River’s Ramblings

I will never divulge any of your information, but let me make it clear what I have access to (and can’t disable collection of). Read Substack’s own privacy policy for what they collect overall. Substack tells me where clicks come from for general viewers. It tells me a lot more about my subscribers.

The former piece of data is largely anonymous, as it doesn’t come with any other data. I know someone clicked from Facebook, but not who they are, where they are, or what type of system they have. Substack does track number of unique visitors, so they are tracking some of that information, but I do not have it.

As for my few subscribers, they should know that some of the tracking may be avoided with private emails, VPNs, etc, but be aware of the tracking regardless. Substack extensively tracks clicks, number of views, and email behavior of each subscriber. It also appears to track location down to the State level, but at present it is only showing me the Country. Likewise, I really only see the number of emails received for my subscribers so far. I’m unsure whether it’s simply too early to fill in the data or if this speaks to some effort or quirk of my current subscribers.

As best as I can tell, the location information is easily the biggest threat. The email is obviously provided as part of the subscription, and I can’t think of a very malicious way to use the engagement tracking. I suppose if I checked it religiously, I could potentially determine what times you’re reading my work and what kinds of things you’re most interested in? That’s the closest I could get to making a profile, but the interests I imagine can largely be inferred from your initial subscription, and activity times would mostly be useful for determining location.

I wanted to be as transparent as possible, at risk of scaring people away. Again, I will never share any of this information. The most I may share is aggregates like the total view-count or number of subscribers.