Privacy & Cookies

TechNest is designed to work without behavioral advertising cookies or third-party analytics.

Information that stays in your browser

The color-theme control stores a small preference in your browser’s local storage. Site search runs in your browser against a public article index. Search state is kept in the URL fragment—the part after #, which browsers do not send to the server—rather than in a server query parameter.

Public article and information pages create a random tab-session identifier in session storage. It disappears when that tab session ends and is not a persistent advertising identifier.

These features are not intended to identify you to TechNest.

Cookie-free reader analytics

On public canonical pages, TechNest sends its own server the page path, the event name pageview, and the random tab-session identifier. The event does not contain your name, email address, full referrer, browser user agent, or a cookie identifier. The server hashes the session identifier with a daily rotating key before storing it.

Raw pseudonymous reader events are removed after seven days. Daily aggregate pageview and session totals retain exactly the latest 400 UTC calendar dates, including the current UTC date. A session is an approximate tab session, not a person or unique visitor.

After the owner opens an authenticated private dashboard, the server may set a Secure, HttpOnly, SameSite owner-exclusion cookie scoped to the reader-event endpoint. Events carrying that cookie are discarded. This administrative cookie is not set for ordinary readers.

Basic server logs

The web server necessarily receives technical information while delivering a request. Before its access record is written to disk, TechNest removes network addresses and ports, request and response headers, browser and referrer fields, TLS details, user identifiers, and the complete query string. The sanitized access log keeps the time, method, hostname, path, status, response size, and duration needed for reliability and anonymous page totals. Rotated access logs are limited to 30 days. Import normally keeps a one-way duplicate-detection receipt for 32 days. If Caddy’s low-traffic active log still contains an older page event, the receipt window extends only far enough to prevent that live record from being counted again. Retained daily page totals contain no request identifier.

Contact messages

When you use the contact form, TechNest receives the name, optional email address, subject, and message you provide. Messages are forwarded to the private editorial communication channel so the editor can respond or investigate. An HMAC rate-limit pseudonym is removed after 24 hours. Delivered message contents are redacted from retained service data after seven days; nonsecret delivery and abuse-prevention audit metadata is removed after 90 days. Do not submit passwords, private keys, payment details, recovery codes, sensitive identity documents, or confidential third-party data.

Messages sent to contact@technest.social are processed by the domain’s email-forwarding provider and delivered to TechNest’s private editorial mailbox. The sender address, delivery metadata, and message contents are handled under those providers’ normal email-retention and security controls; the contact-form retention schedule above does not apply to direct email.

Referral events

Clearly marked affiliate links use a first-party /go/ redirect backed by the verified referral registry. TechNest may record the link, UTC day, referring hostname, and an HMAC pseudonym of the network address before redirecting. It counts at most one event per link, pseudonym, and day; stores no raw network address or advertising identifier; and removes these events after 400 days. These counts measure link usefulness and never determine editorial rankings.

Reader analytics, contact rate limiting, and affiliate measurement use separate HMAC secrets so their pseudonyms cannot be joined across purposes.

Google Search Console

TechNest imports aggregate Google Search Console performance data for editorial planning. It can contain the date, TechNest page, search query, device category, clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position. TechNest does not receive a searcher’s identity from this report and does not combine it with reader-session or affiliate records.

Advertising and consent

TechNest does not serve advertising today. Advertising stays switched off until the owner completes the reviewed launch checklist described in our monetization documentation.

When advertising is enabled, placements will use Google AdSense. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, the ad script loads only after a certified consent-management platform records your consent for advertising cookies; declining keeps ads unloaded. Visitors outside those regions are not asked for ad consent first. AdSense may set and read cookies on these pages to serve and measure advertising, including personalized advertising where consent allows it. How Google uses data when partner sites use AdSense is described in Google’s Advertising Policies – partner sites.

Your choices

You can clear local and session storage through your browser settings. Questions or requests concerning contact information can be submitted through the contact page under “Privacy request.”

This policy will be updated if the site’s data practices materially change.