Privacy Policy

TL;DR

If you want the quick summary, here is how I treat your browsing data:

Managed Hosting: This site lives on managed infrastructure provided by IONOS. I lean on their hosting for stability, but keep your data privacy in my own hands.
No Third-Party Trackers: I don’t use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixels, or any corporate surveillance scripts.
Self-Hosted Analytics: I run my own privacy-first analytics (Rybbit) on my own separate hardware. No data ever leaves my infrastructure to be sold or analysed by someone else.
No Ad-tech: I do not serve ads, and I do not monetize your browsing history.
No BS: You won’t find a giant “Cookie Consent” banner popping up here. There is nothing to consent to because I’m not tracking you for profit.

Who I Am

The site at unknownuniverse.uk is a personal blog covering Linux, FOSS, privacy, and my ongoing experiments with self-hosting. It is run by a human who prefers the command line to a corporate dashboard. This site is hosted on managed infrastructure via IONOS, while the privacy-critical services (like analytics) are handled on my own private servers.

Analytics: The “Homegrown” Approach

I refuse to use invasive third-party tools to profile you. However, as a geek, I do like data. To balance these two things, I use a hybrid, controlled system:

Rybbit (The “Product” Analytics): I use Rybbit, an open-source, cookieless analytics platform. It is hosted on my own dedicated subdomain on my own hardware. Your browser communicates only with my server, not a third-party analytics company. No personal data is stored, and the tracking is completely aggregated.
Internal Sensors: You might see your browser pinging a custom REST API on this site. This is a tiny “homegrown sensor” I wrote to tally “visitors online now” and “daily uniques.” It is a simple, anonymous counter that stores nothing about you. It’s my way of seeing if the blog is “alive” without needing a bloated telemetry suite.

Security and Hosting

My blog content is served via managed services at IONOS. They act as the technical landlord for the site files. In this capacity, they may hold server-level access logs containing IP addresses as part of their standard managed service operations. I do not have direct access to raw server logs for the purpose of identifying you, and I am not personally storing, analyzing, or processing your visit data for my own tracking purposes.

Comments

If you leave a comment, I store the data you provide in the form, along with your IP address and browser user agent to help filter spam. I use Antispam Bee, a local plugin that doesn’t send your data off to any “spam-fighting” cloud services.

Gravatars: Disabled. I do not send your email address to external servers to fetch your profile picture.

Cookies

I keep cookies to the absolute minimum:

Advertising: None.
Analytics/Tracking: None.
Functional: WordPress may set a technical cookie if you decide to log in or use the “save my details” option when commenting. That’s it.

Donations (Liberapay)

Support for this blog is handled via Liberapay, a FOSS donation platform. If you choose to donate, your data is handled by them under their own privacy policy. No financial data is ever processed, seen, or stored on my servers.

Your Rights

You can request an exported file of the personal data held about you (like comments) or ask for its deletion. This doesn’t include data I’m required to keep for security, legal, or administrative reasons.

The Bottom Line

Your data is not a product. I built this stack to be a private corner of the internet where you can read about tech without being followed by a dozen corporate trackers.