First-Party Cookies

The Freethinking Times sets no first-party cookies. Reader preferences and state are stored in your browser's localStorage — a mechanism that never leaves your device and is not transmitted to any server. The following features use it:

  • Dark / light mode preference — stored under the key tft-theme
  • Focus mode — stored under tft-focus
  • Reading settings (font size and typeface choice) — stored under tft-rs-* keys
  • Reading list — articles you save via the bookmark button, stored under tft-reading-list
  • Library reading positions — where you left off in a library text, stored under tft-lib-pos-*
  • Library chapter completion — which chapters you have finished, stored under tft-lib-completed-*
  • Library bookmarks and annotations — highlights and notes you add to library texts, stored under tft-lib-bookmarks-* and tft-lib-annotations-*

All of this data lives entirely in your browser. Clearing your browser's local storage will erase it. We cannot access, view, or recover it.

Analytics

We use Umami for site analytics. Umami is designed to be privacy-first: it collects no personally identifiable information, sets no cookies, and does not track visitors across sites or sessions. It records page views, referrer, browser type, and general country — in aggregate, never linked to an individual.

Our analytics dashboard is public. You can view the same data we see at our public analytics page.

Comments

Article comment sections are powered by Cusdis. If you read an article without submitting a comment, Cusdis does not collect data about you. If you submit a comment, your name (as entered), comment text, and email address (optional) are sent to Cusdis's servers and are subject to Cusdis's privacy policy. Comments go live only after manual review.

Translation

We use a widget from GTranslate (a third-party service, not Google) to offer the site in nine languages. The widget script is loaded from cdn.gtranslate.net. GTranslate uses Google Translate as its translation engine, so when you select a language both GTranslate and Google are involved in processing the request.

GTranslate is likely to set a cookie to remember your selected language. If you do not interact with the language selector, no cookie is set. GTranslate's data practices are governed by their privacy policy; Google's by Google's privacy policy.

Fonts

Typefaces are loaded from Bunny Fonts, a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Fonts. Bunny Fonts does not log IP addresses, does not set cookies, and does not track users. Your browser requests font files directly from fonts.bunny.net, which sees your IP address as part of a standard HTTP request — the same as any web server you connect to.

Hosting

The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare processes traffic as part of providing hosting and DDoS protection. Their infrastructure may log standard request metadata (IP address, user agent, page requested, timestamp) for security and operational purposes. We do not receive individually identifiable logs. Cloudflare's practices are governed by their privacy policy.

Read Aloud (Text-to-Speech)

The "Listen" feature on articles and library texts uses the Web Speech API built into your browser. No audio is recorded or transmitted to us. Depending on your browser and operating system, speech synthesis may be performed locally or routed through a cloud service provided by your browser vendor (for example, Google or Apple). We have no control over or visibility into that process. If this concerns you, you can decline to use the feature.

Offline / Progressive Web App

The site installs a service worker that caches pages for offline reading. This cache is stored locally in your browser. No data about your offline reading is transmitted anywhere.

Newsletter

Our newsletter is managed by Buttondown, a third-party newsletter platform. If you subscribe, Buttondown collects your email address and stores it on their servers. Buttondown does not track whether you open a newsletter or click links inside one — those features are disabled. Links in the newsletter include UTM parameters (e.g. ?utm_source=buttondown) so our site analytics can attribute traffic to the newsletter in aggregate; this does not identify you individually. Your data is governed by Buttondown's privacy policy.

We use your email address only to send the newsletter. We will never share it with advertisers or other third parties. Every newsletter includes an unsubscribe link; you can also write to us at hello@thefreethinkingtimes.com to be removed.

Email

If you contact us by email, we receive your address and message. We use this only to respond to you. We do not add you to any mailing list without your explicit request, and we do not share your email with third parties.

What We Do Not Do

  • We do not use advertising networks or tracking pixels.
  • We do not sell, license, or share reader data with any third party for commercial purposes.
  • We do not require account creation to read anything on this site.
  • We do not build profiles of individual readers.

Changes to This Policy

If our data practices change in any material way, we will update this page and note the date of the change at the bottom. We will not adopt practices that contradict the principles stated above without prominent disclosure.

Questions: hello@thefreethinkingtimes.com

Last updated: 19 March 2026