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The South Asian Story
The South Asian Story · Legal

Privacy Policy

Written in plain language. If any part is unclear, contact us and we will explain it.

Last updated: May 2026

The short version: if you are a reader, we collect nothing about you. If you submit a form, we collect only what you give us, for the specific purpose you gave it, and we delete it when it is no longer needed.

§1

Who We Are

The South Asian Story is a non-commercial, public-interest web platform that monitors human rights across South and Southeast Asia. We aggregate verified news headlines and publish original contributed commentary. We do not run advertisements. We are not funded by governments. We have no commercial interest in your data.

For any privacy-related enquiry: thesouthasianstory@gmail.com

§2

What We Collect from Readers

Nothing.

You do not need to create an account to read this platform.

We do not ask for your name, email address, location, or any other personal information to access any part of the site. We do not place cookies on your device. We do not build a profile of your reading habits. We do not track you across other websites.

If you visit and leave without submitting a form, no personal data about you is stored anywhere on our systems.

§3

Analytics

We use Plausible Analytics to understand how our platform is used in aggregate. Plausible is a privacy-first analytics tool that does not use cookies and does not collect personal data.

What Plausible collects:

  • Page views — which pages are visited and how often
  • Referral sources — how visitors found us (e.g. a search engine or shared link)
  • Device type — desktop or mobile, not the specific device
  • Country of origin — country-level only, not city or precise location
  • Outbound link clicks — which source articles readers click through to

What Plausible does not collect:

  • Your name, email address, or any identifying information
  • Your IP address — used only momentarily to derive approximate country, then immediately discarded
  • Persistent identifiers of any kind
  • Data across sessions — each visit is treated as entirely separate
  • Data across websites — Plausible does not track you anywhere other than this site

No cookies are used. Because Plausible does not use cookies and does not collect personal data, no cookie consent banner is required on this platform. Plausible Analytics is fully compliant with GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, and similar regulations. All data is processed on servers in the European Union.

We use analytics data only to understand which topics and sections are most read. We do not use it for advertising, profiling, or any commercial purpose.

A note on IP addresses and our "no tracking" claim

When your browser loads any webpage anywhere on the internet, your IP address is transmitted to the web server as a technical necessity — this is how the internet works and is not unique to this platform. Plausible Analytics receives your IP address as part of this standard process. It uses it only to derive your approximate country of origin (country-level only — not city, district, or precise location), and then immediately and permanently discards it. No hash, fingerprint, or derivative of your IP address is retained. After this moment, there is no technical record linking your visit to your IP.

Our "no tracking" claim refers to the absence of persistent identifiers, cross-session profiling, behavioural tracking, and advertising surveillance — all of which this platform does not do. What we see in our analytics is only: how many people visited a page, from which country, on which device type, from which referral source — never who those people are. We cannot identify you, look you up, or hand your data to any authority, because no identifying data is ever stored.

For readers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar, and other high-risk jurisdictions: we have no record of your visit beyond an anonymous page-view count. We cannot disclose who you are — to any government, court, or authority — because we do not know. If you require additional assurance, we recommend using a VPN or Tor Browser, which will prevent even country-level data from reaching Plausible. Our content is fully accessible via both.

§4

Contact Form Data

When you submit our contact or grievance form, you provide:

  • Your name
  • Your email address
  • The nature of your request
  • Any details you choose to share

  • Why we collect it

    Solely to process your request — a correction, takedown notice, grievance, or general enquiry. We cannot respond to you without your email address.

  • How long we keep it

    Maximum 12 months from date of receipt, unless actively in use as part of an ongoing editorial or legal process.

  • Who can access it

    The editorial team only. Submissions are stored in a secured database, not accessible to any third party.

What we never do with it:

  • We never sell it
  • We never share it with advertisers or data brokers
  • We never use it for marketing
  • We never share it with any government or law enforcement authority unless required to do so by a binding legal order — and we will log and publish such orders in our annual Transparency Report

§5

Op-Ed Contributor Data

When you submit an op-ed pitch via our submission form, you provide:

  • Your full name
  • Your affiliation or organisation
  • Your email address
  • Your pitch title and pitch or draft text
  • Your confirmation that you own the rights to the work (recorded as a checkbox at time of submission)

If your piece is accepted, we additionally hold a signed contributor agreement confirming your authorship and granting The South Asian Story a non-exclusive licence to publish your work.

Key facts:

  • Publicly displayed

    Only your name, affiliation, and published text — exactly as agreed before publication. Your email is never displayed publicly.

  • Retention

    Contributor data for unpublished submissions is retained for 12 months after the final editorial decision. Data for published pieces is retained while the piece remains published.

  • Your copyright

    You retain full copyright over your work. The South Asian Story holds only a non-exclusive licence to publish. You may republish your work elsewhere at any time.

§6

Third-Party Services

We have selected each service specifically because of their privacy practices.

  • Plausible Analytics

    GDPR compliant · EU-based · no cookies

    Anonymous site analytics

    Aggregate traffic only — no personal data

  • Supabase

    Secure EU-region infrastructure

    Secure database for contact submissions

    Contact form submissions, editorial logs

  • Sanity CMS

    Operated by Sanity AS (Norway)

    Content management for op-eds

    Contributor names, affiliations, published text

  • Vercel

    Enterprise-grade security

    Website hosting

    Standard server logs — not stored by us

  • Hostinger

    WHOIS privacy enabled

    Domain registration and DNS

    No personal reader data

What we do not use:

Google Analytics · Meta Pixel · Google Tag Manager · any advertising network · any behavioural tracking · session recording · heatmapping · any third-party comment system

§7

Your Rights

These rights apply to data you have actively provided — for example, through a contact form or op-ed submission.

  • Right to access

    You may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.

  • Right to correction

    If information we hold about you is inaccurate, you may ask us to correct it.

  • Right to deletion

    You may ask us to delete personal data we hold about you. We will do so unless we are required by law or legitimate editorial necessity to retain it.

  • Right to object

    You may object to our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.

How to exercise your rights

Email thesouthasianstory@gmail.com with the subject line "Privacy Request." We will acknowledge within 5 working days and respond in full within 30 days. We will never penalise you for exercising your privacy rights.

§8 · India IT Rules 2021

Grievances Related to India

For grievances related to content about India, our editorial contact is the designated point of contact for complaints under India's Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021.

Grievance contact

thesouthasianstory@gmail.com

Acknowledged within 24 hours · resolved within 15 days as required by law

§9

Corrections and Takedown Requests

If you are a publisher, individual, or organisation with a concern about how content on this platform references your work or your name, you have the right to contact us.

All government takedown orders are logged in full, reviewed by legal counsel before any action, and published in our annual Transparency Report. We do not comply with orders that lack a clear legal basis in an internationally recognised legal framework.

§10

Government and Legal Requests

We take an editorial-first approach to all legal requests. Any request from a government authority or law enforcement body to access data, remove content, or disclose user information will be:

  • Logged in full — jurisdiction, legal basis, date, content targeted
  • Reviewed by legal counsel before any response
  • Included in our annual Transparency Report

We will challenge requests that are overbroad, lack legal basis, or appear designed to suppress legitimate human rights reporting.

§11

Children

This platform is intended for a general adult readership. We do not knowingly collect any personal data from anyone under the age of 16. If you believe a person under 16 has submitted personal data to us, please contact us at thesouthasianstory@gmail.com and we will delete it promptly.

§12

Where Our Servers Are Located

Our platform is hosted on servers outside Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Pakistan. Domain registration uses WHOIS privacy protection — no team member's personal information appears in public domain records. These are deliberate operational security decisions made to protect the editorial team and the integrity of the platform.

§13

Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. For significant changes, we will note what has changed and why. We will never reduce your privacy protections without clear notice.

Continued use of the platform after a policy update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

§14

Contact

The South Asian Story aggregates and summarises reporting from verified third-party sources. Summaries reflect the findings and allegations of those sources and do not constitute independent findings of fact by The South Asian Story. The South Asian Story makes no representation as to the accuracy of third-party reporting. The South Asian Story does not reproduce copyrighted content. All headlines and summaries link to original sources. Summaries are independently generated.

Platform disclaimer · server-rendered on every page