Privacy statement

1. Who publishes this site

This site is published by an individual, Charlotte Walsh. Nobody else has access to the correspondence described below, and every privacy enquiry, access request and complaint goes to the e-mail address here.

• Publisher: Charlotte Walsh
• Postal address: 8 Rankins Ln, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
• Telephone: +61 412 912 001 (weekdays, 9am to 5pm AEST)
• E-mail: desk@arenagauge.com

2. The legislation this statement follows

This statement is written against the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the thirteen Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) in Schedule 1 of that Act. ArenaGauge is published by one person whose annual turnover is well below the threshold in section 6D, so the publisher falls within the small business operator exception and is not obliged to comply with the APPs. She applies them voluntarily and in full, and treats this statement as binding on herself.

3. The short version

ArenaGauge is a set of static pages with no form of any kind — no contact form, no sign-up field, no comment box, no search box. The publisher records nothing you do while reading; the network that delivers the pages measures page loads, as section 4.3 explains. The only ongoing record she keeps is the Gauge Notebook subscriber list.

4. What is handled, why, and on what basis

4.1 Correspondence you send by e-mail

If you write to the desk, the publisher receives whatever you put in the message: your e-mail address, any name or signature, and the content. It is collected only because you chose to send it, and used to answer you and, where the message is a correction, to fix the page concerned. Your message passes through your own e-mail provider and hers before it arrives.

4.2 Gauge Notebook subscription records

If you subscribe to the Gauge Notebook, the publisher keeps the address the issues go to, the dates consent was given and the subscription started, and a record of payments and when they cleared. Card details are never seen or held by her; payment is arranged with the provider named in the reply you receive. The basis is the contract you enter into on confirming, plus Australian record-keeping obligations on anyone charging for a service.

4.3 Technical information created when a page is delivered

Serving a web page necessarily creates technical information about the request. The publisher runs no analytics package, tag manager or logging tool of her own — but Cloudflare, the network that delivers these pages, inserts a measurement script of its own into the HTML as the page is served: Cloudflare Web Analytics, loaded from static.cloudflareinsights.com. It is not part of the site's own files, cannot be removed by editing a page, and is the only third-party file any page here loads.

What it reports to Cloudflare is the address of the page being viewed, the referring page, page-loading measurements of the kind known as Core Web Vitals, the browser and device type, and the country derived from your IP address. It sets no cookie, stores nothing in your browser, gives no visitor an identifier and follows nobody from one site to another, so neither Cloudflare nor the publisher can connect it to a named individual.

4.4 The choice you make in the storage notice

Your answer to the notice at the bottom of the page is written to a single key in your browser's local storage. It never leaves your device and is not visible to the publisher. Full details are in the cookie and storage notice.

5. How long each category is kept

• Correspondence: twenty-four months from the last message in the thread, or five years where it led to a correction, so an edit can be explained later.
• Subscriber address and consent record: while the subscription runs, and twelve months afterwards so that a cancellation can be evidenced.
• Payment records: five years from the end of the financial year of the payment, the period Australian record-keeping practice expects.
• Technical delivery information: kept by the providers in section 6 under their own schedules, typically days rather than months; the publisher holds no copy.

6. Who else is involved, and overseas disclosure under APP 8

The publisher does not sell, rent or trade personal information. The only parties involved in running the site are these:

• Friendhosting (Bulgaria) — stores the files that make up this site.
• Cloudflare, Inc. (United States) — delivers the pages from a location near you, filters automated traffic, and runs the Cloudflare Web Analytics measurement described in section 4.3. It receives the information listed in section 4.3, but neither your name nor your correspondence, and sets no cookie when the pages are delivered.
• The publisher's mailbox provider — receives and stores the e-mail you send to the address above.

Two of these sit outside Australia, so delivering this site is a cross-border disclosure of the technical information in section 4.3 within the meaning of APP 8 — to Cloudflare, Inc. in the United States and to the host in Bulgaria. The publisher took the reasonable step of choosing providers that publish contractual commitments to recognised data protection standards, but cannot guarantee that an overseas recipient will observe the Australian Privacy Principles in full, and you are told of that here. Information may also be disclosed where a law of the Commonwealth or of Victoria requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

7. Notebook e-mail and the Spam Act 2003

Gauge Notebook issues are commercial electronic messages under the Spam Act 2003 (Cth), and the publisher follows that Act:

• Consent. Issues go only to an address whose owner asked in writing. No address is added from a purchased list, a public directory or a referral.
• Identification. Every issue names Charlotte Walsh as the sender and carries the postal address and e-mail address in section 1.
• Unsubscribe. Every issue explains that replying with the word cancel ends both the subscription and the mailing, acted on within five working days and at no charge.

No other e-mail is sent from this site, and the subscriber list is never shared.

8. Keeping information secure

The site is served only over an encrypted HTTPS connection. The mailbox and the subscriber list are protected by a long unique passphrase and two-factor authentication. Nothing is submitted through these pages, so there is no site database to breach. Were a breach likely to cause serious harm, the publisher would notify the people affected and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in Part IIIC of the Act, although she is not obliged to take part.

9. Your rights and how to use them

Under APP 12 and APP 13 you may ask for access to the personal information held about you, have it corrected if it is wrong or out of date, have it deleted, revoke a consent, or ask that the publisher stop sending you anything.

Send the request to desk@arenagauge.com. No particular wording is needed. A response is sent within thirty days at no cost; if a request cannot be met in full, the reason is explained in writing.

10. Complaints, and how to reach the OAIC

If you believe your privacy has been mishandled, raise it with the publisher first, at the e-mail address in section 1; a written answer is sent within thirty days.

If that answer does not satisfy you, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:

• Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
• GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001
• Telephone 1300 363 992
• www.oaic.gov.au

The OAIC normally expects a complaint to have been put to the publisher first, in writing, and thirty days to pass.

11. Young readers

The site is not directed at people under fifteen, and the publisher does not knowingly keep personal information about anyone younger. The Gauge Notebook is for readers aged eighteen or over. If a younger person has written to the desk, tell the address in section 1 and the message is deleted.

12. Changes to this statement

This statement is updated whenever the way the site operates changes; the date at the top shows when the current version took effect. A change that materially affects subscribers is announced in a Notebook issue beforehand.

13. Effective date

This privacy statement takes effect on 2 September 2026 and replaces any earlier version.