Legal

Privacy & Cookies Policy

Last updated: 4 October 2026

The Consulo ("we", "us", "our") publishes independent analysis of geopolitics, security and energy at theconsulo.com. This page explains what data we collect when you visit or subscribe, why, and what control you have over it.

1. What we collect

If you just read the site. Our analytics records page addresses, referring pages, campaign tags, device and browser categories, and approximate country. A temporary session id groups page views within a tab; a persistent browser id links visits over time and may be associated with signup or subscription records. We do not fingerprint your device. GeoJS receives your IP address to look up your country; our analytics table stores the country, not the IP address. Hosting and other service providers may process IP addresses when handling requests.

If you create an account or become a paying member. We store your email address and the minimum account data needed to run the account (login timestamps, membership tier, subscription status). Payment itself is handled entirely by Stripe, our payment processor — we never see or store your card number. Stripe operates under its own privacy policy.

If you contact us. We keep whatever you send us (e.g. by email) for as long as reasonably needed to handle the conversation.

2. Why we collect it

  • To operate the site and your account (sign-in, membership access, the Brief archive).
  • To understand, in aggregate, which stories and sections are read, so we can decide what to cover.
  • To manage membership and send subscription-related messages. We do not sell or rent your email address.
  • To process payments for paid membership tiers, via Stripe.

3. Cookies & local storage

The site uses browser storage for sign-in, preferences and analytics, and loads third-party analytics tools:

  • Session storage (cleared when you close the tab): a random id used to group page views within a tab, and a cached country lookup.
  • Local storage (persists until you clear it): sign-in session data, display preferences, a returning-visitor flag, a persistent browser id and information about the link that first brought you here. Sign-in data is sensitive, and analytics identifiers may be linked to your account. Visiting ?notrack=1 disables our Supabase analytics in this browser; it does not disable Cloudflare or Metricool. Use ?notrack=0 to re-enable our analytics.
  • Stripe checkout: if you start a paid subscription, Stripe's own checkout page may set cookies under its domain, governed by Stripe's privacy policy, not ours.

Cloudflare Web Analytics and a Metricool tracking pixel also receive requests from your browser. External fonts and scripts are loaded from Google Fonts and jsDelivr; these providers receive connection information such as your IP address.

4. Who we share data with

We use these services to run the site:

  • Supabase — database, authentication and file storage.
  • Stripe — payment processing for paid memberships.
  • Cloudflare and Metricool — website analytics.
  • GeoJS — approximate country lookup.
  • Our hosting provider, Google Fonts and jsDelivr — site delivery, fonts and scripts.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers.

5. How long we keep it

Account and subscriber data is kept for as long as your account or subscription is active, plus a reasonable period afterwards for accounting and abuse-prevention purposes. Analytics records are retained to understand readership trends; browser identifiers can link events across visits.

6. Your rights

Wherever you're located, you can ask us to:

  • tell you what data we hold about you;
  • correct it, if it's wrong;
  • delete your account and associated personal data;
  • stop optional email notifications by contacting us. To cancel paid membership, visit My Account.

If you're in the EU/EEA or UK, these are your rights under GDPR; we'll honour equivalent requests from anywhere.

7. Children

The Consulo is a general-audience news publication and is not directed at children. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.

8. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially, we'll update the date at the top of this page.

9. Contact

Questions about your data or this policy: theconsulo@proton.me.