Privacy

Fractured Self is written and run by Rich Bennetts, based in New Zealand. This page explains what information the site collects, why, and what happens to it. The short version: as little as possible, for obvious reasons, shared with nobody.

What gets collected

If you use the contact form: your email address, your message, and your name if you choose to give it. The form also has an optional checkbox to join the mailing list. If you leave it unticked, your details are used only to reply to you.

If you join the list: your email address is stored so new essays can be sent to you. Nothing else is done with it. No tracking of opens beyond what the sending platform provides by default, no profiling, no selling, no sharing.

If you just read: the site sets no cookies. Visits are counted with Vercel Web Analytics, which records the page you read, the site that sent you, your country, and your browser, operating system and device type. It uses no cookies. A visit is recognised by a hash of the request that is discarded after 24 hours, so nothing follows you from one day to the next or from this site to any other. It helps me understand what people read.

Server logs: like almost every website, the hosting infrastructure records standard technical information such as IP addresses and pages requested. These logs are used for security and troubleshooting, nothing more.

Where it lives

The contact form runs on Tally, which stores submissions on servers in the European Union. The website is hosted with Vercel, which serves it from data centres around the world. The newsletter is delivered through Buttondown, based in the United States. Podcast episodes play from Buzzsprout, and the one video embedded in an essay loads from YouTube in its privacy-enhanced mode; those services receive the request for their content directly. Each of these providers has its own privacy policy governing their infrastructure.

What never happens

Your information is never sold, rented, traded or handed to advertisers. There are no advertising trackers on this site. The mailing list is never shared. If you email a message through the contact form, its contents stay between you and me.

How long it's kept

Contact messages are kept as long as needed to deal with them. List subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe, which you can do at any time via the link in any email or by using the contact form. Ask for your details to be deleted and they will be.

Your rights

Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 you can ask what personal information is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted. Use the contact form for any of these. If you believe your privacy has been breached and you're not satisfied with my response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

Cookies

This site sets no cookies of its own, and there are no analytics or advertising cookies. The contact form, the podcast player and the one embedded video come from Tally, Buzzsprout and YouTube, and those services may set their own cookies when they load. Their privacy policies cover what they do.

Changes

If the site's data practices change, this page changes with them. The date below tells you when it was last touched.

Last updated: September 2026