Privacy

The short version: we only collect what you hand us, we use it to run the newsletter and reply to you, and we don’t sell it. Here are the details.

What we collect

• Subscribing. When you subscribe, our signup form passes your email straight to beehiiv, the platform that sends the newsletter, along with the page you signed up on and the tags in the link that brought you here, such as which ad you clicked. Tags that look like personal details are never passed on. We don’t keep a copy on this site. beehiiv’s privacy terms apply to that data.
• The Party Line. Submissions are anonymous. We don’t require a name or email. If you choose to add contact info for a reply, we use it only for that, and we never publish it. We clear it 30 days after your entry runs or after we decide not to run it, and within 90 days in any case. The entry itself is kept, since it may be published.
• Advertising inquiries. What you fill in (your name, business, email, website, the options you’re interested in, and what you want to promote) is stored so we can respond. We delete inquiries after 24 months.
• Wedding inquiries. What you fill in (your names, email, phone, date or season, guest count, budget, venue plans, the vendors and kinds of vendors you picked, and your message) is saved to our private database, along with the page you sent it from and any campaign tags in that page’s link. We share it only with the vendors you picked and up to three in each category you ticked, and only because you ticked the box asking us to. Later we may ask those vendors whether they heard from you, so we know the guide works. If you ask for the newsletter, we add your email to it. We delete inquiries after 24 months. To have yours deleted sooner, email [email protected].
• Listing updates. When you tell us something in a guide is wrong or missing, we keep what you send (the business, what needs fixing, your name and email, and whether you work there) so we can check it, fix the guide and email you about the change. We delete it after 24 months.

How the forms work

This site runs on Cloudflare. When you submit a form, the request is processed by Cloudflare. Every form but the signup form saves what you sent to a private database only we can reach, which Supabase hosts for us, and we get an email letting us know it arrived. To stop floods of spam on those, we also keep a scrambled code made from your IP address for a day, then delete it. We may use Cloudflare Turnstile to check that a submission is from a person, not a bot. We don’t sell data to anyone.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to count visits: which pages get read, roughly where readers are, what device they’re on, and which links in our guides get clicked. It sets cookies to do that. Google’s advertising features are switched off, so none of it is used to target ads. Links to a business’s website from our guides carry a tag that tells that business the visit came from us. You can block Google Analytics with Google’s opt-out add-on or any content blocker.

Every page on this site also loads the Meta Pixel. It tells Meta (Facebook and Instagram) which pages your browser visits here, so we can measure the ads we run on Meta and show them again to people who have read the Brief. Meta may use cookies and match the visit to a Meta account you’re signed in to, and when you fill in a form on this site it may also receive a scrambled (hashed) copy of the email or phone number you enter, to make that match. Meta’s privacy policy covers what it does with that. You can turn off ads based on your activity elsewhere in your Meta ad preferences, or block the pixel with any content blocker.

What we don’t do

We don’t sell, rent, or trade your information. We don’t try to identify anonymous Party Line submitters, though the Meta Pixel runs on that page like every other (see Analytics).

Your choices

Every newsletter has a one-click unsubscribe. To ask what we hold or to have it deleted, email [email protected] and we’ll take care of it.

Changes

If this policy changes, we’ll update the date at the top. Questions? Email us.