Privacy
Short version: the only thing we ask you for is an email address, and only if you want the newsletter. Delivering it and serving this page means our two providers see a little more than that — the detail is below. No advertising, no tracking pixels, nothing sold to anyone.
Who is responsible
The Backscatter is run by Derrick Chambers, who is the data controller for everything described here. For anything on this page — questions, requests, complaints — email hello@thebackscatter.org.
The newsletter
If you subscribe, your email address goes to Buttondown, which manages the mailing list and delivers the issues. Buttondown stores your address, the date you subscribed, and where you subscribed from. We use that to send you the newsletter. That's it.
Our legal basis is your consent. Subscribing is double opt-in: you'll get one confirmation email, and you're not on the list until you click it. Giving us an address is entirely voluntary — the only consequence of not giving one is that you don't get the newsletter.
How long we keep it: for as long as you're subscribed. Unsubscribing removes your address from the list. If you never confirm, you're never added to it, and we clear unconfirmed signups at least every 30 days.
Reading the site
The site is static and sets no cookies. It's hosted on Cloudflare, which keeps standard server logs (including IP addresses) for security and abuse prevention as part of serving the site. The legal basis for those logs is our legitimate interest in keeping the site up and not being attacked; Cloudflare retains them on its own schedule. We don't run advertising or third-party tracking scripts.
Contributions
If you email us a submission, we keep the message so we can consider it for an issue — again on the basis of legitimate interest, in that you wrote to us about it. We won't publish your name unless you've asked us to, and we'll delete correspondence on request.
Where your data goes
Two processors, both in the United States, so subscribing means your email address is transferred outside the EEA and the UK:
- Buttondown — the mailing list and delivery.
- Cloudflare — hosting, and forwarding mail sent to our address above.
Both process personal data under data processing terms incorporating the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, which is the safeguard those transfers rely on. Neither is permitted to use your data for their own purposes. Nobody else receives it, and we don't sell or share it with anyone.
Your rights
If you're in the EEA or the UK, the GDPR gives you the right to ask for:
- a copy of the personal data we hold about you (access);
- correction of anything inaccurate (rectification);
- deletion of it (erasure);
- a pause on us using it while a dispute is sorted out (restriction);
- a machine-readable copy to take elsewhere (portability);
- that we stop processing it on legitimate-interest grounds (objection).
You can withdraw consent at any time. Every issue carries a one-click unsubscribe link, which takes effect immediately, and you can email us instead if you'd rather. Withdrawing doesn't make anything we did beforehand unlawful, and it costs you nothing.
Email hello@thebackscatter.org to exercise any of these. There isn't much to hold, so it won't take long — we'll respond within one month.
If you think we've handled your data badly, you're entitled to complain to a data protection authority: in the EEA, the supervisory authority where you live or work (the EDPB lists them all), and in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office. We'd rather you told us first, but you don't have to.
Changes
If what we collect changes, this page changes with it. Last updated September 2026.