Privacy

Last updated 1 October 2026. This describes what the site actually stores, which is less than most sites and more than nothing.

The short version

You can read KK Hockey without telling it who you are. It does count things: which stories get clicked, how many people came to a page. If you sign up for the morning email, we keep your address to send it. If you comment, vote in a poll, make a pick or answer a question, we keep your answer. Nothing here is sold, and nothing is shared with anyone except the services that run the site.

The morning email

Signing up stores your email address, which page you signed up from, the times you asked and confirmed, the browser user-agent string your request carried, and the exact wording you agreed to — currently: “Daily email from KK Hockey: yesterday's hockey news and last night's scores. Unsubscribe any time with the link in every issue.”

Your IP address is not stored. What is stored is a one-way salted hash of it, which is evidence that two sign-ups came from the same place without being a list of addresses. That record exists because the law puts the burden of proving consent on the sender, and because we would rather be able to show you asked than ask you to take it on trust.

For each issue we also keep a line saying it was sent to you, when, whether it arrived, bounced or was reported as spam — which is how a dead address stops being mailed — and, from 1 October 2026, whether you opened it and how many of its links you followed. Nothing is sent until you click the confirmation link. Unsubscribing is one click at the foot of every issue and takes effect immediately. An unsubscribed address is kept, not deleted — that record is what stops anyone, us included, putting you back on the list without you confirming again. It does not stop you rejoining: sign up again and you go through the confirmation link the same as anyone else. If you would rather the row were erased entirely, ask and it will be.

Links in the email

Links in the morning email go through this site before they go where they are pointed, so we can count which stories people actually read. That records the link, the issue, the date, and a salted hash of your IP.

Those links now say who you are. Since 1 October 2026 each copy of an issue carries a token of its own in its links, so following one records that your address read that story, not merely that somebody did. The tracking token is random and carries no address — though the unsubscribe link in the same email does encode yours, signed so it cannot be altered, because that link has to know who to remove without asking you to log in. The IP hash beside the click is the same one the sign-up recorded, which is a second way the two could be matched. “Anonymous” was never the right word for this and it is certainly not the right word now.

What a recorded click is not. Corporate mail filters and some webmail scanners follow every link in a message before you ever see it, so a click can be recorded against your address that you did not make. And if you forward an issue, the copy still carries your token: whatever the person you sent it to opens or clicks is recorded against you. Treat these numbers the way we do — as a rough measure of what a whole list reads, not as a record of one person’s morning.

And there is now a tracking pixel. One transparent image at the end of each issue records that the message was opened, when, and how many times. This is the ordinary newsletter arrangement, and it is worth stating rather than burying: blocking images stops it, and most mail apps block them until you ask. Apple Mail and Gmail also fetch images on your behalf in ways that look like opens, so the number is an upper bound rather than a count of readers.

Why. Two reasons, both honest: so the stories people actually read can decide what leads the next issue, and so an address that has never once opened anything can be dropped instead of mailed forever. None of it is sold or shared, and nobody is profiled beyond this email.

If you would rather not. Three things that work, in order of how complete they are:

• Block images and the pixel records nothing. Links still count if you follow them.
• Read the issue in the archive. The public copy carries no token, so nothing is attributed to your address — though a click there is still counted as a click, with the same IP hash as any other.
• Ask us to stop. Write to hello@kkhockey.com and every future issue goes to you without a token at all — no pixel that resolves, no link that names you — and everything already recorded against your address is erased: the tokens, the open and click counts, and your name on past clicks. This is a switch on your subscription, not a note somebody has to remember.

Our mail provider’s own open-and-click tracking is a separate thing and is switched off — checked against a delivered message, whose every link pointed at this domain rather than at a tracking host. Everything above is this site’s own, in this site’s own database.

Delivery itself is handled by Resend, which records whether a message was delivered, bounced or reported as spam, and tells us — that is how a dead address stops being mailed.

Clicks on the site

The same counting happens here. Clicking a headline, a “continued” link, an excerpt or one of the other outlets credited on a line records which one, what kind it was, the date and the same salted hash of your IP. It is how the site knows which stories were worth running, which is a question it would otherwise have to guess at. No cookie is involved and nothing is recorded by reading — only by clicking.

Comments

Comments run on our own installation of Remark42 at comments.kkhockey.com. Signing in with Google shares your name, email and picture with it; signing in with email lets you choose any display name you like, which is the better option if you would rather not use your real one. Your comments, your display name and the address you signed in with live in that system, and deleting a comment is yours to do. Signing in sets a cookie on comments.kkhockey.com that lasts a year; signing out clears it.

A sign-in link sent to your address goes out through Resend, the same service that sends the morning email, from comments@kkhockey.com. No other mail provider is in that path.

Polls, picks and feedback

When you vote in a poll, pick a game or answer a question at the end of a post, we store your answer, a random id kept in a cookie in your browser, and a salted hash of your IP. The two keys exist to stop one person voting two hundred times; they are not a name, and they cannot be turned back into one. The cookie (kk_voter, a random id, a year) is set when a post with a pollloads, not when you vote — so it may be there even if you never pressed anything.

Analytics

Public pages load Google Analytics, Vercel Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights, which report how many people visited which pages, roughly where from, and how fast the pages were. Voting in a poll or making a pick also sends Vercel an event saying that somebody did — not what they chose. The review and login pages are deliberately excluded. If you would rather not be counted, any content blocker will do it, and the site works exactly the same without them.

Google Analytics sets its own cookies in your browser (_ga and one named for this site’s measurement id, about two years), and what Google does with what it collects is governed by Google’s terms, not by this page. Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights set no cookies.

Posts that embed a tweet load it from X, which is its own company with its own cookies and its own policy. An embedded tweet can see that you loaded it.

Who else touches it

The site runs on Vercel, the database is Neon, and the comment system runs on Fly.io. All email — the morning issue, its confirmations, and the sign-in links for comments — goes through Resend. The transaction and jersey-number trackers are embedded from GitHub Pages, which means GitHub sees that your browser asked for them. Each of these necessarily handles the data above to do its job, and each keeps its own server logs. Nobody is paid for access to you, and nothing is handed to anyone to use for their own ends — with the honest exception of Google Analytics, whose terms are Google’s.

Children

This is a hockey site, not a service for children, and it is not directed at anyone under 13. If a child has signed up for the email, tell us and it will be removed.

Asking for your data, or its removal

Write to hello@kkhockey.com and say what you want: a copy of what is held about you, a correction, or deletion. You do not need to give a reason, and you do not need to live anywhere in particular to ask. The only thing that is kept after a deletion request is the fact that an address unsubscribed, and only if you want to stay off the list — say so and even that goes.

Changes

When the site starts collecting something new, this page is updated in the same change that collects it. The date at the top is the last time that happened.

See also: terms of use · editorial policy · contact