Privacy Policy

Effective: 17 March 2026

You're on a static site built by one person. I'm Sasha, and hcd.ai is where I publish what I've learned about design, AI, and product strategy. There are no accounts to create here, no forms harvesting your email, no pop-ups. I built it that way because I find those things annoying on other people's sites and saw no reason to inflict them on mine.

Here's what actually happens when you visit.

Analytics: GA4, nothing custom

Google Analytics 4 is the only measurement tool on this site. I want to know whether anyone reads what I write, and if so, which pieces resonate enough that people stick around. GA4 tells me that. It doesn't tell me who you are. Google anonymises IP addresses before the data reaches me, and nothing personally identifiable gets collected.

If you'd rather not show up in those numbers, the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on handles it. Most ad blockers do too, and Brave kills GA4 tracking by default.

Google Fonts loads one typeface

The site uses Inter, loaded from Google Fonts. Your browser fetches those font files from Google's servers, and your IP address travels with the request. I know self-hosting would be cleaner, but for now the request goes to Google. Their handling of that data falls under Google's privacy policy.

Siteground keeps server logs

Siteground hosts this site. They log the usual things: IP addresses, browser types, pages requested, timestamps. Every hosting provider does this. I don't dig through those logs myself, and Siteground manages their own retention schedules.

No ads. No profiling. No selling your data.

The only thing I use analytics for is figuring out what to write more of. There's no advertising on this site and I don't build audience profiles.

Exactly two cookies

Both are set by GA4. _ga persists for 2 years, _ga_* for 24 hours. They exist so Google Analytics can distinguish one visit from another. Nothing else on this site sets a cookie.

External links go to other people's sites

I link out to resources, tools, and references throughout the site. When you follow one of those links, you leave hcd.ai and land on a domain I don't control, with whatever privacy practices that site's owner has chosen. You'll know it's happening because external links open in a new tab and carry an arrow indicator.

Your browser, your rules

Cookie blockers, ad blockers, Firefox's strict tracking protection, whatever you prefer running. The site works fine with all of it enabled. Got a question about something I haven't covered here? Contact me here.

Changes to this policy

When something changes about how this site handles data, I'll rewrite the relevant section here and update the effective date at the top.