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Privacy

Privacy policy

The Unseen Mind is UK-hosted and UK GDPR-aligned. We collect as little data as we can reasonably run a site on, we do not sell or share it, and we do not use third-party advertising trackers.

Who we are

The Unseen Mind is an independent, self-funded UK resource and community for people with aphantasia and SDAM. The data controller for the purposes of UK GDPR is the site’s founder. Contact: [email protected].

What we collect — and why

Server access logs

When you visit the site, our reverse proxy (Cloudflare) processes your request and keeps short-lived logs. These typically include: the URL you asked for, the time of the request, your rough location (country/city from IP), your user agent, and your IP address. These are used to serve the page, detect abuse, and diagnose problems. We do not retain them long-term ourselves; Cloudflare retention defaults apply.

Site analytics — Plausible

We use Plausible Analytics to understand what pages are read. Plausible is a privacy-first, EU-hosted analytics service. It does not set cookies, does not follow you across sites, and does not retain your IP address in any form we can query. Each day’s data is aggregated and anonymised.

Legal basis: legitimate interest — we need some signal of what is landing with readers.

Newsletter signups — Buttondown

If you subscribe to the newsletter, your email address is sent to Buttondown, our newsletter provider. Buttondown uses double opt-in: you must click a confirmation link before the subscription takes effect. Buttondown is US-based and applies standard contractual clauses for EU/UK personal-data transfers. You can unsubscribe with one click from any issue, or ask us to delete your record at any time.

Legal basis: consent (you opted in).

Server error logs — Sentry (when configured)

If we enable error reporting via Sentry, crashed-request reports may include a URL, a stack trace, and a redacted request payload. We do not capture form submissions, cookie values, or authentication tokens. Reports are retained for as long as needed to diagnose the issue and are purged regularly.

Legal basis: legitimate interest — keeping the site working.

Forum accounts (when the forum opens, later in 2026)

The self-hosted forum is not live today. When it opens, a separate, forum-specific privacy notice will describe the data it handles. We will update this page with a summary and a link on the day the forum goes live.

What we do not do

  • We do not sell, rent, or share your data with third parties for marketing.
  • We do not use advertising or retargeting trackers.
  • We do not set our own cookies. See the cookie policy.
  • We do not build profiles of readers or infer health conditions.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

  • Ask what personal data we hold about you.
  • Ask us to correct it.
  • Ask us to delete it.
  • Ask us to export it in a portable format.
  • Complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you believe we have mishandled it — see ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

To exercise any of these, email [email protected]. We aim to reply within 14 days.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes materially we will (a) date the change at the foot of the page and (b) mention it in the next monthly newsletter so subscribers do not miss it. Typo fixes and prose tidying are silent.