This is a small editorial publication run by two people who live on Gozo. We collect as little as possible. Everything below is in plain language.
What we collect and why
1. Email signups (newsletter subscribers)
When you enter your email on a signup form, we send it to Buttondown (our email service provider) to add you to the WhatsNew in Gozo subscriber list. We store:
- Your email address
- The page you signed up from (e.g.
/places/mekren-bakery) - The signup widget variant (inline, footer, etc.)
- The date you signed up
We use this to send you one email a month with what's on. That's it. You can unsubscribe at any time from the footer of every email. Unsubscribing is instant.
Buttondown stores subscriber data under an EU-adequate Standard Contractual Clauses agreement. Their privacy policy is at buttondown.com/legal/privacy.
2. Partner applications
If you submit the application form at /partners/join, we collect the application content (business name, contact email, contact phone, why-join paragraph, optional website/Instagram/Facebook/hours/phone) and deliver it directly to the editor via Telegram. We keep the application content in our editorial records (email thread, private documents) until either we accept or decline the application.
See the Partner Terms for the full Partner-specific data flow.
3. Cookies and analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to understand which pages people read and how the site is used. We use it in Google Consent Mode v2 with consent denied by default — until you explicitly accept via the banner at the bottom of the screen, no analytics cookies are set and no personal identifiers are sent.
If you accept the banner, the following cookie is set:
gla_consent_v1— first-party, records your choice (granted or denied), retained for 13 months. We re-prompt after that.
And these Google Analytics cookies are set by GA4 itself:
_ga— distinguishes unique visitors, 2-year retention_ga_*— session state, 2-year retention
We have configured GA4 with:
- IP anonymization on
- Google Signals off (no cross-device tracking)
- Ad personalization off
- Ad-data redaction on
We do not run ads. We do not share GA4 data with advertising networks. The events we collect are: page views, email signup submissions (with source widget), and Partner application submissions (with plan choice). No PII (email address, name, etc.) is sent to GA.
If you declined the banner, none of these GA cookies are set, and only minimal, cookieless model data is collected by Consent Mode v2 (no identifiers, no profile). You can withdraw consent any time by clearing site cookies in your browser; the banner will re-appear on next visit.
4. What we don't do
- We don't sell your data
- We don't share it with third parties beyond the service providers named above (Buttondown for email, Telegram for application delivery, Google Analytics for measurement, Cloudflare for hosting + cookieless edge analytics)
- We don't use cross-site tracking, behavioral profiling, or retargeting
- We don't run ads
- We don't build a profile of you across visits beyond GA4's standard session model
Hosting
The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare may log standard request metadata (IP, user agent, requested URL) for security and performance, retained for a short window per Cloudflare's policy. We don't access or store those logs ourselves.
Application back-of-house (the editorial pipeline, drift watchers, newsletter composer) runs on a small Hetzner VPS in Helsinki. None of your data passes through that server — it only operates on our editorial content tree.
Your rights (GDPR)
If you're in the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you
- Correct it if it's wrong
- Delete it
- Withdraw consent for analytics any time
- Object to processing
- Complain to your local data protection authority (in Malta: IDPC)
To exercise any of these rights, email hello@gozo-like-a-local.com. We'll respond within 30 days, usually faster.
Children
This site is not directed at children under 16, and we don't knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has submitted to one of our forms, email us and we'll delete the entry.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. If we do, we'll change the version number and effective date at the top of this page. Material changes will be announced in the newsletter.
Who you're dealing with
Mediavilla Ltd, registered in Malta. Editorial conducted from Gozo. Contact: hello@gozo-like-a-local.com.