Fred Cochran

This publication is written and published independently by Fred Cochran on Substack. This policy covers what happens with your information when you read or subscribe here, and I’d rather just tell you straight than bury it in language built to be skimmed past.

I don’t collect your information directly. This publication runs on Substack’s platform, and Substack is the one actually handling subscriber emails, payment processing, account data, and the technical operation of the site. When you subscribe, whatever information you hand over — your email, your payment details if you take a paid subscription, basic analytics about how you read — goes through Substack’s systems, not mine, and it’s governed by Substack’s own Privacy Policy, which you should read directly at substack.com for the full account of what they collect and how they use it.

What I do have access to, as the writer of this publication, is the kind of basic information Substack gives any writer about their own subscribers: your email address for the purpose of sending you what you signed up for, and some general, aggregated data about open rates and readership that Substack provides to help me understand how the publication’s doing. I don’t sell that information, I don’t share it with advertisers, and I don’t hand your email off to anyone else for their own use. I use it to send you the newsletter and to respond if you write to me directly, and that’s the whole of it.

If you leave a comment, that comment is public, visible to other readers, and handled under Substack’s own comment system and terms, not something I’m separately storing or managing myself.

I don’t run my own tracking, don’t use third-party ad networks on top of what Substack itself might use, and don’t do anything with your data beyond what’s necessary to actually run this publication and communicate with you as a subscriber. If that ever changes, I’ll say so plainly in an update to this policy rather than changing it quietly.

You can unsubscribe at any time directly through Substack, and doing so removes you from future communications the same way it would with any other newsletter on the platform.

If you have questions about your data specifically as it relates to Substack’s handling of it, Substack’s own privacy policy and support channels are the right place for that, since they’re the ones actually holding and processing it. If you have questions about anything I do with it on my end, you can reach me through the contact information listed on the publication itself.