Privacy.

The data controller is The Valerius. Contact for privacy requests: legal@thevalerius.com.

For users in Turkey, this notice is also an information notice under Article 10 of Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data.

Newsletter data: email address, language, subscription status, the time and form of your signup together with the version of the signup notice you saw, and unsubscribe and suppression records (such as bounces and complaints).

Technical data: request and security logs processed by Cloudflare when you visit the site.

Signup checks: when you press Subscribe, Cloudflare Turnstile runs a short check in your browser to tell people from bots. It processes your IP address, browser details, and similar technical signals, and Cloudflare may also use them to improve its bot detection; only the result reaches us. We also check that your address's domain (the part after @) can receive email, which sends only the domain to Cloudflare's DNS service.

Browser preferences: your color theme and the layout you choose for the essay archive are stored only in your browser's local storage and are never sent to us.

Reading statistics: for each page view, how long the page was actively read, how far down it you scrolled, how long you spent in each section of an essay, which outside links you followed, whether you subscribed from that page, the referring website or campaign tag, your device type (mobile, tablet, or desktop), your country as reported by Cloudflare, and page-speed measurements. Your IP address is not stored with them.

If you accept reading statistics, a random reader ID kept in your browser is sent with them so we can tell returning readers apart. It is never stored on the record of a page from which you subscribed to the newsletter. Until you choose, they are sent without any identifier. If you decline, no reading statistics are collected about your visits.

Newsletter statistics: for each newsletter email, the number of recipients who opened it and clicked a link. The record of each email sent to you, with its delivery, opens, clicks, and bounces, is kept only by the sending provider, Zoho Campaigns, to produce these totals; our own database stores only the totals, and we only look at the totals per email.

The site has no comments and no reader accounts. Google Search Console provides aggregated search statistics that do not identify readers.

We process data to publish and operate the website, send the newsletter you asked for (an email for each new essay and occasional editorial letters), protect the service against spam and abuse, and comply with legal obligations.

Reading statistics show which essays are read and how, so the writing and the site can be improved. The reader ID relies on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with the "Change cookie preferences" button in the "Cookies and similar technologies" section of this policy, which is linked at the bottom of every page. Statistics without an identifier rely on legitimate interests (KVKK Article 5(2)(f)), as first-party audience measurement that produces only anonymous figures; declining stops them as well.

The newsletter relies on your request to subscribe. Security and abuse protection rely on legitimate interests. Records needed to prove a subscription or to stop further emails rely on legal obligations and legitimate interests.

For Turkish users, processing relies on the conditions in KVKK Articles 5 and 6 where applicable. Where consent is required, the service will request it separately.

The site sets no advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

If you accept reading statistics, this site keeps a random reader ID in your browser's local storage (tv-reader-id); it is replaced every 90 days and deleted when you decline. Besides it, only these are kept there: your choice (tv-analytics-consent, asked again after 12 months), your theme preference (thevalerius.theme), your archive layout (thevalerius-archive-view), and a flag that stops reading statistics in that browser (tv-analytics-ignore), which is written only when a page address containing ?tv-analytics=off is opened and removed by ?tv-analytics=on. The publication uses this flag to leave out its own visits. No third party sets or reads them.

Cloudflare may place cookies or process technical identifiers for security, traffic management, and performance.

You can change your choice at any time with the button below; this policy is linked at the bottom of every page. Declining deletes the reader ID from your browser.

Cloudflare hosts the website and its data (Workers, D1, R2, Queues, DNS, CDN, and security services). Newsletter emails are sent through Zoho Campaigns. GitHub hosts the source code. Google Search Console provides search statistics. OpenRouter is used to translate article text, which contains no reader data. Approved essays may be shared on X.

Reader and subscriber data is transferred abroad to two providers: Cloudflare, a United States company that runs the website, its database, and its logs on its global network, so the data may be processed in any country where Cloudflare has data centers; and Zoho Campaigns, which keeps the newsletter list and sends the emails from its data center in the European Union. Both process this data on our behalf. The other providers named above receive no reader or subscriber data.

Under KVKK Article 9, a transfer abroad needs an adequacy decision or an appropriate safeguard, such as the standard contract set by the Personal Data Protection Board. No standard contract has been signed with either provider yet; the transfer mechanism, including the providers' data processing agreements, is being finalized, and this section will be updated when it is. Meanwhile we send the providers only what the service needs: reading statistics are stored without IP addresses, and only your email address, newsletter language, and the form you signed up from go to Zoho Campaigns.

We do not sell personal data.

Article text and metadata may be processed through editorial tools for translation, search presentation, and publication workflows. These tools do not receive reader data.

Newsletter records are kept while you are subscribed. After you unsubscribe, our record is reduced to the minimum (your email address, its status, and the date you unsubscribed) and deleted 12 months after you unsubscribed; the sending provider keeps its own unsubscribe record so that no further newsletter is sent to that address. When an address bounces, reports an email as spam, or is blocked by us, a suppression record is kept for as long as it is needed to stop further emails to that address.

Reading statistics are kept with their reader ID for 90 days. After that the reader ID is deleted, and the remaining statistics no longer relate to anyone.

Data deleted or cleared from our database, such as expired reader IDs and deleted newsletter records, can remain for up to 30 more days in the database's automatic point-in-time backups (Cloudflare D1 Time Travel), which cannot be switched off, and is then removed for good.

Security and operational logs are retained only as long as needed for security, diagnostics, and legal compliance.

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may request access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection, portability, withdrawal of consent, and information about transfers or automated processing.

Under KVKK Article 11, Turkish users may exercise their statutory rights by contacting legal@thevalerius.com. Requests will be evaluated under applicable law.

Every newsletter email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Administrative access requires a passkey, and the service relies on provider-level security controls and operational logging.

No internet service is perfectly secure. If a security incident creates a legal notification obligation, affected users or authorities will be notified as required.

The service is not directed to children. Do not submit personal data if you are not legally allowed to do so in your jurisdiction.

This policy may be updated as the product, integrations, or legal requirements change. The updated date will show the current version.