Short, because there is not much to say.

Status, stated plainly: the subscription desk is built but not open. The forms post to this site's own endpoint and to nowhere else — no third-party form service, no tracker, never another company's server. Until the desk opens, that endpoint has nothing to write to: nothing you type is stored, nothing is sent, and the form will tell you so instead of thanking you. What follows describes the arrangement the forms are built for, and takes effect the day it opens.

If you subscribe to the Dispatch

We ask for an email address. We also record which door you came through — an essay, the Studio, the Logbook, the footer — because that is how we learn which writing is worth doing more of.

Subscription is double opt-in. Nothing is sent until you confirm from your own inbox, and every letter carries a one-click unsubscribe that works immediately rather than after a survey.

The list is held by our email provider. On our own side we keep your address, a salted hash of it, and the door, the language, the date and the exact wording of the consent you agreed to. The hash is what lets us tell that two sign-ups are the same person without comparing addresses, and it is what remains after an erasure. We keep the address itself so that we can answer a question about your subscription when you write to us.

Until 28 August 2026 we kept only the hash. Rows from before that date have no address in them and never will: a hash cannot be turned back into what it was made from.

If you write to us

The contact form goes to the house inbox and is read by a person. We keep the message for as long as the conversation is alive, and an anonymised row — the kind of enquiry, the budget band, the date — so we can count enquiries without keeping a file on the people who made them.

The Dispatch checkbox on that form is never pre-ticked and never bundled with sending. Writing to us is not consent to a newsletter.

If you support the house

The payment happens on Stripe's own page, not on this one. Your card number never touches this site and never reaches us. We could not keep it if we wanted to, because we are never given it.

What we can see afterwards, in our account with them, is the name and email address you gave Stripe, the country, the last four digits, and what you have paid. Stripe is a payment company in the United States, and that is where a supporter record sits. There is no way to take money without a processor; this is ours, and you should know its name before you hand it a card rather than after.

We keep that record because a membership needs one: to know a supporter is a supporter, to stop asking you for money you already give, and to answer you if you write about a charge. Tax law also requires us to keep proof of what we were paid.

You can change or cancel from the receipt Stripe emails you, at any time, without writing to us first.

Your own browser also remembers that you supported, so the site stops asking. That mark sits on your machine, says nothing about who you are, and is never sent anywhere.

Analytics

We measure page views, referrers and countries with a cookieless analytics tool. No cookies are set, no cross-site profile is built, and nothing is shared with an advertising network.

This is why there is no consent banner on the site. We did not find a clever way around the rule; we chose a tool that does not trigger it, which also happens to be the only choice consistent with a register that forbids interrupting a reader.

What we never do

• Sell, rent or share the list. Not with partners, not with an imprint, not with anybody.
• Set advertising or tracking cookies.
• Add you to the Dispatch because you did something else.
• Put personal data in a URL.

Your rights

You can ask what we hold, ask for it in a portable form, ask for it corrected, or ask for it deleted. Write to us through Contact and it is done within thirty days, usually the same week.

Deletion means deletion, including the hash and the event row, not a flag that hides you from a screen.

One thing we cannot delete is a payment record held by Stripe. The law obliges them to keep proof of a transaction for years, and it is theirs to hold rather than ours to erase. Everything on our side still goes, and you can ask Stripe directly for what they hold on you.

Where the data sits

The site is served from a global edge network. The email list is held by the email provider on servers inside the European Union. Enquiries sit in a mailbox. Supporter payments sit with Stripe, in the United States. There is no fourth location and no data warehouse.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that affects what we do with your data, the change is announced in the Dispatch rather than quietly dated at the bottom of a page nobody revisits.

Questions about any of this: write to the house.