Tracking and privacy

To give you numbers, Peakub has to remember a little about each visit. This page says what, in plain words, so you can answer your readers when they ask. What is recorded depends on the choice the reader made in the cookie banner, which the page Consent below describes. It describes how Peakub works today. It is not legal advice, and Peakub's Privacy Policy is the text that binds.

What is recorded when a reader opens a page

Each visit to a page of your publication leaves one record. For a reader who accepted "Performance & analytics" in the cookie banner, it is made of:

• the page address and which piece and publication it belongs to;
• how the reader got there (see Where readers come from);
• the time, taken from Peakub's own clock and never from the reader's browser;
• the reader's language, time zone and browser description (the text a browser sends to say what it is);
• the address of the reader's internet connection (their IP address), which Peakub uses to work out the country and the kind of network, such as a home provider or a cloud company;
• a random identifier for the browser, described next;
• the reader's account, if they are signed in.

A reader who has not accepted analytics is still counted, but with less: see Consent.

Locations are worked out by a service that Peakub runs itself. Peakub's counting doesn't hand visits to an outside analytics service. Geography is only starting to fill in, so don't rely on it yet (see the overview). A city is shown only when the location is precise enough to name one; otherwise the visit counts for its country.

The visitor identifier

Peakub sets one first-party cookie to count readers: _platform_visitor_id_v2. It holds a random value that doesn't contain a name, an email address or anything else about the reader. It is created only after the reader accepts "Performance & analytics" in the cookie banner. A reader who has not accepted gets no identifier, and if a reader who accepted later withdraws, the cookie is removed the next time they visit.

• It is shared across Peakub and every publication on a Peakub address, such as yourname.peakub.com. A reader who goes from the feed to your publication is one visitor, not two. Your own figures only ever include reading on your publication.
• A publication on its own domain gets a separate identifier, because a cookie can't be shared between two different domains. A reader of your custom domain is a different visitor from the same person on peakub.com. On a custom domain, as elsewhere, only readers who accepted analytics get one.
• It lasts two years, and the two years restart every time the reader visits. A reader can delete it at any time in their browser settings, and from then on they count as a new visitor.
• The cookie it replaced, _platform_visitor_id, is removed from a browser the next time that browser visits.

What is deliberately not recorded

• No login credential. The token that keeps a reader signed in is never stored with the visits.
• No name or email in the visit record. A signed-in reader's account is referred to by an internal identifier. Names show up in the Studio only where the page is about people (the Leaderboard, Best contributors, the Newsletter list of a piece), and you never see a reader's IP address or browser.
• No claims taken on a browser's word. Who did something comes from the signed-in session, or from an email link Peakub signed. If a browser says "this was reader X", Peakub ignores it unless the link's signature checks out. The time is the server's, and the country always comes from the connection, never from what the browser reports. So nobody can make a visit look like it came from someone else, or backdate it.
• Only a few kinds of event from a browser. A page can report that it was read, viewed, clicked, opened or shared, and nothing else. Anything else a browser tries to send is dropped.

Consent

Peakub shows a cookie banner with three categories: Strictly necessary (always on), Performance & analytics and Marketing & personalization. Readers can choose "Accept all", "Reject non-essential", or "Manage settings". Until a reader chooses, only the strictly necessary category is on.

The visit counting honours that choice.

• A reader who accepted "Performance & analytics" gets the visitor identifier, and their visits are recorded as described above.
• A reader who has not accepted (essential only, which is the default, or who has not chosen yet) is still counted, with less. No visitor identifier is created, and the reader's browser sends no device or browser details. Peakub also drops them on its side. Of the connection's address, Peakub keeps only the country and the network it belongs to (the kind of network, such as a home provider or a cloud company). It does not keep the address itself, nor the region, the city or the coordinates.
• A reader who withdraws loses the identifier cookie the next time they visit.

What this means for your numbers. Unique visitors only include readers who accepted analytics, because without the identifier Peakub can't tell one anonymous reader from another. Views and reads include everyone, except your own activity and automated traffic. So the visitor figures understate your real audience, by the share of readers who decline, while views and reads do not. Read "visitors" as "readers who agreed to be measured".

Email links are separate. A click on a link in a newsletter is recorded through a signed link, and the reader is identified by that link rather than by the banner choice. These clicks are counted for the sender's newsletter statistics.

How long it is kept

This page doesn't give retention periods. Peakub's privacy policy doesn't either, beyond keeping data as long as needed, and the periods built into the system can't be confirmed as in force on the live system yet. If a reader asks you how long their visits are kept, point them to the contact address in Peakub's privacy policy.

What to tell your readers

If you publish a privacy notice of your own, it is fair to say that:

• your publication runs on Peakub, which counts visits to understand how publications are read;
• it uses one first-party cookie with a random identifier, valid two years, only for readers who accept "Performance & analytics" in the cookie banner. It is shared across Peakub addresses, and separate on your custom domain if you have one;
• for those readers it records the page, how the reader arrived, their language, time zone, browser, country and network, and their account if they are signed in. For readers who decline, it still counts the visit but keeps only the country and the network, with no identifier and no browser details;
• clicks on links in newsletters are counted for the sender's statistics;
• it does not record their name or email in the visit, nor their login token;
• they can delete the cookie in their browser, and requests about their data go through the contact address in Peakub's Privacy Policy.

Peakub's counting is separate from anything you add yourself. If you put another analytics script, a tracking pixel or an embed on your pages, what that tool collects is yours to disclose.