Privacy Policy

The short version: your email address, and basic analytics about how you read the newsletter.

When you subscribe, we collect your email address. When you read an edition, our newsletter platform (Beehiiv) records whether the email was delivered, opened, and which links you clicked. When you visit this website, our privacy-focused analytics (Ahrefs Web Analytics) records pageviews, referrers, and country, with no cookies and no individual tracking. If you arrive from one of our ads, we also use Meta’s advertising tools to measure that ad (see Cookies and tracking below).

We do not collect: your name, phone number, physical address, payment information, or any other personal data unless you voluntarily provide it (for example, by replying to an email).

The short version: to send you the newsletter and to make the newsletter better.

Your email is used to deliver the weekly newsletter and any account notifications. Aggregate analytics (open rates, click rates) help us understand what content works and improve future editions. We do not sell your email or your reading habits to anyone, ever.

The short version: we use a small number of vendors to operate the newsletter. Each has its own privacy policy.

Our infrastructure relies on:

• Beehiiv — email delivery, subscriber list, and analytics for editions.
• Cloudflare — domain hosting, DNS, and website CDN.
• Ahrefs Web Analytics — privacy-focused website analytics (no cookies, no fingerprinting).
• Supabase — backend database for editorial content and (encrypted) subscriber backup.
• Google Workspace — our team email and reader replies.
• Meta (Facebook and Instagram) — advertising and conversion measurement for the paid ads we run to grow the newsletter.

None of these vendors have access to read the editorial content of your reading habits except in the aggregate metrics they provide back to us.

The short version:our website analytics are cookie-free, and we use Meta’s advertising tools to measure the ads we run to grow the newsletter.

Cookie-free analytics. Our analytics provider, Ahrefs Web Analytics, sets no cookies and does not fingerprint visitors. Pageviews are aggregated, so we cannot tie a visit back to an individual person.

Advertising measurement (Meta). We run paid ads on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) to grow the newsletter. To see which ads actually bring readers, we use the Meta Pixel on this site together with Meta’s server-side Conversions API. These set advertising cookies in your browser (such as _fbp and _fbc), and when you sign up they send Meta a one-way hashed version of your email plus the ad-click identifier that Meta itself added to your link. The hash leaves our server scrambled and is never readable as your address, and we never send anything you read here. This lets us credit a signup to the ad that earned it and stop spending on ads that do not work.

Functional cookies. When you submit a form or unlock a free resource, our server may set a short-lived cookie to prevent duplicate submissions and to remember that you unlocked. These carry no readable personal data.

Email click tracking is not a cookie. Links inside newsletter emails route through a tracking subdomain (elink747.mail.theaustinnewsletter.com) so we can count clicks per edition. This records that a link was clicked, but does not place a cookie on your browser or device.

Your control, and no banner.Our readers are in the United States, where a cookie consent banner is not legally required, so we do not interrupt you with one. If you would rather not be measured by advertising tools, an ad blocker or your browser’s privacy settings will block the Meta Pixel, and Meta’s own ad preferences let you limit how your data is used for ads. We never sell your email or your reading habits to anyone.

The short version: unsubscribe at any time from any edition. Email us to delete your data entirely.

Every newsletter edition includes an unsubscribe link in the footer. Clicking it removes you from the list immediately. To delete your subscriber record entirely (rather than just unsubscribing), email carissa@theaustinnewsletter.com and we will purge your email from Beehiiv and our Supabase backup within 30 days.

The short version:while you’re subscribed, indefinitely. After you unsubscribe, 90 days for compliance, then deleted.

Active subscriber records are retained while you are subscribed and for 90 days after unsubscription, after which we delete them from both Beehiiv and our Supabase backup. Aggregate analytics (edition open rates, click rates without personal identifiers) are retained indefinitely for editorial purposes.

The Austin Newsletter is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete it.

We may update this policy when our practices change. Updates appear here with the revised date. Material changes (anything that affects what we collect or how we use it) will be announced in the newsletter so you can review before they take effect.

Questions about this policy? Email carissa@theaustinnewsletter.com.

Mailing address:

The Austin Newsletter
1620 East Riverside
Austin, TX 78741