Privacy

The short version

This site collects the bare minimum. You don’t have to create an account to access it, but there is:

• a newsletter — Letters from a Copywriter
• a form for sending me personal information and a project brief;
• and a few third-party integrations that help me to run my services.

What happens with those is covered below. Three things measure what happens here: Fathom Analytics for traffic (cookieless, no profiles), Google’s tag because I run ads, and PostHog, which records how pages get used — including replays of anonymous sessions. All three are detailed below. If anything here changes, this page gets updated to say so, with a new date at the top.

Who runs this site

HX Copywriting is operated by Jef van de Graaf through Redwing Messaging Inc. For anything about your data, email jef@hxcopywriting.com.

Analytics

I’ll be straight with you: I use Fathom Analytics because I want to convert as many visitors as possible into clients, and I can’t improve what I don’t measure. Fathom is the privacy-respecting way to do it — no cookies, no cross-site tracking, no personal profiles. What I see is aggregate: which pages get read, which buttons get clicked, whether people make it through the skeleton. Fathom never sees who you are and never follows you anywhere. Their own policy is at usefathom.com/privacy.

And if you run a website, you should do the same. Use this link and you’ll get $10 off your first invoice: usefathom.com/ref/NICBDW.

Advertising

I run paid ads to bring people here, and I need to know whether those ads earn their keep. So the site loads Google’s tag (Google Ads conversion tracking). It sets cookies, and when someone who clicked one of my ads ends up booking a call, it tells Google — and Google tells me which ad paid for itself. That is measurement of my advertising, not a dossier on you, but it is Google’s technology under Google’s advertising policy, and it may be used to show relevant ads. If your ad blocker eats it, the site works exactly the same without it.

Session recording and heatmaps

Here is the one that deserves plain language. I use PostHog to see how people actually use this site, and that includes session replay: it records mouse movement, clicks, scrolling and which parts of a page you reached, then plays it back to me like a screen recording. I watch these to find out where writing loses people — whether anyone finishes a letter, whether the skeleton is worth the scroll.

It is anonymous. I see a session, not a name, and PostHog is set so that ordinary visitors never get a person profile. Text you type into the booking calendar is masked, and that calendar is on Cal.com’s own page anyway, so the recording does not capture it. It does set cookies. Their policy is at posthog.com/privacy, and if you would rather not be recorded, any ad or tracker blocker stops it and the site works exactly the same.

Booking a call

The booking calendar on the homepage is an embedded service from Cal.com. When you book, the details you enter there — your name, your email, and payment, which is handled by Cal.com’s payment processor — are collected by Cal.com under their privacy policy. I receive the booking: your name, your email, and whatever you chose to write in the notes. I use it to run the call and to follow up with you, and for nothing else.

The letters

If you subscribe to my letters, I collect your email address and nothing else. You get a confirmation email first, and you’re not on the list until you click it. The list runs on my own system, built and operated under Redwing Messaging Inc., and the emails are delivered by Postmark under their privacy policy. I note which page you subscribed from, so I know what’s working. Every letter carries an unsubscribe link; click it and you’re off the list.

Sending a brief

The brief form on the homepage sends what you write straight to my inbox through that same system. It’s email, not a database — I keep it as long as it’s useful for working together, and I don’t share it with anyone.

The video

The testimonial on this site is embedded from YouTube. It only loads YouTube’s player when you press play; from that point Google may set cookies and collect data under Google’s privacy policy. If you never press play, the player never loads.

Email

If you email me, I’ll have your email address and whatever you wrote, the same as any correspondence. I keep it as long as it’s useful for working together and I don’t share it with anyone.

Hosting

The site is served by Cloudflare Pages. Like any host, Cloudflare processes standard technical logs — IP addresses, browser type, pages requested — to deliver the site and keep it secure, under Cloudflare’s privacy policy. I don’t use those logs to identify visitors.

Your data, your call

If you want to know what I hold about you, want it corrected, or want it deleted, email jef@hxcopywriting.com and I’ll sort it out. In practice, unless we’ve booked a call, traded emails, or you’re on the letters list, the answer is: nothing.