Privacy Policy

We try to collect as little as possible. The full list:

• Page visits — Aggregate analytics (pageviews, referrer, device class) via Google Analytics 4 — only after you give explicit cookie consent.
• Newsletter email — If you subscribe, we store your email address, preferred locale, and subscription date.
• Contact form submissions — Name, email, subject, and message when you send a Contact form.
• IP address (transient) — Held in server memory for one hour for spam rate-limiting only. Never written to the database.
• Cookie consent choice — Your accept/reject decision is stored in your own browser under the localStorage key biztechscout_cookie_consent.

Equally important — what we deliberately avoid:

• No behavioral tracking before you grant cookie consent.
• No browser fingerprinting.
• No third-party advertising pixels (no Facebook Pixel, no TikTok, no LinkedIn Insight Tag).
• We never sell your data — to anyone, ever.
• We never feed user data into AI model training.

We use the following vendors to operate the site. Each has a single, narrow purpose:

• Google Analytics 4 — Aggregate traffic analytics. Loaded only after you accept the cookie banner. Provided by Google LLC.
• Clerk (clerk.com) — Admin authentication for the /pAdmin section only. Never touches regular visitors.
• Anthropic API — Server-side AI used by our editorial team for content drafting and verification. No user data is ever sent to it.
• Groq API — Server-side AI used for compliance and content checks. No user data is ever sent to it.
• DeepSeek API — Server-side AI used for editorial tasks. No user data is ever sent to it.
• Cloud hosting provider — Hosts the site and serves it through a global CDN.
• Managed Postgres database — Stores articles, newsletter subscribers, and contact messages. Hosted by a managed cloud provider.
• Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com) — Loads a small subset of web fonts for page rendering.
• Transactional email — Sent from hello@biztechscout.com (e.g. subscription confirmations). No third-party marketing lists.

We keep this minimal. The complete list:

• biztechscout_cookie_consent — localStorage key that remembers your accept/reject choice for the cookie banner. Does not expire automatically — clear it from browser settings to reset.
• _ga, _ga_* (Google Analytics) — Loaded only after you accept. Lifetime up to 2 years. Refusing them does not affect the site.
• Clerk session cookie — Only present on /pAdmin for an authenticated admin. Never set for regular visitors.

You can delete every cookie at any time from your browser settings without breaking the site.

Under GDPR (EU) and CCPA (California), you have the right to:

• Access the data we hold about you.
• Correct anything inaccurate.
• Delete your data (the "right to be forgotten").
• Unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time via the link in every email — or by emailing us.
• Receive your data in a machine-readable format.
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

To exercise any of these rights, email hello@biztechscout.com. We respond within 30 days at the latest.

We keep data only for these durations:

• Newsletter subscribers — Indefinitely until you unsubscribe. After unsubscribe, the email is purged within 30 days.
• Contact form messages — 12 months from submission, then automatically deleted.
• Rate-limit data — 1 hour, in server memory only — never written to persistent storage.
• Analytics records — Per Google Analytics 4 defaults (14 months).