Privacy Policy

Effective October 18, 2026 · applies to thegreatlakesgleaner.press

1. Who we are

The Great Lakes Gleaner (thegreatlakesgleaner.press) is a Michigan travel guide published by Arthur Cady in Michigan, USA, who also runs The Gourmet Gleaner (hence the contact address). We are the controller for the personal data described here. The game Iron Frontier has its own privacy policy.

For anything about your personal data, contact us at arthur@gourmetgleaner.com. In this policy “we”, “us” and “our” mean The Great Lakes Gleaner.

2. What we collect, why, and on what legal basis

3. Analytics, cookies and similar storage

How we measure visits

Our pages load a small script from our own domain (/_hub/e.js) that reports to our own server. It is not Google Analytics or any other third-party analytics service, and nothing it collects is shared with advertisers. When it is allowed to run (see your choices below) it records:

• the page address (never the part after “?”), the website you came from (its domain only), how long the page was actively in view, how far you scrolled, and the order of pages within one visit;
• clicks and taps on links and buttons (the button or link text and where the link goes), taps on our phone, text or email links, file downloads, and video plays and how much was watched;
• when a form is started or sent and which fields your browser flagged as incomplete, but never anything you type;
• page-speed measurements (Core Web Vitals), JavaScript and loading errors, rapid repeated clicks, and whether text was copied or the page printed;
• device type, browser and operating system (from your browser’s User-Agent), screen width, touchscreen or not, language, time zone, dark-mode setting and connection type (such as 4G);
• campaign tags in the link you followed (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign) and whether an ad click ID was present (never the ID itself);
• a random ID for the current browser tab and a random visitor ID kept in your browser for up to 12 months, so we can tell new visitors from returning ones.

These IDs are random numbers, not your name or email address, and our server scrambles them with a secret key (hashing) before saving them. Your IP address is used for a moment to block floods of fake requests and is not saved by this measurement. We use the results to learn which pages help people, to find errors and slow pages, and to decide what to improve. Detailed records are deleted after 400 days (about 13 months); a visitor record is deleted 400 days after its last visit.

Legal basis: if you are in the EU/EEA, the UK or Switzerland, your consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a) and the ePrivacy rules on storing information on your device). Elsewhere, our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the site (Art. 6(1)(f)), which you can switch off at any time.

Your choices

The first time you visit, a small “Privacy choices” box explains this. If your device is set to a European time zone (EU/EEA, UK, Switzerland and neighbouring countries), nothing is stored and nothing is measured unless you click Accept. Elsewhere, measurement runs unless you click Opt out. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, we treat it as an opt-out. You can change your mind at any time:

Open privacy choices

Opting out stops the script on this site, removes its storage from your browser, and deletes the visitor record linked to your random ID from our server. Your choice is saved in the hub_consent cookie for 12 months; if you clear your cookies we will ask again. You can also block or delete cookies and site storage in your browser settings and the site will still work.

Everything we store in your browser

We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels or cross-site trackers.

4. Server logs and security

Like almost every website, our web server writes a line for each request it handles: your IP address, the date and time, the page or file requested, the result, the referring page and your browser’s User-Agent. We use these logs to keep the Gleaner running and secure: fixing errors, spotting attacks and abusive bots, and counting traffic. The log files roll over by size and are overwritten automatically, usually within a few days. Our traffic dashboard keeps only counts made from them. For daily unique-visitor counts it combines the IP address and browser with a random value that changes every day and is thrown away after three days, so the count cannot be traced back to you.

Legal basis: legitimate interests in security and in running the service (Art. 6(1)(f)).

5. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We share it only with:

Links to other sites (sponsors, Facebook, X, Pinterest and others) take you to services with their own privacy policies; we do not embed their trackers.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety, or to defend legal claims. If the business is ever sold or reorganised, the buyer would take over this information under the same promises.

6. Where your data is stored

Our servers are rented from Hetzner Online GmbH and located in Helsinki, Finland, in the EU. We are based in Michigan, in the United States. Some of the providers above are based in the United States. Where the GDPR applies, transfers to the US rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework for providers certified under it, and otherwise on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses in the provider’s data-processing terms.

7. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you the personal data we hold about you, give you a copy (including in a machine-readable format), correct it, delete it, or stop using it for a particular purpose.

EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland: under the GDPR (and the UK GDPR and Swiss law) you have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection, including the right to object at any time to processing based on our legitimate interests and to any direct marketing. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it at any time; that does not affect what we did before. You can also complain to your data protection authority (list of EU authorities; in the UK, the ICO; in Switzerland, the FDPIC), though we would appreciate the chance to put things right first.

United States: residents of states with privacy laws (such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and others) have similar rights to know, delete and correct their information and to opt out of its sale or use for targeted advertising. We do not sell or share personal information in that sense, and we honour Global Privacy Control signals.

We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects.

To use any of these rights, contact us at arthur@gourmetgleaner.com. We reply within one month. For complex requests we may take up to two more months and will tell you if so. We may need to confirm that a request really comes from you, for example by replying from the email address you subscribed with. Using your rights will never count against you.

8. Children

The Gleaner is a general-audience travel guide and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children; if you think we have, contact us and we will delete it.

9. Security

Every page is served over HTTPS. Admin tools are password-protected, passwords are stored only as salted hashes, and card numbers never reach our servers (Stripe handles them). No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data we will tell you and the authorities where the law requires.

10. Changes to this policy

We will post any changes here with a new effective date. If a change is significant we will also say so on the site.