Privacy
What a small paper knows about you, which is less than you might expect.
Most privacy policies are written to protect the publisher. This one is written so a reader can find out, in about four minutes, exactly what happens to their information here. Where the answer is nothing, it says nothing rather than reserving a right we do not use.
What we collect
Almost all of it, you hand us on purpose. Write to the Times, subscribe, or send an advertising enquiry, and we receive what you typed: usually your name, your email address, and your message.
Beyond that, the web server keeps ordinary records as pages load: an IP address, a browser and device type, which pages were opened and when, and the site or search that sent you. These exist so the paper stays up and can be defended from abuse.
We run no analytics platform, no advertising network, and no cross-site tracking. Nothing here is building a picture of you as you read.
How The Mosaic Times is written
The paper carries bylines. You deserve to know what they mean.
The articles on this site are produced with substantial assistance from artificial intelligence, under human editorial direction. A person decides what runs, edits it, and answers for it.
Names such as those on our section pages are desk identities. They mark which beat a piece belongs to and the voice it is written in, the way a masthead assigns a correspondent to a section. They are not the biographies of separate individual journalists, and you should not read them as such.
If you are wondering whether a person with that exact name sat down and wrote the article you just read, the answer is no. A person edited it and stands behind it. We would rather tell you than let a byline imply something else.
If we ever publish work by a named human writer, that writer will be named accurately and identified as such. Corrections apply to everything here regardless of how it was drafted: if something is wrong, write to us and it gets fixed.
The Zakah calculator
The calculator asks about savings, gold, business assets and debts, which is genuinely private information. It is arithmetic running in your own browser. The figures are never sent to us, never stored, never logged, and never seen by anyone. Close the tab and they are gone.
We cannot tell you what anyone calculated, because we do not have it.
Comments and spam filtering
Where comments are open, leaving one records what you wrote, the name and email you gave, your IP address, and your browser string. Comment and form content is checked by Akismet, a spam filtering service run by Automattic, which means that content is transmitted to them for that check. That is the one place where something you type here is examined by an outside company, and it exists to keep the paper readable.
Everyone who can see anything
The full list, rather than the phrase “service providers” and a shrug.
- Namecheap
- Hosts the site and carries our mail. Can see everything stored here.
- Automattic
- Runs Akismet. Receives comment and form content for spam checking, along with the submitter’s IP and email.
- Google Fonts
- Serves the three typefaces the paper is set in: Instrument Serif, Newsreader and Space Grotesk. Loading a page reveals your IP address to Google.
- Fluent Forms
- Runs Write to the Times, subscriptions, and the advertising enquiry form. Submissions are stored on our own server, not a vendor cloud.
- Loginizer
- Blocks repeated failed sign-in attempts. Sees the IP addresses that make them.
- LiteSpeed Cache
- Caches pages so the paper loads quickly. Handles no personal information.
- WPVivid
- Takes backups. They stay on our own hosting account and are blocked from public download.
- Ameen Systems
- Built the site and maintains it over a cryptographically signed connection, reaching what an administrator reaches.
No analytics provider, no advertising network, no data broker, no third-party newsletter platform. If we add anything that can see personal information, it appears in that list before it goes live.
Beyond those, we share information only where the law requires it, or where it is genuinely necessary to protect someone’s safety. We do not sell your information. A paper that sold its readers would not be worth reading.
Cookies
A small number, for caching, security, and remembering whether you chose the day or the night edition. That preference lives in your browser. There is no advertising cookie, no analytics cookie, and no cross-site tracker, which is why the paper does not stop you at the door to ask permission. Clear or block cookies whenever you like; nothing is withheld from you if you do.
How long we keep it
- Letters and form messages
- 24 months after the matter is closed, then deleted.
- Published letters
- Kept as part of the archive, because a published letter is part of the record.
- Subscriber list
- Until you unsubscribe, then removed.
- Comments
- Kept while the article is published.
- Server and security logs
- A short rolling window, then discarded.
- Backups
- Rotated, so a deletion can take one backup cycle to become final.
What you can ask us
Ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to stop emailing you, or just ask how something works. Write to privacy@themosaictimes.com. You do not need to phrase it formally, we reply within thirty days and usually much sooner, and there is no charge.
Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link that works on the first click. Where a legal duty stops us deleting something you asked us to delete, we will name the duty rather than leave you guessing.
Children
This is a general audience publication written for adults. We do not direct it to children and do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has sent us something, tell us and we will remove it.
Changes
When our practices change, this page changes and the effective date at the top changes with it. If something material changes, we will say so in the paper rather than relying on you noticing a quietly edited line.
Who we are
The Mosaic Times. Write to privacy@themosaictimes.com for anything on this page, or use Write to the Times for everything else.