Privacy & Cookies
What we collect, why we use it, and the choices available to you.
Last updated:
About this notice
This notice covers Alpekin’s public website, Journal, comments, and contact form. It describes the features available today; it does not describe future account services or products.
When you contact us
We collect your name, email address, subject, message, and selected category. If you choose a Journal member, that selection is stored with your enquiry, along with the submission time and whether it has been handled.
We use this information to understand and respond to your enquiry. Contact messages are not published. Authorized staff can read and manage them, and replies are sent through email. Please do not include passwords, payment information, medical records, or other sensitive information that is not needed for your enquiry.
When you comment on the Journal
We store the name you provide, your comment, the article and language it relates to, its submission time, and moderation status. Replies are linked to their parent comment. Published comments and display names are visible to other readers and may be indexed by search engines.
We also retain keyed fingerprints of the submitting network address and comment text, and a verification signature, to detect abuse and repeated submissions. These are not published. A fingerprint is not the raw address, but it should not be treated as fully anonymous information.
Security and technical records
Our server receives technical information needed to deliver pages, including your IP address, requested address, time, browser information, and sometimes the referring page. Access and error logs help us investigate failures and misuse.
Forms use a self-hosted ALTCHA human-verification check. Your browser solves a small computational challenge and sends its proof to Alpekin. The check does not require an external CAPTCHA service. Contact submissions also use temporary keyed network-address fingerprints and verification records to limit repeated submissions.
Journal readership measurements
The Journal records aggregate article interactions, including page views, reading completion, and sharing actions. These counters help us understand which published work is being used. The counters do not store a visitor identifier or create an individual browsing profile. Requests can still appear in server logs.
The current public website does not include third-party advertising or analytics scripts. Fonts and the human-verification script are served by Alpekin.
Cookies and browser storage
Cookies support form security and temporary website state. Browser storage remembers a theme only when you choose one. These have different purposes and lifetimes:
- csrftoken — helps protect form submissions against forged requests. Its configured lifetime is approximately one year and it can be renewed when you visit.
- sessionid — connects your browser to temporary server-side state, such as contact-form confirmation. Its configured lifetime is two weeks; it is set when a session is needed.
- alpekin-public-theme — local browser storage for your chosen light or dark appearance. It has no automatic expiry and remains until you change it or clear site data.
Who can access information
Access to private enquiries and moderation information is restricted to authorized staff. Hosting, infrastructure, and email providers can process information needed to operate their services. If you exchange email with us, your email service and ours also handle that correspondence.
Links to research sources, member websites, and other external destinations take you to services with their own privacy practices. Using an external sharing option also involves the service you select.
How long information remains
Contact enquiries, comments, and their associated moderation records remain stored until they are deleted by authorized staff. They do not currently have an automatic expiry. Marking an enquiry as handled does not delete it. You can contact us to request review or deletion of information relating to you.
Contact rate-limit records expire after one minute and used verification records after two hours; expired cache entries may remain until cache cleanup. Journal comment fingerprints remain with their comment records.
The current web-server log configuration rotates logs daily and keeps up to 14 rotated files. Application logs and backup copies have separate maintenance cycles, so removing a live record does not necessarily remove every retained copy immediately.
Your choices and privacy enquiries
You can read public pages without submitting a contact message or comment. You can use browser settings to remove cookies and site storage; blocking security cookies may prevent forms from working. Clearing the theme preference restores the default dark appearance.
Contact us to ask about information relating to you or to request access, correction, or deletion. We may need enough information to verify that the request relates to you. Requests are considered under the law that applies to the circumstances, and some information may need to be retained for a legal obligation or dispute.
Updates
We will update this notice when the website’s features or data handling change. The date above identifies the latest revision.