Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 16, 2026

This policy explains how The Plug Weekly ("we", "us"), at theplugweekly.com, collects and uses personal information. The Plug Weekly is a small independent business operated by Aaron Dunn.

Information we collect

• Newsletter signup. If you subscribe, we collect your email address (and anything else you choose to give). Our newsletter platform (beehiiv) stores subscriber data and may record opens and clicks so we can measure what readers find useful.
• Sponsorships. If you buy a sponsorship, payment is handled by Stripe; we receive your name, email and billing details, never full card numbers.
• Messages you send us. If you contact us, we keep that correspondence.
• Basic technical data. Our hosting provider automatically logs standard request data (IP address, browser type, pages requested, date/time) for security and reliability.
• Analytics. We use two analytics tools. Cloudflare Web Analytics measures page views and referrers without cookies and without tracking individuals across sites. Google Analytics 4 (provided by Google) measures page views and clicks, such as outbound links and file downloads, so we can see which pages are useful. It receives your page address, referrer, browser and device details and approximate location. We have turned off Google signals and ads personalization, so this data is used only for measurement and not for advertising. On checkout-return (thank-you) pages we send Google the page address without its query string, so your checkout session identifier is not shared.

How we use it

• To provide the site and deliver what you asked for (orders, downloads, emails).
• To answer questions and provide support.
• To keep the site secure and understand overall usage.
• To meet legal, tax and accounting obligations.

We do not sell your personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Service providers

We share information only with providers that help run the business, such as Stripe (payments), Google (analytics), our web host, beehiiv (newsletter delivery), and our email provider. Each processes data under its own privacy policy.

Cookies and third-party content

Google Analytics sets first-party cookies named _ga and _ga_ followed by part of our measurement ID, which tell visitors and sessions apart and can last up to two years. We use them only for measurement, with Google signals and ads personalization turned off. Cloudflare Web Analytics sets no cookies. We do not use advertising cookies. To opt out of Google Analytics, install Google's browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout, or block cookies and analytics scripts in your browser settings.

The signup form on the home, archive, about and sample-issue pages is a third-party form served by beehiiv from subscribe-forms.beehiiv.com. When it loads, beehiiv and the providers it uses can set their own cookies and run their own scripts. In our testing these were Cloudflare and PerimeterX bot-protection cookies, plus requests to Google Tag Manager and Google Fonts. We do not control them or receive data from them; see beehiiv's privacy policy. If you would rather not load the embedded form, use the plain beehiiv subscribe page (hosted by beehiiv, with its own cookies) or the contact form. Payment pages hosted by Stripe may also set cookies needed for fraud prevention.

Retention

We keep order records as long as required for tax and accounting (typically up to 7 years) and other data only as long as needed for the purposes above.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR or California law), you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal information, or to object to certain processing. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in every email. To make a request, use our contact form. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.

Children

This site is not directed to children under 13 (or 16 in the EEA), and we do not knowingly collect their information.

International users

We are based in the United States and our providers may process data in the US and other countries.

Changes

We may update this policy; the date above shows the latest version.

Contact

Use the contact form at theplugweekly.com/contact/. We reply by email.