Educational content only. Sequence & Signal sells nothing and does not provide medical advice. Talk to a licensed clinician about anything that concerns your health.

Policy

Privacy policy

The short version: we collect as little as we can, we never sell it, and you can have it deleted by asking. The long version follows, because the short version is not a legal document.

Last updated 2 July 2026 · Effective 2 July 2026

1. Who we are

Sequence & Signal ("we," "us," "our") is an independent editorial publication operating from 214 West Gorham Street, Suite 3B, Madison, WI 53703, United States. This policy explains what personal information we collect through sequenceandsignal.com, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do with it. Questions and requests go to hello@sequenceandsignal.com.

2. What we collect

Information you give us

  • Newsletter subscription. Your email address, and the date and time you subscribed. Nothing else. We do not ask for your name, and we do not ask why you are interested.
  • Correspondence. If you use our contact form or email us, we receive the name, email address, subject category, and message content you provide, along with anything else you choose to include.
  • Reader contributions and institutional subscriptions. Payments are handled by a third-party payment processor. We receive a record that a payment was made, along with the billing name and email; we never receive or store your full card number.

Information collected automatically

  • Server logs. Our hosting provider records standard request data: IP address, timestamp, requested URL, HTTP status, referring URL, and user-agent string. These logs exist for security and operational diagnosis.
  • Analytics. Described in section 4.

What we do not collect

We do not collect health information, and we ask you not to send it. We do not build advertising profiles, do not track you across other websites, do not use fingerprinting techniques, and do not buy, rent, or append data about you from any third party.

3. Cookies

We use a minimal number of first-party cookies and similar storage. We use no advertising cookies, no social-media tracking pixels, and no third-party marketing cookies.

  • Strictly necessary. Session and security cookies required for the site to function and for form submissions to be protected against cross-site request forgery. These expire when your browser session ends or shortly after.
  • Preference. If you set a display preference, we store it locally in your browser so the site remembers it. This never leaves your device.
  • Analytics. See section 4. Our analytics does not set a cross-site identifier.

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may prevent forms from working. We honour Global Privacy Control and "Do Not Track" signals where your browser sends them.

4. Analytics

We use a privacy-focused, self-hosted analytics tool to understand which pages are read and where readers arrive from. It records the requested page, referrer, approximate country derived from IP address, device type, and browser family, and it produces aggregate counts. IP addresses are truncated before storage and are not retained in full. The tool does not set a persistent cross-site identifier, does not follow you to other websites, and does not attempt to identify you as an individual.

We do not use Google Analytics, advertising platforms, heat-mapping tools, or session-recording tools. Analytics data is used solely to inform editorial decisions about what to cover and how to present it. It is never shared with third parties for their own purposes.

5. Newsletter data handling

"The Weekly Read" is sent through a third-party email delivery provider acting as our processor under contract. That provider stores your email address and the delivery events associated with it in order to send the newsletter and to manage bounces and unsubscribes.

We record aggregate open and click counts to know whether an issue arrived and whether an item was of interest. We do not use that data to profile individual subscribers, to segment readers by inferred health interest, or to target anything at anyone. Every issue carries a working one-click unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing is immediate and requires no explanation; you may also write to hello@sequenceandsignal.com and we will do it for you.

6. Legal bases for processing

Where the UK GDPR, EU GDPR, or a comparable regime applies to you, we rely on: consent for newsletter subscription (withdrawable at any time); legitimate interests for security logging, aggregate analytics, and responding to correspondence you initiate; and contract for administering reader contributions and institutional subscriptions. We do not process special-category data, and we ask you not to provide it.

7. Sharing and disclosure

We do not sell, rent, trade, or otherwise share your personal information for money or for anything of value. We do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we have no advertisers to share it with.

We disclose information only to: service providers acting on our instructions under contract (hosting, email delivery, payment processing, error monitoring); and where required by law, valid legal process, or to protect the rights or safety of any person. Should we receive a legal demand for reader information, our practice is to require valid process, to interpret it narrowly, and to notify the affected person unless we are legally prohibited from doing so.

8. Retention

  • Newsletter addresses: kept while you are subscribed, and deleted within 30 days of unsubscribing. We retain a one-way hash of a deleted address solely to honour a suppression request.
  • Correspondence: kept for up to 24 months, then deleted. Correspondence that becomes part of the editorial record for a published piece — a corrections report, for example — may be kept for the archival life of that piece.
  • Server logs: 90 days.
  • Analytics data: aggregate figures kept for 24 months; underlying event records for 90 days.
  • Payment records: kept for seven years as required for tax and accounting purposes.

9. Security

The site is served over TLS. Access to subscriber data is limited to staff who need it, protected by multi-factor authentication, and reviewed periodically. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If a breach affecting your personal information occurs, we will notify affected people and any required authority in accordance with applicable law and without undue delay.

10. Your rights and how to exercise them

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you; correction of inaccurate information; deletion; a portable copy; restriction of or objection to certain processing; withdrawal of consent; and to be free from discrimination for exercising any of these rights. California residents have rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right to know, delete, correct, and opt out of sale or sharing — we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined.

To make a request, email hello@sequenceandsignal.com with the word "Privacy" in the subject line. We respond within 30 days, and will tell you promptly if we need longer. We may ask you to confirm control of the email address involved; we will not ask you for identity documents to action a routine deletion request. You may designate an authorised agent to act for you where the law provides for it.

11. Children

This site is intended for a general adult audience and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, write to us and we will delete it.

12. International transfers

We operate from the United States, and our service providers may process data in the United States and elsewhere. Where personal information is transferred out of the UK, the EEA, or another jurisdiction with transfer restrictions, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or another lawful transfer mechanism with the provider concerned.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our practices or the law change. The revision date appears at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will say so on this page and, for subscribers, in a newsletter issue before the change takes effect.

Privacy requests and questions: hello@sequenceandsignal.com, or by post to Sequence & Signal, 214 West Gorham Street, Suite 3B, Madison, WI 53703. See also our terms of use and disclaimer.