Effective date: October 30, 2026
The Curious Inquiry is an independent online magazine published by Dustin White in Sturgis, South Dakota, United States, and available at belzian.com. This policy explains what information the website collects, how it is used, and the choices you have. The site is written for a general adult audience and is not directed at children under 13.
Information collected automatically
When you visit the site, the web server records standard log information, which may include your IP address, browser type, the pages requested, and the date and time of the request. These logs are maintained by the site’s hosting provider, Bluehost, and are used to operate the site, diagnose technical problems, and protect against abuse. They are not used to build profiles of individual readers.
This site uses Jetpack Stats (a service of Automattic Inc., the company behind WordPress.com and Jetpack) to count visits and see which articles are read. To provide those statistics, Automattic collects your IP address, user agent (browser information), the page visited, the referring page, the time of the visit, browser language, and country code; if you are logged in to a WordPress.com account, your WordPress.com user ID and username may also be collected. The publisher sees only aggregated statistics (for example, that an article was viewed a certain number of times) and cannot identify individual readers from them. Automattic states that the underlying stats logs are retained for 28 days. Images on this site are also served through Automattic’s image content-delivery network (i0.wp.com), so loading a page with images sends a request — including your IP address — to Automattic’s servers.
This site also uses Site Kit by Google, connected to Google Search Console, which provides the publisher with aggregated statistics about how the site appears in Google search results (such as search terms, impressions, and clicks). Search Console reports are aggregate data; the site does not receive the identities of individual searchers from Google. As of the effective date, Google Analytics is not connected to this site and advertising code (Google AdSense) is not placed on this site; Site Kit’s own panel confirms the AdSense code has not been placed. If either is enabled in the future, this policy will be updated before or at the time of the change.
Email subscriptions
Subscriptions are operated by WordPress.com / Jetpack (Automattic Inc.). If you subscribe, Automattic collects and holds your email address in order to deliver new articles and occasional publication updates from The Curious Inquiry. The publisher can see subscribers’ email addresses (or WordPress.com usernames) and subscription dates, and does not sell or rent the subscriber list.
To initiate and process a subscription, Jetpack also uses the ID of the article being subscribed to and collects some basic server data: your HTTP request headers, the IP address from which you are viewing the page, and the address of the page (the request URI). Jetpack documents that this server data is used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam. If you have an active subscription, Jetpack may set a functionality cookie that remembers your subscription choices for 347 days (see Cookies, below).
Every email contains an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing stops future mailings and ends the subscription; Automattic’s retention of the underlying records is governed by its own policy, linked below.
Contact form
If you use the Contact page, the name, email address, and message you enter are handled by Jetpack Forms in two ways: the submission is emailed to the publisher so that he can respond, and a copy is stored in this website’s own database on the site’s server, where it can be viewed in the site’s administration area (Jetpack → Forms). The notification email includes your IP address and the time of submission. Because this site is connected to WordPress.com through Jetpack, Jetpack may also synchronize related submission data with Automattic’s services as part of that connection; any data Automattic processes in doing so is handled under its own privacy policy, linked below.
Contact-form submissions are not added to the subscription list and are not used for marketing. Do not send sensitive personal information through the contact form.
Cookies
The site’s configuration was checked on October 30, 2026. In that configuration, the functional cookies used for readers include the following:
- Site cookie: the homepage sets one first-party functional cookie (is_mobile), used in detecting mobile devices. It carries no advertising or cross-site tracking function.
- Subscription cookie: if you have an active subscription, Jetpack may set a functionality cookie remembering your blog and post subscription choices, for a duration of 347 days.
- WordPress login cookies are set only for the site’s administrator when logged in to manage the site. Ordinary readers browsing the site do not receive login cookies.
This describes the site’s configuration as verified on the date above; WordPress, Jetpack, or the hosting platform may use additional strictly functional cookies as the site operates and its configuration changes, and this page will be updated if the site’s practices change materially. On the current configuration, no advertising cookies are set and no advertising network code runs on the site’s pages, and no Google Analytics or Facebook cookies are set. Your browser settings allow you to block or delete cookies; the site’s articles remain readable if you do so.
Comments and accounts
This site does not offer reader comments or reader accounts, and it does not collect reader profiles or account credentials. No comment form is published on the site’s articles, and commenting on older articles is closed.
Sharing of information
The publisher does not sell personal information, and does not share it for cross-site advertising. Information is processed only by the service providers named in this policy — the hosting provider (Bluehost), Automattic (subscriptions, contact-form handling, statistics, and image delivery), and Google (aggregated search statistics) — each under its own privacy terms, and may be disclosed if required by law.
Automattic’s privacy policy, which covers WordPress.com and Jetpack processing, is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/.
Retention
- Server logs are retained according to the hosting provider’s standard schedules.
- Contact-form submissions are kept in the site’s database and in the publisher’s email for as long as needed to respond to the message and keep a reasonable record of the correspondence. You may ask for a submission you sent to be deleted (see below).
- Subscription information is held by Automattic for as long as your subscription is active. Unsubscribing ends future mailings; Automattic’s own retention practices govern its records after that point.
- Statistics logs are retained by Automattic for 28 days, as described above.
Your choices and rights
You may unsubscribe from mailings at any time using the link in any message. To ask what information connected to you the publisher holds, or to request its deletion — including a contact-form submission stored in the site’s database — use the Contact page.
Depending on where you live, applicable law (for example, the GDPR in Europe or the CCPA/CPRA in California) may give you additional rights, such as rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal information, or to object to certain processing. The publisher will handle requests in accordance with the law that applies to them. Please understand the practical limits: the publisher can delete only the records he controls (such as form submissions in the site’s database and his own email copies). Records held by Automattic or Google are governed by their own policies, and requests about that processing may need to be directed to them; the link to Automattic’s policy above explains how.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted at this address with a new effective date. Material changes — such as enabling advertising or analytics — will be reflected here before or when they take effect.
Contact
Questions about this policy: please use the Contact page at belzian.com/contact/.