Privacy
Privacy policy
Version 1.7 · 12 October 2026
Who is responsible
The controller of the data is the publisher of Biały Brzeg, reachable at kontakt@bialybrzeg.com. The site appears in two language versions — Polish at bialybrzeg.com and English at en.bialybrzeg.com. It is one site run by the same publisher; this policy covers both versions.
The authors publish under pen names. That changes nothing about responsibility for readers’ data — it rests with the publisher, and contact goes through the address above.
What we collect and why
When you are only reading. The site records a view event: the date, the address of the entry, your IP address, country, browser type, referring page, browser language, and a source marker if you arrived from the feed or from a social service. This exists only so that we know whether anyone is reading and where they come from. We build no profile from it, link it to no identity, and pass it to nobody. After 90 days the IP address is masked — for IPv4 we zero the last part, for IPv6 we cut the tail. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in knowing whether the site reaches anyone at all.
When you use the search box. The sentence you type is sent to a language model run by Cloudflare on our own account — it does not go to OpenAI, Google or any other provider, and it is not used to train any model. We store the text of that sentence together with the date and the match score. We do this to learn what people actually come here looking for, and to write about what is missing — that is the only reason. We do not link a query to your account, your comment or any other identity, and we do not store an IP address alongside it. We keep queries for as long as we need them for that purpose; they do not expire after any fixed period. The basis is our legitimate interest in developing the content of the site. If you would rather your sentence was not stored, simply do not use the search box — the rest of the site works the same without it.
When you rate an entry. The rating is stored without any information about you. That you rated it is remembered by your browser, not by our server.
When you comment. We store the name, the text of the comment and the date. The name can be anything; leaving it blank means “Anonymous”. An email address is not required; we ask for it only if you want to stay in touch, and store it only after you tick a separate consent box. The address is never displayed and goes to nobody but the publisher. A comment published in one language version may be translated and shown in the other — it is then clearly marked as a machine translation, and the original stays visible.
When you create a reader account. Sign-in happens through an external identity provider. We receive an identifier and an email address from them; we have no access to your password. We store the name you use.
When you write through the contact form. The message and the address you give reach us through the Web3Forms service, which acts as an intermediary in delivering the message.
When you turn on notifications. We store the technical subscription address issued by your browser. You can remove it at any time by turning notifications off on the site or in your browser settings.
Analytics: ours, and we call it that
To be plain about it: this is analytics. The view events described above — date, address of the entry, IP, country, browser, referring page, source marker — exist for exactly what analytics exists for: counting how many readers there are and where they come from. We do not call it anything else.
Source markers in links. Links in notifications and on social services carry parameters such as utm_source. They say which channel you arrived through — the feed, Bluesky, Instagram — and nothing more. They carry no identifier of a person, are not stored on your device, and do not let us recognise you on a later visit.
The distinction we care about is this:
- the analytics sits with us, on our server and in our database — nothing goes to Google or to any analytics provider
- it works only within this site — it does not know, and cannot know, where you were before or where you go next
- we build no profile and do not match view events against comments or reader accounts
- the IP address is masked after 90 days, and you can object to this processing by writing to the contact address
What we count on every page
Regardless of consent the site records on the server a visit to every page (the home page included), the page you came from, source markers, the window size, how long the tab was visible, how far you scrolled and what you clicked. None of this stays in your browser, and none of it lets us recognise you on your next visit. The basis is our legitimate interest — knowing what is read and what does not work. Under heavy traffic we count only a share of visits: whether a visit goes into the log is decided by the server from a hash of the address and the browser computed on the fly — the hash is stored nowhere, and nothing is left in your browser.
We store no identifiers. The site's engine can — with separate consent — keep a random identifier and a visit identifier in your browser, to count returning visits and compare two versions of a page (an A/B test). Since 17 October 2026 that feature is switched off here: there is no consent banner, no identifier is created, and consent given earlier in that banner is not used. We cannot tell whether you are the same person as yesterday, and we do not try to find out. Should we ever want to switch it on, the banner will return and we will ask afresh — and this document will change the same day.
What we do NOT do
We have no advertising. We have no external analytics — no Google Analytics, no social network pixels. We do not profile, we make no automated decisions with legal effects, and we neither sell nor share data with third parties for marketing. We do not follow you beyond this site.
What is stored in your browser
The site uses no tracking or advertising cookies. It uses only what it cannot work without, given what you asked it to do:
| What | Kind | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| bben_sess | cookie | keeping you signed in | until you sign out or the session expires |
| entry marked as seen | session storage | so one visit is not counted twice | until you close the tab |
| your rating of an entry | local storage | to show that you have rated, and let you change it | until you clear browser data |
| a “language button already pulsed” marker | session storage | so the button for the other language version draws your eye once, not on every page | until you close the tab |
| dismissal of the install prompt | local storage | so the prompt is not shown again | until you clear browser data |
To this are added the technical cookies of Cloudflare, which serves the site and protects it from automated traffic, and — on the comment form — the Turnstile mechanism that tells a human from a bot. In its default mode Turnstile writes no cookies; on a harder check it may write a short-lived marker recording that the test was passed.
Why we ask for nothing. Consent is required for storing and reading information on your device for purposes other than what is necessary to deliver the service you yourself asked for. Every item in the table above is necessary, a direct consequence of something you did — signing in, rating — or gone when you close the tab. The one thing that would need consent, the analytics identifiers, is switched off. The counting of visits described above happens on the server and does not require consent; you can object to it by writing to the contact address.
If we ever add external analytics, advertising, or anything that follows you beyond this site, we will ask first — and this policy will change before that happens.
Who processes data for us
- Cloudflare — servers, database, file storage, bot protection
- Google — reader sign-in (only if you use it)
- Web3Forms — delivering messages from the contact form
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (Gemini) — AI tools that may support the author in correspondence, especially when analysing extensive material
- YouTube — playing recordings, in the mode without tracking cookies
Some of them process data outside the European Economic Area, on the basis of standard contractual clauses and the applicable transfer mechanisms.
How long we keep it
View events: the IP address is masked after 90 days, the event itself remains. Comments: until the entry is removed or you ask us to remove them. An email address given with a comment: until you withdraw consent. A reader account: until it is deleted. Messages from the form: in the mailbox, like ordinary correspondence.
Your rights
You have the right of access to your data, and to its rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, portability, and to object to processing based on legitimate interest. Consent — for the email with a comment, for notifications — can be withdrawn at any time, which does not affect the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal. Writing to kontakt@bialybrzeg.com is enough.
You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority — for this site, the President of the Personal Data Protection Office in Poland, or the authority in your own country.
Children
The site is not directed at people under 16 and does not knowingly collect their data.
Changes and language
The version number and date are given at the top. Substantial changes — above all adding anything that follows the reader — will be announced on the site before they take effect.
The Polish version of this document is the binding one. This English text is a translation provided for convenience; where the two differ, the Polish wording decides.
How to use the site is described in the Terms.