Protocol STAMP is teamed with AI and can make mistakes. Verify before you implement anything. What we got wrong · Free to read, paid for by readers: Contribute
This site runs no analytics of its own and sets no cookies of its own. One thing is added at the edge that we did not write: our host, Cloudflare, inserts a short bot-detection script into every web page it serves; with Bot Fight Mode already off, we have found no setting on our plan that removes it. It is never added to the Source of an issue: those are served as plain text, which it does not touch, so each one hashes to the build printed in its PDF (checked Oct 10, 2026). Six third parties are involved: an advertiser that is not yet switched on, the service that sends our mail, Google’s reCAPTCHA inside that service’s sign-up form, the service that takes reader contributions, our host, and a font server. Each is listed here with exactly what it collects.
Issues
Every Calibration and every Log is served as written. The page around an issue runs only the site’s own scripts — the day-and-night switch, the menu and page search — with no advertising, no beacon and no cookie, and no third-party script of ours; our host adds a bot-detection script to the page at the edge, as the opening of this page says, but never to the issue’s Source. That is not only a privacy choice; the fingerprint printed on every page of an issue’s PDF is the SHA-256 of its Source file, which is served byte for byte, and the issue inside its reading page is those same bytes, so anything added inside them would falsify it. The switch stores one word (“day” or “night”) in your own browser’s local storage and nothing leaves it.
Advertising
To help pay for measurement, the home page and the two essays at the foot of The Bench carry one advertising slot each, placed below the content, served by Google AdSense. It appears only once Google has approved the site; until then the slot is empty and no Google code loads. When it is live, Google may use cookies, web beacons, IP addresses and device identifiers to serve and measure ads, including personalized ads based on your visits to this and other sites; Google’s use of that data is described at policies.google.com/technologies/ads, and you can opt out of personalized advertising at adssettings.google.com. Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are asked for consent through Google’s certified consent message before any ad is served, and may decline. Advertising never appears on an issue, the archive, the Colophon, or this page.
What we collect. If you subscribe, we collect your email address and nothing else: no name, no phone number. We use it for one purpose, sending you each issue of The Calibration and The Log and occasional one-time announcements. The list is never sold or rented, never shared with anyone but the service that sends the mail, and never used to profile you.
Who holds it. The list is kept and the mail is sent for us by EmailOctopus, acting as our data processor under its data-protection terms. It and the sub-processors it names store and deliver the mail, and some of them may be outside your country; its terms and sub-processor list are at emailoctopus.com/legal. The sign-up form on the subscribe page is EmailOctopus’s own, and its script loads on that page only. The form includes a hidden Google reCAPTCHA, which EmailOctopus uses to stop automated sign-ups; it loads Google code on the subscribe page and nowhere else, and Google’s privacy policy and terms apply to it. Before Oct 11, 2026 the form opened your own mail app instead, and those requests were added by hand.
Confirming. Subscription is double opt-in. Until you click the link in the confirmation email, your address is held as pending and nothing else is sent to it. Sign-ups that are never confirmed are deleted at least once a month.
Opens and clicks. EmailOctopus records by default whether a message was opened and which links in it were clicked. For the welcome email, which sends the Reader’s Kit, open and click tracking are turned off. For each issue it is a setting on that mailing, and this page will say when it is off for those too. Until then we look only at totals for each issue, never at what one reader did. This replaces an earlier line on this page, written before any list existed, that said no tracking pixels were used.
Leaving, and your data. Every message carries a one-click unsubscribe, and we stop sending at once. EmailOctopus may keep the address on a do-not-send list so that it is not added again by mistake; to have it deleted entirely, or to see or correct what we hold, write to s@bud.day and we will answer within 30 days. For readers in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the legal basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by unsubscribing, and you may complain to your data protection authority. The list is not meant for anyone under 16.
Payments
Who holds it. Contributions made from the Support page are taken by Stripe on a checkout page it hosts. Your card details go to Stripe and never to this site or to us. Stripe acts as an independent controller for the payment itself and as our processor for the record of it; its terms are at stripe.com/privacy.
What we see. Your email address, your name if you give it, the amount and date, and your answer to one question: whether you may be named in the ledger if your year’s total reaches $100. We use these to keep the ledger the Independence page requires, to send a receipt, and to answer you. Payment records are kept as long as tax law requires; to see or correct them, write to s@bud.day.
Hosting
The site is served by Cloudflare Pages from the public repository at github.com/buddaybudderson/stamp, so the bytes served can be compared against the commit that produced them. Cloudflare, as the host, sees the IP address and request headers of every visit in order to serve it, and applies its own security processing; the publisher has turned off Cloudflare’s analytics, email obfuscation and content-rewriting features for this site. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which sees the request for the font file. The subscribe page alone also loads EmailOctopus’s form and the Google reCAPTCHA inside it. No other third party is involved. Questions: s@bud.day. This statement is dated Oct 09, 2026, replacing the version of Sep 03, 2026; what changed is listed in Corrections + changes. Like everything else here, it is corrected in the open when it changes.