AreaZinePrivacy
Privacy
AreaZine asks for nothing to read it: there are no accounts, no forms and no newsletter. The tools below measure visits and show ads; this page says what each stores and what you can do about it.
Updated
Who is responsible
AreaZine is owned by Kiznis Studio, which decides what data the site collects (the controller under the EU and U.K. GDPR). Kiznis Studio is a trading name, not yet a registered company; the person who runs it, in Lithuania, is the controller, and gives their name and postal address to anyone exercising a right below, or to a data protection authority, on request. Write to hello@areazine.com about anything on this page.
What runs on the site
| Tool | What it does | Legal basis | Cookies | Kept |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | counts visits and pages (the address of the page without its query string) | consent in the EEA, the U.K. and Switzerland; legitimate interest in measuring the site elsewhere | yes, after consent where it is required | event data 2 months, user data 14 months (the property's settings) |
| Umami (analytics.opspixel.com) | counts page views without identifying visitors | legitimate interest (no personal data kept) | no | aggregate counts |
| Google AdSense | shows ads; personalised ads only with consent where it is required | consent in the EEA, the U.K. and Switzerland (without it Google serves limited ads that store nothing on the device); legitimate interest elsewhere | yes, depending on consent | Google's own terms |
| Google's consent banner (Funding Choices) | asks for consent in the EEA, the U.K. and Switzerland and records the choice | legal obligation (recording consent) | yes (the choice) | until you change it |
| Cloudflare | delivers the site and blocks abusive traffic | legitimate interest (security) | security cookies only | Cloudflare's own retention; AreaZine keeps no copy |
| Sentry | records server errors (no browser script) | legitimate interest (keeping the site working) | no | the service's standard error retention |
Consent, by region
In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, nothing but security storage runs before you choose in the consent banner, and Google Analytics does not load until you consent to measurement. Elsewhere, measurement runs and ads wait for consent; in the United States ads run by default and you can opt out through the banner's link, and a browser's Global Privacy Control signal is honoured as an opt-out of sale and sharing everywhere.
The records on the site
The notices AreaZine publishes describe places and hazards, not people. Messages about individuals (such as child abduction alerts) are never published, and the parts of agency feeds that name staff or give contact details are not shown. A fire is placed at its locality, never its street. The records come from the agencies' public feeds (listed on the methodology page); if a record page could identify you or your home, write to hello@areazine.com and it will be reduced or removed (your right to object).
Where the site runs
The site is served through Cloudflare from a server in the United States (Ashburn, Virginia) rented from Hetzner. Data about visits therefore goes to the United States: to Google, Cloudflare and Sentry, which are certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (and its U.K. extension) and also rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, and to the server. Because the site stores no accounts and measures visits only after consent where consent is required, AreaZine has not appointed a representative in the U.K. (U.K. GDPR article 27(2): occasional, low-risk processing).
Your rights
Where the GDPR or a U.S. state privacy law applies, you can ask what data about you the tools above hold, and ask for it to be corrected or deleted, by writing to hello@areazine.com. Because AreaZine itself stores no names, most requests are about Google's tools, which you can also manage in your Google account and in the consent banner. You can complain to your data protection authority.