs retain standard HTTP metadata (IP address, user-agent, request path, timestamp) for 30 days, used for abuse investigation and uptime monitoring. Nothing in those logs is joined to subscriber records.

Why we collect it

• Deliver the newsletter you asked for.
• Prevent signup + inquiry abuse (the IP-hash rate limit stops attackers from submitting thousands of addresses at once).
• Measure our own effectiveness. Email open and click rates tell us whether our writing is landing. Source tracking tells us which pages are driving real interest.
• Reply to inquiries.

Who we share it with

Postmark — our email vendor — processes your email address and engagement data to deliver messages. Their privacy practices are at postmarkapp.com/privacy-policy. They are contractually prohibited from using your data for their own marketing or selling it to third parties.

Legal compliance: if we receive a valid subpoena or court order compelling disclosure, we will comply. We will notify you that such a disclosure occurred unless legally prohibited from doing so. We have not received any such order to date.

Nobody else. We do not sell subscriber data. We do not swap lists with other publications. We do not share with advertisers (we have none). We do not share with investors for pitch purposes.

How long we keep it

• Subscribers: until you unsubscribe, then 30 days in a suppression list (to prevent accidental re-subscribe via a typo), then fully purged.
• Inquiries: 3 years from receipt, then automatic purge. Earlier on request.
• Email engagement events (opens, clicks): aggregated per-issue after 90 days; individual-level records dropped.
• IP hashes: salt rotates daily. Yesterday’s hashes cannot be correlated with today’s even for the same IP.
• Server access logs: 30 days, then rotated out.

Your rights

Regardless of where you live, you can exercise these rights by emailing editor@geomemo.ai. We respond within 10 business days, usually sooner.

• Access / export. Ask for everything we have about you. We will send a JSON file with every record associated with your email.
• Correction. Ask us to fix incorrect data.
• Deletion. Ask us to delete everything. We will comply, subject to retention laws (if any apply; we will tell you if so).
• Portability. The export is machine-readable JSON — you can take it elsewhere.
• Objection to processing. If you live in a jurisdiction (e.g. EU, California) that recognizes a right to object to specific processing, email us and we will honor it.
• Withdraw consent. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link. You can also email us directly.

If you believe we are mishandling your data and we haven’t resolved it to your satisfaction, you may also file a complaint with your local data protection authority. EU residents: your country’s DPA. California residents: the California Privacy Protection Agency.

Cookies

The public site uses no cookies. The admin dashboard (operator-only, not for readers) uses a session cookie for authentication, scoped to its own subdomain and discarded on sign-out. There are no tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or analytics cookies anywhere on www.geomemo.ai.

Children

GeoMemo is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has submitted personal information to us, email editor@geomemo.ai and we will delete the record.

International transfers

Our servers are in the United States. If you subscribe from outside the US, your data is transferred to and stored in the US. Postmark is also US-based. For EU residents, this transfer relies on Standard Contractual Clauses as the legal basis.

Security

We encrypt data in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest (AES-256 on the database). Admin access is behind strong authentication with 2FA. We rotate secrets on a 90-day cadence. We do not store credit card data ourselves; any payment processor we add in the future will be PCI-compliant.

We have not experienced a data breach. If we ever do, we will notify affected users within 72 hours of discovery, as required by applicable law.

Updates to this policy

If we materially change how we process data, we will update this page with the new effective date and email every subscriber 14 days before the change takes effect. Minor clarifications (typo fixes, reorganization) may happen without notice, but the effective date at the top of this page always reflects the last substantive change.

Contact

Email editor@geomemo.ai for any privacy question, request, or complaint. We read every message and reply.

Postal: GeoMemo, [mailing address · to be set], United States.