Last updated: 15 August 2026.
Who is responsible for your data
The controller for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is Ran Heilbrunn, Munich, Germany. Contact details are on the contact page. [TO CONFIRM: full postal address and contact email required before publication.]
The newsletter
If you subscribe to the newsletter, we collect your email address, the date and time of your subscription, and the page you subscribed from. We use this only to send you new writing and occasional notices about Ran’s work.
Subscription uses double opt-in: after entering your address you will receive an email asking you to confirm. Nothing is sent until you confirm, and the confirmation record is kept as proof of consent.
The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). You may withdraw it at any time, with effect for the future, using the unsubscribe link in any email or by writing to us. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing before it.
The list is operated by MailerLite (UAB “MailerLite”, Vilnius, Lithuania), acting as our processor under a data processing agreement. MailerLite stores your address and records whether emails are delivered and opened. Your address is never sold, rented, or shared with anyone else.
If you unsubscribe, your address is removed from the active list. A minimal record may be retained to make sure we do not email you again by mistake.
Analytics
This site uses Google Analytics 4, loaded through Google Tag Manager, to understand how many people visit, which pieces they read, and where they arrived from. Google Ireland Limited acts as our processor; data may be transferred to Google LLC in the United States under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
Alongside this, the site records a small number of its own events — which type of page you are on, which publication you arrived from, whether you clicked through to one of Ran’s published pieces, and whether you signed up. These are passed to Google Analytics. They do not identify you personally and the site sets no cookies of its own for this purpose; it uses your browser’s session storage, which is cleared when you close the tab.
The legal basis for analytics is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR and § 25(1) TDDDG). [TO CONFIRM: a consent banner must be in place before analytics may lawfully run for EU visitors. See the note at the end.]
Cookies and local storage
- Google Analytics / Tag Manager set cookies to distinguish visitors and sessions.
- Session storage is used by this site to remember, for the length of your visit only, where you arrived from and how many pieces you have opened.
- WordPress may set a cookie if you leave a comment or log in as an administrator.
You can delete or block cookies in your browser at any time. Doing so does not affect your ability to read anything here.
Embedded content from other sites
Pages here link to and occasionally embed material hosted elsewhere — publishers, podcast platforms, booksellers. Those sites behave exactly as if you had visited them directly, and collect data according to their own policies. We have no control over that.
Hosting
The site is hosted by Hostinger International Ltd. The server keeps standard access logs, including IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in operating a secure website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
How long we keep things
- Newsletter subscriptions: until you unsubscribe.
- Analytics data: according to the retention period set in Google Analytics (by default, 14 months).
- Server logs: a short period set by the host, then deleted.
- Messages you send us: as long as needed to deal with them.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to request access to your data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to its processing, to receive it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent at any time. To exercise any of these, write to us using the contact page.
You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. For Munich this is the Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA).
Changes
If this notice changes, the date at the top will change with it.