Privacy

The short version

tuhat stores the minimum needed to operate your account. We don't sell your data, we don't run third-party trackers on blog pages, and we don't share anything with advertisers. If you want to leave, you can export everything you've written and delete your account from your site settings.

What we store

• Account: email address, username, and a password hash (we never see your password in plain text). Your account record is held in our identity service, Sam, which other 8by3 services share.
• What you write: posts, drafts, tags, images you upload, letters you send or receive.
• Subscribers: if readers subscribe to your blog, their email addresses are stored against your blog so the newsletter system can deliver to them.
• Activity logs: HTTP access logs (IP address, path, status, timestamp) for operational debugging. Retained 30 days, after which the IP is dropped and only aggregate counts (requests per day, status code distribution, etc.) are kept.
• Login attempts: time, IP, and outcome of recent logins for security monitoring. Retained 30 days.

What we don't store

• No third-party analytics. No Google Analytics, no Mixpanel, no Plausible, no anything.
• No advertising pixels or fingerprinting.
• No cookies on public blog pages — only on authenticated pages, and only for the session.
• No location data, no device data beyond user-agent in the access log.

Where it lives

The primary database and image storage are held on hardware we own, located in Cape Town, South Africa. We don't use third-party cloud providers for production storage.

Encrypted backups are sent to Backblaze B2 in their EU region. The encryption happens before the backup leaves our hardware — Backblaze stores the encrypted bytes and doesn't hold the keys, so they cannot read backup contents.

If you're an EU or UK reader, your data is being transferred outside those jurisdictions when you read or write here. Signing up implies you accept that transfer.

Lawful basis (GDPR / POPIA)

We rely on contract as the lawful basis for processing your account data — we need it to provide you the service. Subscriber email addresses are processed on consent, captured via double opt-in. Server logs are processed on legitimate interest (operational security and debugging).

Your rights

• Export: /site/settings → Download all my data. Posts as markdown, subscribers as CSV, in one zip.
• Delete: /site/settings → Delete account. Permanent. tuhat-side data is hard-deleted. In Sam (the shared identity service): if you use no other 8by3 service your account is hard-deleted entirely; otherwise only your tuhat footprint is removed and your account remains for those other services.
• Correct: edit your profile and posts from the editor and account settings at any time.
• Object: email legal@tuhat.net and we'll respond within 30 days.

Sharing

We don't share data with third parties. Two operational exceptions:

• Newsletter and account email is delivered through MailPace, a small transactional mail provider based in the UK. They process recipient email addresses to deliver the message and discard them after delivery.
• If we receive a lawful order from a South African court, we'll comply. We'll tell you it happened unless the order forbids us. We'll publish the number of such orders in the annual transparency report.

Children

tuhat is not directed at children. By signing up you confirm you're 16 or older. If we become aware of an account belonging to someone younger we'll delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy in any material way, we'll tell existing users by email and via a banner on the site for at least 30 days. The "last updated" date above always reflects the current version.

Contact

Privacy or data questions: legal@tuhat.net. General support: help@tuhat.net.