Privacy
Privacy notice
This notice is in two parts, and the split is the most important thing on the page. Part one describes what this site does today. Part two describes what will change when advertising is switched on, which has not happened yet.
They are separated because a privacy notice describing advertising cookies today would be describing something that does not happen — and a notice describing something that does not happen is as false as one that omits something that does. Part two is published in advance so it can be read before it applies, not so it can be treated as already true.
Who we are
TechCritic is published by Tireless, which is responsible for this site's use of personal data. For anything in this notice, including a request to exercise your rights, write to ops@tirelesshq.com and say in the subject line that your message concerns personal data.
We publish an email address rather than a postal address. If you need a postal address in order to exercise a legal right, ask and we will provide it.
Part one — what happens today
The statements in this section are measured rather than asserted. The automated checks that run before anything reaches this site load every page in a real browser and record every cookie stored, everything else left behind on your device, and every server contacted. The check compares what it finds against a written list and fails the build if the two disagree. A second check then loads the published site itself and compares it, byte for byte, against what we wrote, so that nothing added between us and you goes unnoticed. That list is currently empty, which is why this section can be this short.
- Cookies
- This site sets no cookies. None at all — not analytics, not advertising, not preference or session cookies. Nothing is stored on your device by this site, so there is no consent to give and nothing to withdraw.
- Web beacons, tracking pixels and similar identifiers
- None are used. There is no tracking pixel, no invisible image beacon and no fingerprinting script on any page.
- Third parties
- No page on this site contacts any third party. There is no advertising, no analytics service, no social media embed, no comment system, no font service and no content delivery network beyond our own host. The typefaces are served from this site's own domain rather than fetched from anybody else, so loading a page tells no other company that you visited.
- Your IP address, and this is a real disclosure
- This site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like any host, Cloudflare handles the network request your browser makes — which necessarily includes your IP address — and records it in its own server and security logs. That processing is what makes it possible to serve you the page at all and to block attacks on the site, and Cloudflare acts as our hosting provider in doing it. We do not receive, store or analyse those logs as a visitor-tracking tool, and we do not combine them with anything else.
- Email you send us
- If you email ops@tirelesshq.com we hold your message and your address for as long as we need to deal with it, and afterwards only where it records a correction we made as a result. We do not add you to a mailing list, and we have none to add you to.
- Accounts, forms and newsletters
- There are none. This site has no login, no contact form, no comment box and no newsletter sign-up. The contact page explains why a form was deliberately not built.
Part two — what will change when advertising is switched on
This section is not yet in effect. Nothing described below happens today. It is published in advance so that what will change can be read before it changes. When advertising is enabled this notice will be updated in the same change that enables it, this warning will be removed, and the date at the foot of the page will be revised.
We intend to fund TechCritic with advertising served by Google AdSense. When that is switched on, the following will become true.
- Third parties will place and read cookies, beacons and IP addresses
- Google, and other companies supplying advertising through Google, may place and read cookies on your device, and may use web beacons and your IP address, as a result of serving advertisements on this site. They may do so to select which advertisements you see, to limit how often you see the same one, and to measure whether an advertisement was effective.
- The technologies involved will be, by name
- Cookies, web beacons (also called tracking pixels or clear GIFs), your IP address, and other device or browser identifiers set or read by the advertising system.
- Who will be collecting data
- Each company able to collect data through advertising on this site will be identifiable to you at the point you are asked for consent. Google publishes the list of its advertising technology partners, and the consent notice will link to it so you can see who they are and decide for each purpose. We will not present that list as though it were only ours.
- Consent, if you are in the UK, the EEA or Switzerland
- You will be asked for consent before any advertising cookie is set or read for personalisation, using a consent notice certified for that purpose under the industry framework Google requires. Your choices will be recorded so that they can be honoured and demonstrated.
- How to withdraw consent, and this must always be easy
- You will be able to change or withdraw your choices at any time, from a link available on every page, without having to email us and without losing access to anything. Withdrawing consent will not stop you reading the site; it means advertisements will not be personalised.
- What we will still not do
- We do not intend to add analytics, and if that ever changes this notice will say so before it happens. We will not sell your personal data. We will not build profiles of readers ourselves.
Why we process what we process
Serving you a page, and keeping the site available and secure, rests on our legitimate interest in running a website that works. Dealing with an email you chose to send us rests on the same interest in answering correspondence. Advertising cookies, when they arrive, will rest on your consent and on nothing else — which is why they are absent until you have been asked.
How long we keep things
Hosting and security logs are kept by Cloudflare for its own retention period as our hosting provider, not by us. Email correspondence is kept while it is needed to answer you, and afterwards only where it records a correction made to an article. There is nothing else, because nothing else is collected.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you may ask for a copy of any personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, ask us to restrict or stop processing it, and object to processing based on legitimate interests. Where we rely on consent you may withdraw it at any time. Write to ops@tirelesshq.com.
In practice, if you have only read this site and never written to us, we hold no personal data about you at all and there will be nothing to send you. We would rather say that than imply a larger filing cabinet than exists.
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator. We would prefer the chance to put it right first.
Changes to this notice
When this notice changes materially — and switching advertising on is a material change — the date below is revised in the same change. This notice is written from the published requirements that apply to advertising publishers and from the ordinary structure of a UK privacy notice. It has not been reviewed by a solicitor and it is not legal advice.
Last updated 7 August 2026. Part two is not yet in effect. Contact: ops@tirelesshq.com