Privacy

This site is operated by me, Valerio Milana, as a sole trader based in the United Kingdom. I am the data controller for any information collected here. You can reach me at contact@valeriomilana.com.

The question in the banner

The banner asks for one thing: permission to keep a small random identifier on your device, so that when you come back I can see that this is a second visit rather than a new person. That is the only reason it exists. There is no advertising, nothing is sold or shared with anyone for their own purposes, and nothing records what you do on the page.

Page views are counted whichever way you answer, and that count stores nothing on your device: without the identifier my analytics provider gives every page load a fresh random number, which makes each figure a count of pages rather than of people. Saying no does not turn the counting off. It turns the identifier off, and with it everything that needs one.

Not answering is treated exactly the same as saying no. You can change your answer at any time: reopen the cookie banner, or use the Cookies link in the footer of every page. Your answer is remembered for up to six months, after which the banner asks again. Some browsers, Safari among them, expire it sooner than that on their own, so you may be asked again after about a week.

What is stored on your device

Everything, in both cases. Nothing here is left out.

Whatever you answer

• A cookie holding your answer to the banner, so you are not asked on every page. It holds a single character, yes or no, and lasts six months. This one is set because you answered, so there is no version of the site that asks permission to remember your permission.

Only if you agree

• A random identifier, held in your browser’s local storage and in a cookie by PostHog, my analytics provider. It is a meaningless string of characters. It is not linked to your name or your email address, and I cannot tell from it who you are: its only use is to recognise the same browser twice.

Only if you ask for it

• An opt-out cookie. If you visit /exclude and press the button, or add ?ph=off to any page, a cookie holding the value 1 is stored and this site records nothing about you at all, whatever you answered in the banner. Its only effect is to make the site record less.

There is nothing else. No advertising cookies, no tracking pixels, no third-party scripts beyond the analytics described below.

What I record about your visit

Whichever way you answer, PostHog records each page view and each click on the email link or the contact form. For each one it receives the page you viewed, the referring URL if there is one, and your IP address, from which it derives an approximate location. PostHog holds this on its European servers. Session replay, heatmaps, automatic click tracking, and surveys are all switched off, so it sees the fact of a page view and nothing about what happened on the page.

If you agree to the identifier, the same events are recorded against it, which is what lets me count returning visitors rather than page loads. If you do not, each page load carries a fresh random number and nothing joins them up.

PostHog is the only analytics this site uses. Nothing about your browsing is written to my own database. The lawful basis for the recording that happens either way is legitimate interest in knowing which pages are useful and whether the contact form works. The basis for storing anything on your device beyond the answer cookie, and for everything that depends on it, is your consent.

The contact form

If you fill in the form on the homepage, I store what you typed: your name, your email address, your business name if you gave one, and your message. Alongside it I store the page you sent it from, the referring URL, and the country and city my hosting provider derived from your IP address. The IP address itself is not stored, and neither is the analytics identifier: whichever way you answered the banner, nothing in an enquiry connects it to your other visits.

The same details are emailed to me so that I see the enquiry without having to check the database. Nothing you send through the form is added to a mailing list, and there is no newsletter to be added to. The lawful basis is legitimate interest in responding to someone who has asked me to get in touch. This does not depend on the banner: sending me a message is you asking me to have your message.

Third parties

Four providers process data on my behalf:

• Vercel hosts the site, serves the pages, and provides the country and city information from your IP address.
• Neon hosts the PostgreSQL database where contact form enquiries are stored. Nothing about your browsing is kept there.
• PostHog receives the page views and clicks described above. The data is held on their European servers.
• Resend delivers the email that tells me a form enquiry has arrived. Your name, email address, and message pass through their service on the way to my inbox.

Linking out to LinkedIn or sending an email to me will be governed by the privacy terms of those services.

How long I keep it

Form enquiries are kept for up to 24 months, so I can look back at what someone asked for if they come back. Emails you send me are kept for as long as the conversation is active and for a reasonable period afterwards in case we work together. The page views and clicks are held by PostHog under their own retention schedule, on their servers; I do not keep a copy of those anywhere.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to ask what information I hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to object to how I use it. Withdrawing consent is easier than any of those: reopen the banner from the footer and say no, which stops the identifier being used and deletes what is held on your device. Clearing this site’s data in your browser has the same effect.

For anything already recorded, email me and I will respond within 30 days. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes

If I change how this site collects or uses information, I will update this page and revise the date at the top.