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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 10 September 2026

This page explains what this site collects, why, who else gets to see it, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read rather than survived, and it describes what actually runs on the site rather than every possibility a template could imagine.

The short version

  • This site does not sell your data, and never has.
  • There are no advertising networks, no retargeting pixels and no data brokers on this site.
  • There is no comment form, no login and no newsletter, so there is nowhere to hand over a name or an email address in the first place.
  • The site stores exactly one thing in your browser: whether you chose light or dark mode. It is not a cookie and it is never sent to us.
  • We use Google Analytics to count visits, and clicking a product link tells Amazon you came from here.

The rest of this page is the detail behind those five lines.

Who we are

The Wooden Stars publishes practical guidance on solid wood furniture at thewoodenstars.com, and is the party responsible for the data described on this page. You can reach us through the contact page, and that is the address to use for any request described below.

What this site stores in your browser

One item, and it is worth being precise about what kind of item it is.

When you use the light/dark toggle, the site writes your choice into your browser’s local storage under the key tws-theme, with a value of light or dark. Local storage is not a cookie: it stays in your browser and is never attached to a request, so the value never reaches our server and we cannot read it. It exists only so the site does not flash the wrong colour scheme at you on the next page.

Clearing your browser’s site data removes it. If you block storage for this site, everything still works; the site will simply forget the preference and fall back to whatever your operating system asks for.

The site itself sets no cookies of its own.

Server logs

Like every website, this one is served by machines that keep records of what they served. Those logs typically contain your IP address, the page requested, the time of the request, the referring page and your browser’s user-agent string.

They exist for security and troubleshooting — blocking abuse, diagnosing errors, working out why a page is slow — and they are not used to build a profile of you or combined with anything else. They are held by our hosting provider and by Cloudflare, which serves this site and which also processes IP addresses in order to filter malicious traffic. Retention is governed by those providers’ own policies rather than by us.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how many people visit, which pages they find useful, and which pages fail them. It records things like the pages viewed, the approximate location derived from your IP address, the type of device and browser, and how you arrived — a search engine, a link, or directly.

What matters about it here:

  • It is used in aggregate. We look at whether a page works, not at what any individual did.
  • Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses, and IP addresses are not used to identify you to us.
  • We do not enable Google Signals, advertising features, remarketing audiences or any user-ID linking, so the data is not fed into ad targeting.
  • Google acts as a data processor for this, and its own handling is governed by Google’s privacy policy.

You can opt out across every site that uses it by installing Google’s official opt-out browser add-on, or by blocking analytics in your browser or an extension. Nothing on this site is withheld from readers who do.

We also use Google Search Console, which reports which search queries led to this site and how pages rank. It reports aggregate figures only and gives us no personal data about you at all.

Product links on this site carry an Amazon Associates tag. Following one tells Amazon that the visit came from us, and Amazon may then set its own cookies in your browser, on Amazon’s own domain, governed by Amazon’s privacy notice and not by this one.

What comes back to us is a report of which products were ordered and in what quantity. It never includes your name, your address, your payment details or anything that would let us connect an order to a visitor. How the commercial side works is set out on the Affiliate Disclosure page.

If you would rather not be tracked at all, search for the product on Amazon yourself. The site is written so that this is always possible — product names are spelled out rather than hidden behind a button.

What we do not do

  • No advertising networks, ad exchanges or programmatic ads.
  • No Facebook pixel, no TikTok pixel, no retargeting of any kind.
  • No selling, renting or sharing of personal information with data brokers. There is nothing to sell.
  • No mailing list, so there is no address for us to lose.
  • No comment form and no user accounts. Comments are switched off across the entire site.
  • No fingerprinting scripts, session recorders or heatmaps.

Who else sees anything

Three parties, each for a stated reason and none of them for advertising:

  • Our hosting provider — because the pages have to be served from somewhere, and serving them means handling the request.
  • Cloudflare — content delivery and protection against abusive traffic, which requires processing IP addresses.
  • Google — analytics and search reporting, as described above.

We do not disclose anything to anyone else, except where the law requires it.

Where the UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies to you, the processing described here rests on legitimate interests: keeping the site available and secure, and understanding in aggregate which pages are useful. We do not process special-category data, we do not run automated decision-making or profiling, and we do not use personal data for advertising.

You have the right to ask for access to any personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable form. In practice this site holds very little that could identify you — there is no account, no mailing list and no comment history — but a request will be answered honestly, including where the honest answer is that we hold nothing. You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

This site is run for a mainly United States audience and is served through Cloudflare’s global network, so data may be processed outside your own country.

If you are in California

Under the CCPA as amended by the CPRA, you have the right to know what personal information is collected and for what purpose, to request its deletion or correction, to opt out of its sale or sharing, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of those rights.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are defined in that law. There is accordingly no “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” mechanism on this site, because there is no sale or sharing to opt out of. The categories collected are limited to internet activity and device information as described above, and none of it is retained for advertising purposes.

Children

This site is written for adults buying and repairing furniture, is not directed at children, and does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and it will be deleted.

How long anything is kept

Analytics data is retained for the shortest period Google Analytics 4 allows for the reporting we need, after which it is deleted automatically. Server and security logs are kept by our hosting provider and Cloudflare according to their own retention schedules — short, and measured in days or weeks rather than years. The theme preference in your browser stays until you clear your site data.

Changes to this policy

When what the site does changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the foot is updated. Two changes are already foreseeable and will be written up here when they happen: joining an affiliate programme other than Amazon, and adding any form that asks you for an email address. If either happens, this page will say so before it goes live rather than after.

Contact

Any question about this page, and any request to see, correct or delete data, goes to the address on the contact page. Requests are answered by a person, not a ticketing system, and we aim to reply within 30 days as the relevant laws require.