Privacy policy

for(geeks) is published by Sergey Kuznetsov, Yerevan, Armenia, who is the controller for the data described here. The site is free to read and funded by advertising, so this policy has to cover advertising data as well as the ordinary business of running a website. It is written to be read rather than to be survived.

What we collect ourselves

Almost nothing. for(geeks) has no accounts, no newsletter sign-up and no comment forms, so reading the site requires no personal data and we ask you for none. Our web server keeps standard access logs — IP address, user agent, requested page, timestamp — on the legal basis of legitimate interest in keeping the site up and secure. Logs are rotated and deleted within 30 days and are not used to build a profile of anyone.

Advertising

Ads on this site are served by Google AdSense and its advertising partners. To do that, Google and those partners may read and set cookies or similar identifiers in your browser, and process your IP address, approximate location, device and browser information, and which pages you viewed — in order to serve an ad, cap how often you see it, measure whether it was seen or clicked, detect fraud, and, if you have consented, personalise which ad you get.

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland this happens only on the basis of the consent you give in the privacy dialog on your first visit, which is operated by Google as a certified consent management platform under the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework. You can refuse, choose purpose by purpose, and change any answer later from Privacy settings in the footer. Refusing does not lock you out of anything — advertising simply falls back to non-personalised ads. Elsewhere, advertising runs on the basis of legitimate interest under applicable local law, with the opt-outs listed in our cookie policy.

Google acts as an independent controller for the advertising data it collects here. What it does with that data is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services. The current list of Google's advertising partners is shown inside the privacy dialog itself, where each can be reviewed and refused individually. We are not paid for, and do not carry out, any sale or sharing of reader data outside this advertising arrangement.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics and Yandex Metrica to see how many people read the site and which stories land — traffic-level measurement, nothing more granular than that, and never anything we could tie back to you as an individual. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland they run only after you consent; the exact cookies they set, and how to switch them off anywhere, are listed in the cookie policy. Your colour-theme preference is stored separately in local storage and is never transmitted to us or to anyone else.

Other third parties

Images and static files may be served through a content delivery network, which sees the same technical data any web request contains and uses it only to deliver the file. Articles sometimes embed content published elsewhere — a video, a post, a code sample. Where they do, the host of that content receives a request from your browser and applies its own privacy policy; we have no access to what it collects.

International transfers

for(geeks) is run from Armenia, and the providers named above process data in the United States and elsewhere. Where data is transferred out of the EEA or the UK, those providers rely on the transfer mechanisms set out in their own terms — the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and/or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

How long data is kept

Server access logs: up to 30 days. Analytics data: retained by Google and by Yandex under their own retention settings, which we keep at the shortest period each offers. Advertising data: governed by Google's retention policy, linked above. Your consent answer is stored until you change it or clear your browser.

Your rights

If you are in the EU/EEA or the UK, you have the right to access, rectify or erase personal data we hold, to restrict or object to processing, to data portability, and to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority. Where processing rests on consent, you may withdraw it at any time, as easily as you gave it, from Privacy settings in the footer — withdrawal does not affect processing that already happened. Because of how little we hold ourselves, a request to us usually concerns server logs; requests about analytics or advertising data can also be made directly to Google or Yandex, who hold it. Our GDPR page sets out each right and how we handle a request.

Children

This site is written for a professional adult audience and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16, and ad serving on the site is not configured for child-directed treatment.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes materially, the date at the top of the page changes with it. Where the change affects the basis on which we process your data, the consent dialog is re-shown so the choice is made again rather than assumed.

Contact

Privacy questions and data requests: privacy@forgeeks.net. Everything else is routed from our contact page.