Privacy Policy

This is the Box Turtles privacy policy. It explains, in plain English, what we collect when you read or interact with this site, who else processes that data, and what control you have over it. We are a small independent publisher and we do not enjoy reading legal text any more than you do, so we have tried to write this in a way you can actually finish.

Site operator: Box Turtles (boxturtles.com)
Contact: contact page or [email protected]
Last updated: 18 May 2026

The short version

  • We do not sell your data and we do not have a mailing list to sell to.
  • We use Google Analytics 4 to count visits and figure out which articles people find useful. The data we see is aggregate.
  • We run Google AdSense on most pages. AdSense uses cookies (and similar technologies) to show you ads. You can opt out — see below.
  • If you leave a comment or fill in the contact form, we keep what you sent us so we can reply.
  • Our host is Cloudflare‑fronted, so your IP is briefly visible at the network edge for abuse protection.

What we collect, and why

Analytics (Google Analytics 4)

We use GA4 with the measurement ID G-GZS89N3LVG. GA4 records aggregate information about your visit — pages viewed, time on page, referring source, country, device type, browser. It uses cookies and similar identifiers. We do not enable Google Signals demographics, and we do not pipe GA data into ad targeting. We use the data to decide which care sheets to update and which species to write about next.

Advertising (Google AdSense)

We display ads through Google AdSense (publisher ID pub-4240720052276636). AdSense and its partner networks may use cookies, web beacons, and device identifiers to:

  • show you ads that may be more relevant based on your past activity (this is “personalised advertising”);
  • measure how often ads are seen and clicked;
  • limit how often a single ad is shown to you (“frequency capping”);
  • detect and prevent click fraud.

Google’s advertising privacy policy covers exactly what AdSense does with that data. You can opt out of personalised advertising entirely at Google Ads Settings or, for many other networks at once, at aboutads.info (US), youronlinechoices.eu (EU/UK), or youradchoices.ca (Canada).

EU, UK, and California visitors

If you visit from a region that requires a consent prompt, Google’s ad code will surface one for you. AdSense uses Google’s IAB‑compliant consent mechanism. Until you give consent, AdSense runs in a non‑personalised mode — you will still see ads, but they will not be tailored to you. If you are a California resident under CCPA/CPRA, you can opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information using the same Google Ads Settings link above; we do not separately sell any data to anyone.

Comments

Our comments are managed by WordPress and filtered by Antispam Bee. If you leave a comment we keep your name, email address, website (if provided), comment text, and the IP address you submitted from. Antispam Bee checks your submission against public blocklists; it does not phone home with your data. We do not require an account, and we do not require a real email — but if you give us a fake one we cannot reply.

Contact form

If you write to us through the contact page, we receive whatever you put in the form (typically your name, email, and message). We keep that email so we can carry on the conversation. We do not add you to a list — we have no list.

Server logs

Our host keeps standard web‑server logs (your IP address, request URL, user agent, timestamp). These rotate on a normal schedule and are used for diagnostics and abuse handling. Cloudflare sits in front of the site for caching and DDoS mitigation — their privacy policy covers that layer.

Cookies set directly by this site

If you log in (we have maybe four logins on the entire site, all editors) WordPress sets standard authentication cookies. If you leave a comment, WordPress may set a small cookie so it can pre‑fill your name and email next time. We do not set any tracking cookies of our own.

How long we keep things

  • Comments — kept indefinitely so the thread on a 2018 article still makes sense in 2030. You can ask us to delete yours at any time.
  • Contact form emails — kept for as long as the conversation is useful, usually a year or two, then archived.
  • Analytics — GA4 default retention is 14 months for event data; we have not changed that.
  • Server logs — rotated monthly.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask us for a copy of what we hold on you, to correct it, to delete it, or to object to it being processed. We do not hold much — most of what we have is “you left this comment in 2021”. Email [email protected] from the address tied to the account or comment and we will reply within a reasonable time, usually under a week.

If you are in the EU/UK and you are not happy with how we have handled a request, you can complain to your local supervisory authority. If you are in California, you can authorise an agent to make a CCPA request on your behalf; we will need to verify both of you.

Children

Box Turtles is a general‑audience site about reptiles and we know plenty of kids read our care sheets — that is part of the point. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13 (or under 16 in the EU). If you are a parent and you think your child has submitted something to us, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

Third parties we knowingly hand data to

  • Google — for Analytics and AdSense, as described above.
  • Cloudflare — for caching and DDoS protection.
  • Our hosting provider — for the actual web server, email, and backups.

That is the entire list. We do not use email marketing platforms, CRMs, retargeting pixels, or session‑replay tools.

Changes to this policy

If we materially change what we collect or who we share it with, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page and, where the change is significant, leave a note in the site footer for at least 30 days.

If anything here is unclear, or you would like a copy of your data, please get in touch. We read everything.

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