Privacy

What Utah Relay collects, why, and for how long.

What we count ourselves

We count page views so we know which stories are read and what the site is worth to an advertiser. That counting happens on our own server. It sets no cookie, runs no script in your browser, and never stores your address.

To tell one reader from another for a single day, we store a scrambled fingerprint made from your network address and browser, mixed with a secret and with today’s date. Because the date is part of it, the value changes at midnight and cannot be used to follow you from one day to the next. The address itself is never written down.

Alongside that we record which page was viewed, which site linked you here (the site name only, never the full address, which can contain what you searched for), and whether the visitor appeared to be a robot. The detailed records are deleted after 30 days; only daily totals are kept after that.

When you click through to a publisher we record that a click happened, from which list and in which position, so we can tell which stories readers actually want and tell outlets how much traffic we send them. That record does not include who clicked.

Advertising

Sponsorships sold directly by us are counted the same way as everything else above: on our server, with no cookie and no third-party code. An advertiser is told how many times their sponsorship was shown and how many people clicked it, never who they were.

We also use Google AdSense, and that is different. AdSense is Google’s code running in your browser, and it can set its own cookies, read cookies it set earlier, and use them to choose which advertisements you see, including based on your activity on other sites. That data goes to Google, not to us, and is governed by Google’s terms rather than ours.

You can see and change what Google uses at My Ad Center, and read what they collect in the Google privacy policy for partner sites. A content blocker or a browser that blocks third-party cookies will stop it, and the site works normally without it.

If you write to us

Suggesting an outlet is anonymous unless you choose to leave an email address, which we use only to ask you a question about your suggestion. It is not published, not added to any mailing list, and not passed on. To stop one person flooding the queue we keep a scrambled fingerprint of the sender for a short period, made the same way as above.

Accounts

The only accounts on this site belong to its editors, and the only cookie we set ourselves is the one that keeps an editor signed in. Readers are never asked to make an account and never given a cookie by us.

The reporting is not ours

Utah Relay links to news published by other outlets. Headlines and short summaries appear here; the articles remain on the publishers’ own sites, under their own privacy terms, which apply as soon as you follow a link.

Questions, corrections, or a request about your data: write to us and we will answer.