What I keep,
and what I don't

This site doesn't set any. No advertising pixels, nothing following you to other websites, nothing building a profile of you. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.

The one exception is the private admin area, which sets a sign-in cookie after I log in. That's me, not you, and it's the kind of cookie that's strictly necessary for a login to work at all.

I do count page views, through Vercel Analytics. It records which pages get looked at, roughly which country the visit came from, and whether it was a phone or a computer.

It doesn't use cookies and it doesn't identify you. There's no profile, nothing that follows you to another site, and nothing I could tie back to a person even if I wanted to. That was the whole reason for choosing it — I'd like to know whether anyone reads the book page, not who you are.

I store your email address, the date you confirmed it, and the IP address the confirmation came from. That last one exists for one reason: it's the proof that you asked to be here and I didn't add you myself.

You have to click a link in a confirmation email before you're actually subscribed. Until you do, nothing gets sent to you. The confirmation link expires after thirty days.

Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom and your mail app's own one-click unsubscribe works too. One click, no questions, no “are you sure”. I keep a record that you unsubscribed rather than deleting you outright, which is what stops you being added back by accident later.

I'll be straight about this, because most newsletters aren't. My letters are sent through MailerLite, and they record whether a letter was opened and whether a link inside was clicked.

It's there so I know whether anyone actually wants these before I write the next one. It isn't linked to anything you do on the site, it isn't sold, and it isn't shared with anyone.

Turning off image loading in your mail app stops the open tracking. The unsubscribe link is never tracked — leaving is not something I get to measure.

The contact form stores your name, email, what it's about, and your message, so I can reply and so I don't lose it. That arrives in my inbox as well.

Drink card enquiries come through that same form, so they land with me directly. If you use the separate author services form instead, that one is a Google Form and Google holds whatever you type into it under their own terms.

Client quotes on the drink cards page are only there with permission, credited the way the person asked to be credited. I record privately where a quote came from so I can find it again if anyone asks.

Want yours taken down, reworded, or credited differently? Ask and it's done. No explanation needed.

Nobody buys any of this. These are the companies that handle it because the site needs them to work:

• Supabase— stores the database and handles my login
• MailerLite— sends the newsletter, and counts opens and clicks
• Resend— sends everything else — confirmations, replies, receipts
• Forward Email— receives mail sent to this domain
• Vercel— hosts the site, keeps standard server logs, and counts page views
• Google— my inbox, and the drink card intake form

Subscriber records last until you unsubscribe, and the record of that unsubscribe is kept so it sticks. Messages from the contact form are kept while they're still useful to answer. Delivery and open records are kept for as long as they tell me something about a letter I've sent.

None of it is kept for the sake of having it, and any of it will be deleted on request.

Email hello@tapsandtropes.com and ask. You can have a copy of everything I hold about you, have it corrected, or have it deleted. I'll do it, and I won't make you explain why.

If you just want the emails to stop, the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of them is faster than writing to me.

This is a site about cocktails. It isn't intended for anyone under 21, and I don't knowingly collect anything from anyone who is.

The date at the top changes with it. If something changes in a way that actually affects you — a new thing collected, a new company handling it — the newsletter will say so rather than me quietly editing this page.