Privacy Policy

This policy explains how The Westphalia Gazette handles information when you visit our website, contact us, join our email list, send a contributor submission, or submit an advertising inquiry.

Information collected automatically

Our hosting and service providers may process standard technical information such as IP address, browser type, device information, requested pages, and access times to operate, secure, and improve the website.

Information you provide

We may receive information you choose to send when contacting us. We will use it to respond to your inquiry and for the purpose for which you provided it.

Email updates and audience records

If you join our email list, we retain your email address, signup date, signup source, consent language, subscription status, and related administrative information. We use these records to send the Gazette updates described at signup, maintain our audience list, and document your communication preferences.

The email list is used to send The Westphalia Brief, our free local news newsletter, and occasional Gazette updates, including announcements about new Gazette products, services and events. We do not sell the email list. You may unsubscribe from future messages at any time.

To understand how readers find the newsletter, we keep a temporary signup-source record in your browser tab for up to 24 hours. When you subscribe, we may save the referring website’s hostname, the page where you arrived, and campaign tags from the link you followed with your audience record and email contact. We do not save full referring URLs or Facebook click identifiers. If the source is unavailable, we record it as direct or unknown.

Contributor submissions

If you use the contributor form, we retain the contact information, Westphalia connection, topic, submission details, links, disclosures, acknowledgement, date, source, review status, and related editorial records you provide. We use this information to evaluate, verify, respond to, and administer the submission.

A contributor submission does not add you to the Gazette’s general email list. We do not sell contributor-submission information.

Advertising inquiries

If you submit an advertising inquiry, we retain the contact and organization information you provide, your stated advertising interest, your message, the date and source of the inquiry, and related administrative records. We use this information to evaluate and respond to the inquiry, develop advertising offerings, and maintain appropriate business records.

Submitting an advertising inquiry does not add you to the Gazette’s general email list. We do not sell advertising-inquiry information.

Service providers

The website uses third-party services for hosting, content management, audience-record storage, and weather information. Those providers process information according to their own terms and privacy practices.

Policy changes

We may update this policy as the website develops. The date shown above reflects the latest revision.