Privacy Policy: the straight version

We track basic stats to make the site better, not to sell your soul. We run ads through Google AdSense to keep the lights on, and Google uses cookies to do that — we'll explain exactly how below. We don't sell your personal data to anyone. We never have, and if that ever changed, it would be the lead story on our own Corrections Log.

• Analytics data — pages visited, time on page, rough location (country/city level), device and browser type. We use this to learn which stories you actually read, so we write more of those and less of what bores you. This data is aggregated; we're looking at crowds, not at you.
• Newsletter email — if you sign up for The Card, we store your email address for exactly one purpose: sending you The Card. Unsubscribe anytime with one click, and we delete it.
• Contact submissions — if you send us a tip, a correction, or hate mail, we keep the message. Tips may be kept confidential indefinitely to protect sources — that one's non-negotiable, it's how journalism works.
• Server logs — IP addresses and request data, kept briefly for security (stopping bots, scrapers, and denial-of-service nonsense), then rotated out.

This site is funded by advertising served through Google AdSense. Here's the honest mechanics of that:

• Google and its certified ad partners use cookies (including the DoubleClick cookie) to serve ads based on your visits to this site and other sites across the internet.
• These cookies allow Google to show you personalized ads based on your interests. We don't see your individual profile — Google handles that on their side.
• You can opt out of personalized advertising at any time via Google's Ads Settings (adssettings.google.com), or opt out of many third-party ad cookies at aboutads.info/choices.
• If you're in the EU/EEA or UK (like a lot of our readers), you'll see a consent banner before any non-essential cookies load, and you can refuse them. The site works fine either way — refusing just means the ads get dumber, not fewer.

If you're in the EU/EEA, UK, or anywhere with similar laws, you have the right to:

• Access — ask what data we hold about you (spoiler: probably just an email address, if that).
• Correction — fix anything we've got wrong. We run a whole public log for our mistakes; yours get fixed quietly and faster.
• Deletion — ask us to erase your data. Newsletter emails are wiped on unsubscribe automatically.
• Objection & portability — object to processing or take your data elsewhere.
• Complaint — escalate to your local data protection authority if you think we've mishandled something. We'd rather you email us first so we can fix it, but that's your call.

To exercise any of these: email privacy@rawgolf.com. A human reads it. We respond within 30 days, usually much faster.

• We don't sell your personal data. Not to brokers, not to brands, not to tours.
• We don't run hidden trackers beyond what's declared here and in the consent banner.
• We don't email you anything you didn't sign up for.
• We don't knowingly collect data from children under 16. This is a site about tour drama and strokes gained — if you're under 16 and reading us anyway, respect, but we're not tracking you.

If this policy changes in any way that matters, we'll update the date at the top and flag it in the newsletter. No silent edits — that's Rule 4.1 energy, applied to legal pages. Questions about any of this: privacy@rawgolf.com.