This is a small personal website run by one person, and this policy is written the same way the rest of the site is: plainly, so you can actually read it. The short version — I collect almost nothing, I sell nothing, and the little that is collected exists so the site works and so I can send the newsletter to people who asked for it.
Who I am
I’m Luke Burchell. I run Alternative Lives (https://www.alternativelives.org) from San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. For anything in this policy, contact me directly: luke@alternativelives.org. I read and answer these emails myself.
What I collect, and why
The newsletter
If you sign up to follow along, I collect one thing: your email address. The list is managed by EmailOctopus (a UK company whose sending runs on Amazon Web Services infrastructure), which stores the address on my behalf. Like most newsletter tools, it can tell me whether an email was opened and whether a link in it was clicked — that’s the extent of the tracking, and I use it only to see whether what I send is worth reading.
Every email includes an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing removes you from the list; if you want your address deleted entirely rather than just unsubscribed, email me and I’ll do it.
If you email me
Emails to luke@alternativelives.org are forwarded through Cloudflare’s email routing service to a Google (Gmail) inbox, where I read and keep them as ordinary correspondence. I don’t add you to the newsletter because you emailed me — the list is opt-in only.
Analytics
The site uses Google Analytics 4 to show me which pages people read and roughly where in the world readers are. This sets analytics cookies in your browser and involves Google processing technical data such as your IP address and device information. I see only aggregated numbers — I cannot identify you from them. Google’s privacy policy is here, and you can block analytics cookies in your browser settings or with Google’s opt-out tool without affecting how the site works.
Server logs
The site is hosted by DreamHost in the United States. Like virtually every web server, it keeps standard access logs (IP address, browser type, pages requested) for security and troubleshooting. I don’t do anything with these beyond that.
Fonts and embedded videos
Pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, which means your browser requests files from Google’s servers and Google sees your IP address in that request, as it would on most of the web.
A few pages embed YouTube videos using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode (“youtube-nocookie”), which sets no cookies unless you press play. If you do play a video, YouTube (Google) may collect data about that as described in its own privacy policy.
What this site does NOT do
- No comments — they’re switched off, so none of the comment data collection WordPress sites often describe applies here.
- No user accounts or registration for visitors.
- No advertising, no ad-tracking cookies, no social-media pixels.
- No selling or renting of any data, to anyone, ever.
Who your data is shared with
Nobody, in the everyday sense. The services named above — EmailOctopus, Google (Analytics, Gmail, Fonts, YouTube), DreamHost, and Cloudflare — process data as part of making the site and newsletter function, under their own privacy policies. That’s the complete list.
How long I keep things
- Newsletter addresses: until you unsubscribe (or ask me to delete the address entirely).
- Emails you send me: kept like ordinary correspondence, for as long as they’re relevant.
- Analytics data: retained by Google Analytics for its standard retention period, then deleted automatically.
Your rights
Depending on where you live (this applies in the UK, EU, and a growing list of other places), you have the right to ask what personal data I hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, and to withdraw consent — for the newsletter, that’s the unsubscribe link. For any of it, email me at luke@alternativelives.org. Since the honest answer will almost always be “your email address, if you subscribed, and nothing else,” these requests tend to be quick. You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority, though I’d appreciate the chance to fix things first.
Children
This site is written for adults planning builds and big life decisions. I don’t knowingly collect any data from children.
Changes
If how the site handles data changes — for example, if I ever add a question form or new tools — I’ll update this page and change the date below.
Last updated: 5 July 2026