Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-07-27

Last updated: 27 July 2026

This policy governs countlane.com. Countlane’s subject is Countlane; this page is about the information involved in publishing it and reading it.

Information Received

The data involved falls into two buckets. Passively collected: log and analytics information — IP address, device and browser — about the connection used to reach countlane.com, and the path taken through the site. Actively provided: an email address for the mailing list, comment details, or the contents of a message to us.

Given what we write about, this is worth being explicit about: we ask readers not to send us sensitive personal details, and we delete rather than retain anything of that kind that reaches us unprompted.

Age Restrictions

Nothing here is directed at children. The site assumes an adult reader, we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13 (16 where required), and any such data discovered is deleted promptly.

Tracking and Storage

The Cookie Policy explains which cookies may be set on countlane.com and how you can manage them.

Where advertising is served, third-party vendors including Google may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet. You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings, or opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for personalised advertising at www.aboutads.info.

Security and Retention

Retention is purpose-bound: analytics records expire on their provider’s cycle, mailing-list entries persist only while you remain subscribed, and comment data stays as long as the comment does. We restrict who can reach the data, serve the site over encrypted connections, and apply safeguards proportionate to the (limited) sensitivity of what we hold — no system is completely secure.

Requests You Can Make

Readers in the UK and EU have GDPR rights; readers in California and other US states have comparable rights under CCPA/CPRA and similar statutes. In practice this means you can ask to see, correct, delete, or export your data, object to certain processing, and opt out of sale or sharing for advertising. We honour Global Privacy Control. The State Privacy Notice and Do Not Sell or Share pages have the detail.

Partners and Providers

We rely on third parties for infrastructure and measurement: a host, a content-delivery layer, potentially an analytics provider, an email service for the newsletter, and advertising partners where advertising is served. Some are processors acting on our instruction; some, particularly advertising and analytics vendors, act as independent controllers under their own terms.

Newsletter and Email

Mailing-list signup requires confirmation from the address given, which stops anyone subscribing you without your knowledge. Unsubscribe links and a postal address appear in every message, and we do not pass the list to anyone.

How We Use It

The information is used to keep the site working, to understand which of our guides, comparisons and reference pages are actually read, to send the newsletter to people who asked for it, and — where advertising is served — to support that advertising.