Privacy

Who runs this site

Rooting Home is a sole proprietorship based in Texas, USA. Rooting Home decides what is collected and why, and is the "controller" under data protection law.

Write to support@rootinghome.com.

The short version

Readers have no accounts. The site counts every visit itself, with no cookie and nothing that says who you are.

Anything more is your choice, asked first: analytics and advertising tags on the site, which you accept or reject in "Your privacy choices", and personalized emails, which you are asked about on their own once you confirm your email. Saying no to any of them changes nothing else you can do here.

The site never sells your data for money. If you accept advertising tags, the advertising platforms use what they collect to show you ads, which some laws call "sharing" your data for targeted advertising. You can say no, or change your mind, at any time.

The email list

When you sign up you give your email address and tick a box to agree to the emails. We keep the address as you typed it, to send to, and a lower case form of it, so two spellings of one address count as one. We send one email with a link to confirm, which works for 10 minutes. Nothing else is sent until you press it. An address that is not confirmed is deleted after 7 days.

With each signup we keep a consent record: which version of the form's wording you agreed to, which form and page it was on, when you signed up, and when you confirmed. This is our proof that you asked for the emails, which the law asks us to keep.

The lawful basis is your consent (GDPR article 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email, which works with one click and takes effect at once.

When you unsubscribe, your address is deleted. The consent record is kept, without your address, as our proof that you asked for the emails. A keyed hash of your address, which cannot be turned back into it, goes on a suppression list so it is never emailed again. The same happens if an email to you bounces for good or is marked as spam.

Links in the newsletter to this site say which newsletter they came from, so we can count how many visits each one brings, without saying who. Links to other sites go straight to where they say. We keep which newsletter was sent to which subscriber, so a restart never sends one twice and we can see how each newsletter did, until you ask for it to be deleted.

The email list is for people 16 and older. The site is not meant for children under 13.

Personalized emails, only if you ask for them

Once you confirm your email, the confirm page asks whether you also want personalized emails. This is email tracking: we use it to learn which builds you are into and send you more like them. It is never turned on for you and never needed to stay on the list: if you press nothing, it stays off. If you turn it on, your copy of each newsletter carries a tiny image that tells us when it is opened, and its links to this site carry a code that tells us which ones you followed. We keep which version of that question's wording you agreed to, and when.

If you also accept analytics in "Your privacy choices", following one of those links sets a cookie that links the pages you then read here to your subscription, for 180 days. Without analytics, the pages you read are not linked to you.

We use this to send better emails. The lawful basis is your consent (article 6(1)(a)). It is kept for as long as personalized emails are on. Every personalized email has a link to turn them off, and you stay on the list: what was kept is deleted at once. Unsubscribing stops it and deletes it too. Some mail apps, such as Apple Mail, load images ahead of time, which counts as an open.

YouTube and TikTok videos

Articles show videos from YouTube and TikTok. Nothing is loaded from either platform until you press play on that video: not the player, and not a thumbnail. The box in its place says where the video plays from.

When you press play, the video loads in the platform's own player. YouTube's loads from youtube-nocookie.com. Either platform may set cookies and will see your IP address, under its own privacy policy: Google's and TikTok's.

If you tick "Remember my choice", that choice is kept in your browser's own storage, not a cookie, and is never sent to us. Later videos from that platform then load without the extra press, and still do not play by themselves. The "Forget my video choices" button in the footer of every page undoes it.

When you read the site

For everyone, the site counts page views, video plays, and clicks on affiliate and promoted links as numbers per hour. No cookie, IP address, or browser name is kept with them, and nothing in them says who did anything. For a visit from another site we count that site's domain, such as tiktok.com, and nothing more. For a link with campaign tags, such as one we posted on TikTok, we count the tags, and nothing more.

To stop abuse, the site counts requests per address for a short time. It keeps a keyed hash of the address, never the address itself, for at most 24 hours.

The web server's access logs, which do hold IP addresses, are kept 14 days for security, then deleted. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in keeping the site safe (article 6(1)(f)).

Analytics and advertising tags, only if you accept them

Nothing below loads until you choose. "Your privacy choices" asks the first time you visit, with Accept all, Reject all, and Choose, and is at the foot of every page to change your mind.

Analytics: Google Analytics, to see how the site is used, such as which pages are read and how people find them. Google sees your IP address and sets cookies to tell visits apart.

Advertising: the platforms' tags, so we can measure how our ads and posts do and show ads to people who have visited. Each platform sees your IP address and browser, sets cookies, and can link your visit to your account with them and to what you do on other sites. What they do with it is under their own privacy policies.

The lawful basis for both is your consent (article 6(1)(a)). Turning one off stops its tag and deletes the cookies it set on this site. Cookies the platforms keep on their own sites are theirs to delete.

None of these tags is in use at the moment. If one is added, it is named here first.

Affiliate and outside links

Some links are affiliate links. Clicking one takes you to the retailer, whose own cookies then apply. The site passes nothing about you to them. See the disclosure for how affiliate and paid links work.

The Save to Pinterest link, and the links to the site's YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest channels, are plain links. Following one takes you to that platform, under its own privacy policy. The Pinterest advertising tag, if you accept it, is separate: see above.

Cookies

rh_consent: your privacy choices, set by your browser only once you choose, for 180 days, so you are not asked on every page.

rh_reader: only for a subscriber who turned on personalized emails and accepted analytics. It links the pages you read to your subscription, for 180 days.

Admin cookies, which readers never get.

No analytics or advertising cookies, since no such tag is in use at the moment.

Who else handles the data

Amazon Web Services hosts the site and its database, sends the email (SES), and keeps the article images and the backups (S3), in the United States.

The article images are served through Amazon CloudFront, a content delivery network (CDN): your browser fetches each image from the CloudFront server nearest you, which is faster than fetching it from one place. Like any web server, CloudFront sees your IP address, your browser's name, and which image was asked for, for as long as it takes to answer. It does not set cookies, and we do not turn on its access logs. If the site's pages are also put behind a CDN, it is named here.

Data about readers in the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland is sent to the US under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions where the company is certified, and otherwise under the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

How long things are kept

Your email address: until you unsubscribe or ask for it to be deleted. An unconfirmed signup: 7 days. The consent record: until you ask for it to be deleted, and without your address once you unsubscribe. Which newsletter went to whom: until you ask for it to be deleted. Personalized emails: until you turn them off, unsubscribe, or ask for it to be deleted. The suppression list: for good, as a hash only. Admin login addresses: 90 days. Error logs: 90 days. The log of privacy requests: 3 years. Database backups: 30 days.

Something deleted from the database stays in the backups until they age out, at most 30 days.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, or to stop the emails or the tracking. In the EU, EEA, and UK you can also object to processing, ask us to restrict it, withdraw consent at any time without affecting what was done before, and complain to your data protection authority.

If you live in Texas, California, or another US state with a privacy law, you have the right to know what we hold, to have it deleted or corrected, to opt out of targeted advertising and the "sharing" of your data for it, and to appeal if we refuse. To opt out, choose Reject all, or turn Advertising off, in "Your privacy choices" at the foot of every page. The site honours Global Privacy Control: a browser that sends it never gets advertising tags. We do not sell personal data for money.

To ask, email support@rootinghome.com from the address concerned, or say which address it is. We answer within 30 days, which is sooner than the 45 days Texas law allows. If we refuse, you can appeal by replying, and we answer the appeal within 60 days. Using these rights costs nothing and will not be held against you.

Changes to this policy

A change to this policy is posted here with a new date at the top. A change to how the email list is used is also announced in the next newsletter, and never applies to you without your consent where the law asks for it. When the tags the site asks about change, everyone is asked again.