Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 28, 2026

What we collect

When you subscribe to Cyber Brief, we collect:

• Your email address (required)
• Your IP address (for spam prevention and rate limiting)
• Your user agent string (for compatibility diagnostics)
• Your category preferences (which categories of stories you want)

We also automatically collect, when you interact with emails we send:

• Open events (a tiny invisible image in the email body loads when you open it)
• Click events (links in the email redirect through our server to record which articles you read)

What we don't collect

• Your name (unless you give it to us)
• Your address, phone number, or any contact info beyond email
• Your browsing history on other sites
• Data from third-party trackers (we use none)

How we use your data

• Send you the daily briefing at the time you signed up for
• Detect and prevent abuse (subscription spam, scraping)
• Improve our content selection (aggregate, anonymized)

We do not sell, rent, share, or trade your email with any third party. We do not use your data for advertising.

How to unsubscribe

Every email we send contains a one-click unsubscribe link (RFC 8058 compliant). You can also manage your preferences (which categories you receive, how often) using the link at the bottom of every email. After unsubscribing, your email is removed from our active list immediately; we retain only a hash of your email for suppression to prevent re-subscription accidents.

Data retention

• Active subscribers: email + preferences retained while you remain subscribed
• Unsubscribed: email hash retained for suppression; raw email purged within 30 days
• Open/click events: retained for 90 days for engagement reporting, then anonymized

Security

Access to subscriber data is restricted to the site operator. All web traffic uses HTTPS with HSTS. Subscription endpoints are rate-limited to 5 requests per IP per hour. Form submissions include CSRF tokens and a honeypot field to deter automated abuse.

Contact

For data access, correction, or deletion requests, contact us at info@totaljerk.net.