Privacy Policy

We value your privacy as much as our own. To this end, we try to self-host as much as possible and minimise the use of tracking and cookies.

This privacy notice describes how we might use your information if you:

  • Visit our website at https://www.snipettemag.com ("Website") or
  • Engage with us in related ways, including signing up for our newsletter and updates or placing orders for our print edition.

This notice applies to visitors, readers, and paying subscribers of our website only. If you are an author or illustrator, there are separate terms that apply which we can negotiate with you upon request.

The purpose of this privacy notice is to explain what information we ("Our", "Us", "The Snipette Team") collect, where we store it, how we use it, and what rights you have in relation to it.

What information do we collect?

We collect personal information that you choose to provide to us when you register on the Website.

We only ask for personal information when we truly need it to provide a service to you and includes the following collected by Us or through third parties:

  • your full name (which could be a pseudonym);
  • your email address;
  • cookies;
  • usage data;
  • postal address (if you subscribe to or place an order for our print magazine);
  • payment and order details (if you make a payment to us or place an order);
  • any comments you post under our articles on our website.

The cookies collected include (a) technical and anonymous statistical cookies, and (b) cookies to help you remain signed on to our website without having to enter your login details each time you navigate to a new page.

How and where do we collect your information?

Most of our web services are hosted by HelioHost, a small non-profit web host provider aiming to provide professional grade services for free or at a low price-point. When we use the term "self-hosted", unless specified otherwise, we mean the service in question is hosted on our HelioHost Virtual Private Server ("VPS"). The software and data for self-hosted software remains on our server and is not stored on any other companies or services.

When you pay for a "Digital", "Lite", or "Analog" subscription to our print version, Snipette Analog, we track your payment and subscriber information on an Airtable base. You can read Airtable's privacy policy here.

We may also mention your name or email ID on our internal Notion notebook. This information is unstructured and used internally by Us to note down quick tasks such as which customer support email to respond to or where to re-send a failed delivery. None of the Notion pages containing your information will be publicly visible. You can review the Notion terms and privacy policy on this public Notion notebook.

We use a self-hosted version of Ghost for hosting this website and providing newsletter services, including email delivery, contact information, and analytics. (The previous version of our newsletter used MailChimp. If you have signed up via our MailChimp form, your data has been automatically imported to Ghost and will be destroyed from MailChimp within the next 3 months).

Our analytics are counted using a self-hosted instance of GoatCounter. GoatCounter does not collect any personal information (such as IP address). Instead, a hash of the IP address, User-Agent, and a random number ("salt") is kept in the process memory for 8 hours to identify a browsing session, and is never stored to disk. There is no information stored in the browser with "cookies", localStorage, or other methods. You can read the full GoatCounter privacy policy here, but please note that all the related information is stored by Us on our HelioHost VPS and not on the GoatCounter web service.

Our website provides the ability to write "Comments" on certain pages of our Website. This commenting system is powered by a self-hosted instance of Commento. You can review the Commento privacy policy here, but please note that all the related information is stored by Us on our HelioHost VPS and not on the Commento web service. When you register on Commento, we will store the name and email you provide and keep a cookie on your browser to keep you logged in. However, Commento also provides the option to comment "anonymously" without logging in. If you make an "anonymous" comment while logged in, your profile information will be linked to the anonymous comment and accessible to our administrators but will not be displayed publicly.

We only collect the information you provide directly to us voluntarily. For example, we collect information when you create an account, subscribe, participate in any interactive features of our services, fill out a form, request customer support or otherwise communicate with us. The types of information we may collect include your name, email address and other contact or identifying information you choose to provide. We don't collect any credit card information as this is handled by PayPal and PayU (see below).

Some of the links on this Website may be affiliate links. Affiliate links in articles are included after the editing process is over no edits are made to an article in order to accommodate an affiliate link. Other affiliate links, such as in our "Editors' Bookshelf" feature are used only when we actually recommend the product(s) in question.

Some pages include embedded YouTube videos and other external links, which may use cookies and other tracking data when clicked on. Please refer to the privacy policies of those websites to understand how they will process your information.

How do we use your information?

We use personal information collected via our Website for the purposes described below.

  • To enable us to send the newsletter and other Website updates as you request by signing up for updates;
  • To send administrative information to you, such as providing information about new features or products or changes in our terms, conditions and policies;
  • To respond to any queries you send us;
  • To publicly display your name next to any comments you publish on our Website.

Third-party websites

Our Website may link to external sites that are not affiliated with us. We cannot guarantee the safety and privacy of data you provide to any third parties. Any data collected by third parties is not covered by this privacy notice. We are not responsible for the content or privacy of any third parties, including other websites, services or applications that may be linked to or from the Website. You should review the policies of such third parties and contact them directly.

Payments

We may provide paid products and/or services within the service. In that case, we use third-party services for payment processing (e.g. payment processors).

We will not store or collect your payment card details. That information is provided directly to our third-party payment processors whose use of your personal information is governed by their Privacy Policy.

The payment processors we currently work with are PayPal and PayU. You can find their respective privacy policies at the following locations:

In the near future, we hope to integrate with the Stripe payment processor. You can open this link to be redirected to their region-specific privacy policy for your region.

When you make a payment, we record the successful transaction on an Airtable base dedicated to finances. This record includes the transaction date, amount, purpose, and a version of your name as well as additional contextual details such as which editor was in charge of the payment. This record will be used by Us internally for accounting purposes and will not be shared to anyone outside the Snipette Team.

Your Rights

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) offers various rights to residents of the European Union. We have decided to extend these rights to all users, regardless of whether they reside in the European Union or not. These rights include:

  • The right to be informed.
  • The right to rectification.
  • The right of access.
  • The right to be forgotten (erasure).
  • The right to restrict the processing of your data.
  • The right to data portability.
  • The right to object.
  • Rights regarding automated profiling and decision making.

Since we are a small publication, we do not have automated systems in place to process these requests. However, you may place a request by contacting us (as specified in the below section).

Contacting us

We strive to adhere to local and international law; however if you feel we are inadvertently violating any of these laws please email us immediately and we will work to rectify it as soon as possible.

If you have questions or complaints about this privacy policy or would like to be removed from our mailing list then please contact us at editors@snipettemag.com. This privacy policy is still a work in progress so feedback is appreciated.