Privacy · Jerry Zheng

This site is a portfolio, and I write up the tools I build here. It still collects a few things about your visit, and this is the whole list of them, in the order I'd want to read it.

Google Analytics

I run Google Analytics. It counts visits. It records which pages you opened, roughly where you are (city level, worked out from your IP address) and which browser and device you used. It sets cookies. That's how it tells one visit from the next.

I use it to see which write-ups people read. I can't identify anyone with it and I don't try.

Microsoft Clarity

Clarity is the one to read about. I record sessions with it. Your clicks, your scrolling and how the page looked while you were on it. Those recordings play back like video. Clarity builds heatmaps out of the same data.

Anything you type into a form field gets masked before it leaves your browser. Clarity masks every input box and dropdown in every one of its modes. I can't turn that off. The message you type on the contact page isn't in the recording.

Ordinary page text and images aren't masked, which is fine here: I show everyone the same pages, nothing on them is yours, and a recording ends up showing my own writing with your cursor moving over it. Clarity sets cookies too, so separate pages join up into one session.

Turning both off

A content blocker stops both. Most already do. Google also publishes an opt-out add-on for Analytics, which switches it off on every site you visit, mine included.

Each tool has its own account of what it does with the data: Google's privacy policy and Microsoft's privacy statement. Both are longer than this page.

Getting in touch

The contact page hands you my email address and nothing else. There's no form on it today. Nothing you do there reaches anyone but your own mail app.

Either way I'm the one who reads it, at jerryzhengconsulting@gmail.com.

What isn't here

I serve the fonts from this domain. No request goes to Google Fonts. There's no advertising, no retargeting pixel and no third party buying any of this. I don't sell or share what the two tools above collect.

Cloudflare hosts the site, and it serves the pages and sees the request the way any host sees one, which means an IP address and a page name pass through it on the way to you. That part isn't optional. It's how the web works.

If this page is wrong

I wrote this page from what the site actually does. I built the two sections above to appear only while their tool is switched on, and I did that because the ordinary way a page like this goes stale is that someone removes a tracker and leaves the paragraph behind. Turn one off and its paragraph goes with it. It's a plain account. It also isn't legal advice. If something here doesn't match what you see, email me and I'll fix it.