Privacy Policy

This policy describes how enginesandmargins.com currently handles data. It will be updated if that changes — for example if advertising, user accounts, or other data collection are introduced later.

Privacy-friendly analytics

Engines & Margins uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand aggregate page traffic and real-user page-performance metrics. It is not used for advertising, visitor profiling, or cross-site tracking.

Cloudflare says Web Analytics collects the minimum information required for performance measurement. Cloudflare also says it does not collect or use visitors' personal data and does not track individual visitors across its customers' websites. You can read Cloudflare's own description in its data origin and collection documentation and its privacy policy.

Because the site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, the automatic Pages configuration sends beacon data through the site's /cdn-cgi/rum endpoint. Engines & Margins does not receive a visitor-level profile and does not use the analytics information to identify individual visitors.

Some browsers or privacy tools may block the analytics beacon, so reported traffic may not include every visit.

Optional Google Analytics

With your permission, we use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand which articles visitors read and whether they use our calculators. The Google Analytics tag is loaded only after you choose “Allow analytics” in our website analytics choice. You may choose “Decline analytics” instead, and you can change your choice using “Analytics preferences” in the footer. We store that choice in your browser; if storage is blocked, the choice applies only to the current page view. Declining GA4 does not turn off the separately configured Cloudflare Web Analytics.

If you allow GA4, Google may set first-party analytics cookies and process device, browser and usage information under Google's Privacy Policy. We send page paths and a calculator-use event labelled only with the tool name. We do not send calculator inputs, shareable-link query parameters or URL fragments as analytics event data. Automatic GA4 enhanced measurement is disabled. GA4 advertising signals and ad personalization are disabled in our tag configuration.

These analytics choices apply to GA4. Consent for any future AdSense advertising is handled separately. Our published European regulations message covers advertising choices for visitors where it applies.

What we don't do, currently

• No advertising is currently enabled, including Google AdSense.
• No advertising pixels or third-party marketing tags are used. Google Analytics is optional as described above.
• No advertising or cross-site tracking cookies are used by us. Optional first-party GA4 analytics cookies may be set after you allow analytics.
• No user accounts, newsletter profiles, or personal visitor profiles are maintained.

Normal hosting and server logs

Like essentially any website, our hosting provider and content delivery network necessarily process some technical information to serve pages at all — this typically includes IP address, requested URL, user-agent string, referrer, and timestamp, generally retained briefly for security, abuse prevention, and reliability purposes by the infrastructure provider. This is standard web server behavior, not a deliberate analytics or tracking system we've built or configured, and we do not currently combine it with any other data to build profiles of visitors.

The interactive calculators

Our calculators perform their calculations in your browser. After you edit valid inputs, the numbers may appear in the page address so you can share a link. When someone opens or reloads a link with those numbers in the URL, the query parameters are sent to our hosting provider as part of the request and may appear in server logs. Avoid entering confidential information into the calculators.

Third-party embeds

Some pages feature a YouTube video. The video embed itself makes no connection to YouTube before you activate it — you'll see a static, locally rendered placeholder (a title and a play button, not a thumbnail fetched from YouTube) instead of a live player. A YouTube player is only loaded if you deliberately click that play button, which is also stated in text next to the control. Once you do, the video loads using YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), which YouTube states limits cookie use compared to a standard embed. From that point on, your interaction with the player is subject to YouTube/Google's own privacy policy, not ours. You can also click a plain link next to the placeholder to watch the video directly on youtube.com instead, without loading a player on this site at all.

Future changes

We will update this policy before introducing advertising, user accounts, marketing technology, or materially different data collection.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to [email protected].