The Valley Weekly is a free Tuesday-morning email about the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. This policy explains what we collect when you subscribe or visit the site, why we collect it, who we share it with, and how to get rid of it if you change your mind. Plain language.

Who we are

The Valley Weekly is operated by Neal Quesnel, based in Western Massachusetts. You can reach us at neal@thevalleyweekly.com.

What we collect

Only what we need to run a newsletter and a referral program. Specifically:

• Your email address, when you subscribe. Required.
• Engagement events on emails you receive: when you opened the email, which links you clicked, whether the send bounced, whether you unsubscribed. We use Resend as our email service; Resend records these events and reports them to us via webhook.
• Your IP address at signup, plus the browser user-agent string. Used to detect signup abuse (someone creating fake accounts to game the referral rewards) and to understand roughly where our readers are.
• Referral data: the share code we generate for you, how many people signed up using your code, and which reward tiers you have crossed. We do not store the email addresses of the friends you referred against your account; they each get their own subscriber record.
• Reward fulfillment details (name, shipping address) only if you earn a reward that needs to be mailed, and only after you provide them to us so we can ship it.
• Cookies and similar storage. See our cookie notes for the specific ones we use and how to opt out.

We do not collect your name, phone number, mailing address, demographic information, or your friends' contact info unless you actively give them to us for one of the purposes above.

How we use it

• To send you the weekly issue and any account-related email.
• To run the referral program (figure out who referred whom, credit rewards).
• To improve the letter. We look at open and click rates in aggregate to understand which subject lines and sections resonate.
• To prevent abuse. Repeated signups from the same IP, bounces, spam complaints, that kind of thing.
• To respond when you email us.

We do not sell your data. We do not rent it. We do not run behavioral ad targeting based on what we know about you.

Who we share it with

We use a small set of vendors who help us run the service:

• Resend: sends the emails, records deliveries / opens / clicks / bounces.
• Vercel: hosts the website. Sees request logs (IP, user-agent, URL) like any web host.
• Neon: hosts the database where subscriber records live.
• If you earn a physical reward, the courier that ships it.
• Government or legal authorities, only if compelled by valid legal process and only what we are required to provide.

Each vendor has its own privacy commitments and is contractually limited to processing your data on our behalf.

Your rights

You can, at any time:

• Unsubscribe using the link in the footer of any email, or by emailing neal@thevalleyweekly.com. We will stop sending immediately.
• Request a copy of the data we hold about you. Email us and we will send you what is in our database for your account.
• Request deletion of your account and all associated records. We will delete your subscriber record, shipping details if any, and engagement history. We may retain a hash of your email on a suppression list so we do not accidentally re-add you to the list later if someone signs you up again.
• Correct any inaccurate data we hold about you by emailing us.
• Opt out of cookies by clicking Cookie preferences at the bottom of any page.

If you are in a jurisdiction with specific privacy rights (EU, UK, California, others), the rights above apply to you in substance even if the local terminology is slightly different. Email us to exercise them.

How long we keep it

• Your subscriber record: as long as you are subscribed, plus a brief tail after you unsubscribe so we can honor suppressions and answer support questions.
• Engagement events: kept indefinitely in aggregate but pruned to last 24 months at the per-event level. We use the older aggregate counts to understand long-term trends; we do not need to know that you opened issue #4 five years ago.
• IP addresses captured at signup: purged after 90 days unless we have an active abuse investigation tied to that signup.
• Reward shipping details: kept only as long as needed to fulfill the reward, then deleted.

Children

The Valley Weekly is for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has subscribed, email us and we will remove the record.

Changes to this policy

When we make material changes to this policy, we will update the effective date at the top and email subscribers a heads-up before the changes take effect. Minor edits (typos, formatting, clarifying wording without changing meaning) we make silently.

Contact

Questions, requests, or anything we got wrong: email neal@thevalleyweekly.com. Real person on the other end.