Privacy Policy

THE D[AI]LY BRIEF (“we,” “us,” or “our”) is a personal newsletter and website operated by Rajesh Beri at www.beri.net. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have regarding your data.

By using our website or subscribing to our newsletter, you agree to the practices described in this policy.

Information you provide directly:

• Email address — When you subscribe to our newsletter, we collect your email address to deliver our content to you.
• Name — If optionally provided during subscription.
• How and when you signed up — for example through the newsletter form or by requesting one of our free guides, and the date you subscribed.

Information collected automatically:

• Analytics data — We use Google Analytics (GA4) to understand how visitors interact with our website. This may include browser type, device information, approximate location, pages visited, and referring URLs. Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies to collect this data. If you are a subscriber, we also give Google Analytics your random subscriber ID (described below, never your email address) so that your visits on different devices are counted as one reader, and we record that you signed up.
• Page-view logs — When you view an article, tool, event or learning page, our own server records the page, the time, your IP address, your approximate location (country, region and city), your browser and device type, your screen size and time zone, and the page that referred you. We use these logs to measure which content is read and to detect automated traffic.
• Sponsored-placement logs — When a Founder Spotlight card appears on your screen, or you click it, we record the same kind of details as a page view (time, page and position of the card, IP address, approximate location, browser and device type, and the site that referred you to us). See Sponsored Placements below.
• Subscriber reading activity — When you subscribe, or click a link in one of our emails, we set a first-party cookie called dab_sid containing a random ID that identifies your subscription. It contains no personal information. While it is present, the page-view logs above are linked to your subscription, so we can see which pages our subscribers read. Links in our emails carry the same ID so this also works on a new device; we remove it from the address bar as soon as the page loads.
• Email engagement data — Our email provider, Postmark, tells us when each email we send you is delivered, opened (detected by a small image in the email) or clicked (links pass briefly through Postmark), and when an email bounces or is reported as spam. We store these events against your subscription.
• Spam protection — Our signup forms include automated checks for fake and bot signups. We keep a record of blocked attempts (the email address entered and why it was blocked), and signups that look automated are held and not emailed.

Information we do not collect:

• We do not collect payment information, as all our content is provided free of charge.
• We do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 16.

We use the information we collect to:

• Deliver our weekly newsletter to your inbox.
• Understand website traffic and improve our content and user experience.
• Respond to unsubscribe requests and manage your subscription preferences.
• Send occasional service-related communications (e.g., changes to our newsletter format or privacy policy).
• Measure which articles and emails our subscribers find useful, so the weekly digest features the right content.
• Stop bounced addresses, spam complaints and fake signups from receiving email.

We will never sell, rent, or share your email address or newsletter subscription details with third parties for their own marketing purposes. (Advertising cookies used to display ads are handled separately — see the Advertising section below.)

We use the following third-party services to operate our website and newsletter:

• Google Analytics (GA4) — For website analytics. Google may process your data according to its own privacy policy. You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
• Mediavine — For displaying ads. Mediavine and its ad partners use cookies to serve ads based on your visits to this and other sites. See the Advertising section below for details and opt-out options.
• Postmark — For email delivery (the welcome email and the weekly digest). Postmark processes your email address to deliver our emails and records delivery, open, click and bounce events for us.
• MongoDB Atlas — For secure data storage.

Each of these services has its own privacy policy governing how it processes data.

We display ads on this website through Mediavine, a third-party advertising management service.

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
• Mediavine works with a number of ad partners whose use of advertising cookies enables them to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
• Ad partners may process data such as your device, browser, IP address, and interactions with ads.

Your choices: You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings or aboutads.info/choices. For details on how our advertising partner handles data, see Mediavine’s privacy policy.

Some pages, and some issues of our weekly email, show a card labelled “Sponsored · Founder Spotlight”. It promotes a product built by a founder. These placements are free: nobody pays for them and we earn nothing from them. How the program works is explained on the Founder Spotlight page.

• The card is served by us. It sets no cookies and loads nothing from the sponsor until you click it.
• We count an impression when the card is on your screen (for the email, we count each email sent), and a click when you follow its link, which passes briefly through our own address (/go/…) before reaching the sponsor’s site. We store the details listed under Sponsored-placement logs above, and the random subscriber ID if you have one. That links the click to your subscription, so we can see which subscribers clicked. We never share that with the sponsor.
• The sponsor’s site receives the link with tags saying it came from beri.net (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and the card’s position). We may share totals with the sponsor, such as how many people saw or clicked the card and from which pages and countries. We never give a sponsor your IP address, email address or subscriber ID.
• Once you are on the sponsor’s site, its own privacy policy applies.

If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you will be shown a consent message before personalized ads are served. You can grant or refuse consent for advertising cookies and data processing, and you can change your choices at any time through the consent controls on our site. Google Analytics is also off by default in these regions: it does not store analytics cookies until you give consent through the same message.

Our website uses cookies for two main purposes: analytics (through Google Analytics, to collect anonymized usage statistics) and advertising (through Mediavine and its ad partners, to serve and measure ads). These cookies help us understand how visitors use our site and support the ads that keep our content free.

The cookies and similar storage we use:

• dab_sid (ours, 12 months) — your random subscriber ID, set only if you subscribe or click a link in one of our emails. See Subscriber reading activity above.
• _ga, _ga_* (Google Analytics, up to 2 years) — distinguish visitors for analytics.
• Advertising cookies (Mediavine and its ad partners) — serve and measure ads; see Advertising above.
• guide-offer (browser local storage, not a cookie) — remembers that you dismissed or completed our free-guide offer so it isn’t shown again.

You can control cookies through your browser settings, and you can manage advertising cookies using the opt-out options in the Advertising section above. Clearing your cookies removes dab_sid. Disabling cookies may affect certain website functionality but will not prevent you from reading our content.

We retain your email address and subscription data for as long as you remain subscribed to our newsletter. When you unsubscribe, your email address will be removed from our active mailing list. We may retain a record of the unsubscribe request for compliance purposes, so that we do not email you again.

If you ask us to delete your data, we permanently delete your subscription record and its email engagement history.

Analytics data is retained according to Google Analytics’ default data retention settings.

You have the right to:

• Unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time using the unsubscribe link included in every email, or by visiting our unsubscribe page.
• Request access to or deletion of your personal data, including your email engagement history, by contacting us.
• Opt out of Google Analytics tracking using browser tools or the Google Analytics opt-out add-on.

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), you may have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including the right to access, rectify, or erase your data, and the right to data portability. To exercise these rights, please contact us using the information below.

We take reasonable measures to protect the information we collect from unauthorized access, loss, or misuse. Our website uses HTTPS encryption, and our data is stored in secure, managed cloud infrastructure. However, no method of transmission or storage over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Our website and newsletters may contain links to external websites and resources. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these third-party sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any external sites you visit.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected on this page with an updated “Last updated” date. We encourage you to review this policy periodically. Continued use of our website or newsletter after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your data rights, you can reach us through:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rberi
• X (Twitter): @rajeshberi