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Privacy Policy

How Shared Sapience handles member, payment, email, website, and contact information.

Last reviewed: August 4, 2026

Shared Sapience, LLC owns and operates sharedsapience.com and publishes Shared Sapience and The Century Report. This policy explains how the publication handles personal information when you visit the site, subscribe, become a paid member, sign in, comment, activate an embedded video, or contact us.

At a glance

  • We collect information you choose to provide, account and payment records needed to serve members, and limited technical, attribution, and engagement data.
  • We rely on service providers to host and secure the site, deliver email, process payments, and provide specific site features.
  • Shared Sapience does not sell personal information. It does not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
  • You can unsubscribe from newsletters or manage a membership at any time. You may also contact us about your information and privacy rights.

Information we collect

Membership and account information. When you subscribe or become a member, we collect your email address and any name you choose to provide. Ghost also records account information such as newsletter preferences, membership tier, signup date, sign-ins, account status, general location, recent account activity, and comment-notification preferences.

Payment and subscription information. Stripe collects full payment details directly. Shared Sapience receives and stores related records such as Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, payment amount and currency, plan, billing dates, subscription status, and the last four digits of a payment card. Shared Sapience does not store the full card number.

Newsletter engagement and signup attribution. Ghost records newsletter delivery, opens, and link clicks. It may also record the page where you subscribed, referring page, campaign information, and recent pages viewed before signup. These records help us deliver newsletters, understand readership, and support members.

Messages and public interactions. If you contact us, we collect the contents of your message and the contact information you provide. If you comment, submit feedback, send a webmention, or interact through a federated social feature, we may receive your submission and related public profile or interaction data. Comments and federated interactions may be visible publicly.

Technical information. When you visit the site, Cloudflare, the web server, and related infrastructure process information such as your IP address, approximate country, browser and device information, requested pages, timestamps, referring page, and security or routing data. Ghost temporarily uses browser session storage to remember recent pages and referral information for signup attribution.

First-party website analytics. Shared Sapience uses a self-hosted instance of Umami to understand readership and improve navigation. It records page paths and titles, referring sites or pages, browser and device categories, screen size, language, approximate location, and session activity tied to a rotating identifier. The request IP address is used transiently to create that identifier and estimate location, then omitted from stored analytics records. The tracker operates without analytics cookies or cross-site tracking. Analytics sessions remain separate from names, email addresses, and member accounts. URL fragments and query parameters are removed before records are stored, except for the publication-attribution parameters utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, and ref. Values for those parameters are accepted only as short platform and campaign labels. The records stay on infrastructure operated for Shared Sapience and are available only to authorized people working on the publication.

How we use information

We use personal information to:

  • create and manage member accounts;
  • deliver newsletters and transactional messages;
  • authenticate sign-ins and provide member features;
  • process paid memberships and maintain payment records;
  • measure newsletter delivery and engagement;
  • measure page readership, referrals, and navigation patterns;
  • understand how members discover the publication;
  • publish and moderate comments and public interactions;
  • respond to questions, feedback, and support requests;
  • maintain, secure, diagnose, and back up the site; and
  • meet legal, accounting, tax, and fraud-prevention obligations.

Service providers and other disclosures

We disclose information to service providers when their work requires it:

  • Ghost powers membership, newsletters, comments, and publishing on the server operated for Shared Sapience.
  • Hetzner provides server and encrypted backup infrastructure.
  • Cloudflare provides content delivery, traffic routing, caching, and security.
  • Mailgun delivers newsletters and reports delivery, open, click, bounce, unsubscribe, and complaint events.
  • Postmark delivers account, sign-in, and other transactional email.
  • Stripe processes payments, manages subscriptions, and collects transaction, device, and activity signals for payment security and fraud prevention.
  • Migadu hosts Shared Sapience mailboxes and processes messages sent directly to Shared Sapience.
  • jsDelivr delivers some browser software used by Ghost and the site design.
  • Google and YouTube provide video preview images and, after a reader activates a video, the YouTube player.

These providers process information under their own terms and privacy policies. We may also disclose information when required by law, when needed to protect the publication, its readers, or other people, or as part of a merger, sale, reorganization, or transfer of the publication. Shared Sapience does not disclose subscriber or member lists to advertisers.

Cookies and browser storage

Ghost uses cookies needed to sign members in and keep account features working. Member-source attribution uses session storage in your browser. Cloudflare may set necessary security cookies when its security controls require them. Stripe.js may use cookies and similar technologies and collect device or activity signals for payment security, fraud prevention, authentication, and service analytics. You can control cookies through your browser, though blocking required storage may prevent member or payment features from working.

Umami audience measurement does not set analytics cookies. It respects browser Do Not Track signals. URL fragments and query parameters are removed before collection, except for the publication-attribution parameters utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, and ref. Analytics activity is kept separate from member accounts.

Pages with videos may request a preview image from Google. The YouTube privacy-enhanced player loads only after you choose to activate it. Loading a preview image or player may send technical information to Google. Following an external link places you under the destination site's privacy practices.

Retention

We retain member and subscription records while an account or paid membership remains active and afterward as needed for publication administration, accounting, tax, security, dispute resolution, and legal obligations. Newsletter and member activity records stay with the related account while needed for those purposes.

Local request logs normally rotate within 10 to 14 days. Encrypted backups follow a rolling schedule that includes 14 latest snapshots, 7 daily, 4 weekly, 12 monthly, and 2 annual recovery points. Deleted information may remain in a backup until that snapshot expires. Service providers apply their own retention periods.

First-party analytics event and session records are normally deleted after 13 months. A deleted analytics record may remain in an encrypted backup until the related backup expires.

A deletion request removes or de-identifies active account data where feasible. Sent-email delivery records, payment records, security records, unsubscribe or complaint suppression records, and information required for legal or accounting purposes may remain for a limited period.

Your choices and rights

Every newsletter includes an unsubscribe link. You can manage newsletter and paid membership settings through the member account portal. A paid membership should be canceled before account deletion so recurring charges stop. You may cancel through the account portal or ask us to handle cancellation and deletion together.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, delete, restrict, or object to the processing of personal information. You may also withdraw consent and lodge a complaint with a data-protection authority. Send a request to [email protected]. We may need to verify your identity. Applicable law may allow or require us to retain certain records.

Where data-protection law requires a legal basis, we rely on consent, performance of a membership or payment agreement, legitimate interests in operating and securing the publication and understanding its readership, and compliance with legal obligations.

Service providers may process information in countries other than the one where you live. Their privacy policies describe the safeguards they use for international transfers.

Security

Shared Sapience uses encrypted connections, access controls, software updates, restricted administrative access, and encrypted backups to protect personal information. These measures reduce risk. No storage or transmission method guarantees complete security.

Children

Shared Sapience serves a general audience and is not directed to children under 13. Shared Sapience does not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13. Please contact us if you believe a child has provided personal information.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the publication and its services change. The date at the top shows the latest review. Material changes will receive a clear notice on the site or by email when appropriate.

Contact

Shared Sapience, LLC [email protected]