Privacy Policy

Effective & last updated: July 11, 2026

Iron Brew Works is the personal creative journal of Dan McCoy. Your privacy matters to us, and it is our policy to respect your privacy and comply with any applicable law and regulation regarding any personal information we may collect about you through our website, https://ironbrewworks.com/.

Iron Brew Works is a free, read-only journal with an optional email newsletter. We do not sell products, we do not require you to create an account, and we do not run advertising. As a result, we collect very little information about you.

Personal information is any information about you which can be used to identify you. In the event our site contains links to third-party sites and services, please be aware that those sites have their own privacy policies. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any of your activities after you leave our site.

Information We Collect

Information we collect falls into two categories: "voluntarily provided" information and "automatically collected" information.

"Voluntarily provided" information refers to any information you knowingly and actively provide us — for example, your email address when you subscribe to our newsletter, or the contents of a message when you email us.

"Automatically collected" information refers to limited, privacy-respecting analytics data collected when you visit the site (see "Analytics" below).

Analytics

We use Rybbit, a privacy-focused, first-party analytics tool that we self-host on our own server (Codamarfa). Rybbit helps us understand which posts are read and how visitors find the site. It is designed to be privacy-respecting: it does not use tracking cookies, does not build advertising profiles, and does not sell your data. The analytics data is aggregated and is not used to personally identify you.

If you subscribe to our newsletter ("Working Draft"), we collect your email address and use it to send you the newsletter and related updates. Our newsletter is delivered through a third-party email service provider (EmailIt), which processes your email address on our behalf for the purpose of sending these emails. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any newsletter email, or by contacting us.

Log Data

Like most websites, our hosting and analytics infrastructure may automatically process standard technical data provided by your browser — such as your approximate location (derived from IP address), browser type, the pages you visit, and the time and date of your visit. This information helps us keep the site running and understand how it is used, and is not used to personally identify you.

What We Do Not Collect

To be clear about what does not apply to this site:

We do not collect payment or financial information — the site is free and sells nothing.
We do not offer user accounts, usernames, or passwords.
We do not run advertising or use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
We do not sell or rent your personal information to anyone.

Legitimate Reasons for Processing Your Personal Information

We only collect and use your personal information when we have a legitimate reason for doing so. In that instance, we only collect personal information that is reasonably necessary to provide our services to you — namely, to run the website, understand how it is used, and (if you have subscribed) send you our newsletter.

Security of Your Personal Information

When we collect and process personal information, and while we retain this information, we will protect it within commercially acceptable means to prevent loss and theft, as well as unauthorised access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification.

Although we will do our best to protect the personal information you provide to us, we advise that no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure and no one can guarantee absolute data security.

How Long We Keep Your Personal Information

We keep your personal information only for as long as we need to. If you have subscribed to our newsletter, we retain your email address until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it. Aggregate analytics data is retained for as long as it remains useful for understanding site usage. If your personal information is no longer required, we will delete it or make it anonymous.

However, if necessary, we may retain your personal information for our compliance with a legal, accounting, or reporting obligation.

Children's Privacy

We do not aim any of our services directly at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information about children under 13.

Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties

We may disclose personal information to:

third-party service providers we rely on to operate the site and newsletter, including our hosting/analytics infrastructure and our email newsletter provider (EmailIt);
courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities, and law enforcement officers, as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights;
an entity that buys, or to which we transfer, all or substantially all of our assets and business.

Third-party services we currently use include:

Rybbit (self-hosted, first-party analytics)
EmailIt (email newsletter delivery)
Cloudflare (website hosting and delivery)
GetTerms (cookie consent management)
YouTube (privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com embeds, where videos appear)

Your Rights and Controlling Your Personal Information

Your choice: By providing personal information to us, you understand we will collect, hold, use, and disclose your personal information in accordance with this privacy policy. You do not have to provide personal information to us; you can read the site without giving us any personal information at all.

Marketing permission: If you have subscribed to our newsletter, you may withdraw your consent at any time by unsubscribing or contacting us.

Access: You may request details of the personal information that we hold about you.

Correction: If you believe that any information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant, or misleading, please contact us. We will take reasonable steps to correct it.

Deletion: You may ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you (for example, your newsletter email address), and we will do so unless we are required to retain it by law.

Non-discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights over your personal information.

Complaints: If you believe that we have breached a relevant data protection law and wish to make a complaint, please contact us with full details of the alleged breach. We will promptly investigate and respond to you in writing. You also have the right to contact a regulatory body or data protection authority in relation to your complaint.

Opt out of communications: You may opt out of receiving our newsletter at any time using the "unsubscribe" link in any email we send you, or by contacting us directly.

Use of Cookies

We use a cookie consent tool (GetTerms) to manage cookies on our site, and you can adjust your preferences at any time using the "Cookie Preferences" link in the site footer. Our first-party analytics (Rybbit) is designed to work without tracking cookies. Please refer to our Cookie Policy for more information.

Business Transfers

If we or our assets are acquired, or in the unlikely event that we cease operating, we may include data, including your personal information, among the assets transferred to any parties who acquire us. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any parties who acquire us may, to the extent permitted by applicable law, continue to use your personal information according to this policy.

Limits of Our Policy

Our website may link to external sites that are not operated by us. Please be aware that we have no control over the content and policies of those sites, and cannot accept responsibility or liability for their respective privacy practices.

Changes to This Policy

At our discretion, we may change our privacy policy to reflect updates to our processes, current acceptable practices, or legislative or regulatory changes. If we decide to change this privacy policy, we will post the changes here at the same link by which you are accessing this privacy policy. If the changes are significant, or if required by applicable law, we will take reasonable steps to notify you.

Additional Disclosures for U.S. States Privacy Law Compliance

The following section includes provisions that comply with the privacy laws of certain states (including California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Virginia, and Utah) and is applicable only to the residents of those states.

Do Not Track

Some browsers have a "Do Not Track" feature that lets you tell websites that you do not want to have your online activities tracked. Because our analytics is privacy-respecting and cookieless by design, we do not track you across other websites. At this time, we do not separately respond to browser "Do Not Track" signals.

California Notice of Collection

In the past 12 months, we have collected the following categories of personal information enumerated in the CCPA:

Identifiers, such as email address (only if you subscribe to our newsletter) and IP address.
Internet activity, such as aggregate, privacy-respecting analytics about your interactions with our site.

We collect and use these categories for the purposes described above. We do not sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Right to Know and Delete

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months, and to request deletion of the personal information we have collected about you. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details below.

Contact Us

For any questions or concerns regarding your privacy, you may contact us using the following details:

Dan McCoy
[email protected]

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