Privacy

Who we are

Saarekiri is a newsletter about Saaremaa: a weekly letter on Thursdays, daily news every morning and daily lunch on weekdays (each one can be chosen separately), published by Hernas OÜ (registry code 14157586), the controller of your data. The site and the subscriber list run on our own server, which sits on Saaremaa. Every night an encrypted backup copy of the server's data goes to the cloud storage Backblaze B2 (Backblaze, Inc.), in its European Union region; Backblaze keeps these copies on our behalf, only as a backup.

What we collect

When you subscribe: your email address, your language (Estonian or English), the emails you chose with the consent text and time of each, which form you used, ad tags (utm), the referring page and the first page you visited, your browser type, and a one-way hash of your IP address (we do not store the IP address itself).

Sending the sign-up form also confirms your subscription: we do not send a separate confirmation email. The proof that it was you who gave consent is the data listed above, stored when you subscribe — the consent text and time of each email, your browser type and the hash of your IP address; the time you subscribed is also kept as the time of confirmation. If you confirmed earlier with the link in a confirmation email, we also stored when you clicked it, with your browser type and a hash of your IP address.

We send the welcome email and the newsletter through the email service Mailgun (Mailgun Technologies, Inc.), from its European Union data centre in Germany; to deliver an email, your address passes through their servers. Mailgun processes it on our behalf, only to deliver our emails.

You can also subscribe through a form in our Facebook and Instagram (Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd) ads: you enter your email address in Meta's form, choose the emails and tick the consent box. Every 15 minutes we bring these sign-ups to us through Zernio, the service our ads run through. We store the address, the emails you chose, the consent and its time, the form, the names of the ad and the campaign, and Meta's id of the sign-up (so the same sign-up is never added twice); there is no IP hash or browser type in this case. As on the site, you are subscribed as soon as you send the form, and we send you a welcome email.

Zernio handles the form sign-ups on our behalf, only to bring them to us. We also post Saarekiri to Facebook and Instagram through Zernio; no subscriber data goes into those posts.

The restaurant list has an Apple map (MapKit JS) and each restaurant page an Apple Maps map image. They load straight from Apple's (Apple Inc.) servers, so your browser sends Apple your IP address and the usual browser details, and Apple sees that the map was opened on saarekiri.com. The site never asks for your location. There are no Apple maps on other pages.

The map view of the business directory loads its map images from the OpenStreetMap servers (OpenStreetMap Foundation): your browser sends them your IP address and the usual browser details. The map images load only when you open the map view.

Your lunch favourites stay in your browser (localStorage) and never reach us.

For visit statistics we use self-hosted Plausible: it sets no cookies and collects no personal data.

Why

We use your address only to send you the emails you chose and to understand which ads bring readers to us. The legal basis is your consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)). We never sell or share your address. How we measure opens and clicks is in the next section.

Your name and birthday

After you sign up, and on the "Manage subscription" page, you can tell us your first name and your birthday. Of the birthday we keep only the day and the month; we never ask for the year. Both are optional: without them you get the same emails.

We use your first name to greet you in our emails ("Hi Mari!") and your birthday to send you a birthday greeting. On your birthday you may also get offers from local places. In the daily news we only say how many readers have a birthday today, never who. With your name and birthday we store the consent text you saw and the time.

The legal basis is your consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)). You can change or delete your name and birthday any time on the "Manage subscription" page (the link is at the bottom of every email). We never share them with anyone, also not with the places whose offers we send. When your subscription is deleted, we delete your name and birthday too.

Opens and clicks in our emails

In the weekly letter and in the daily news and daily lunch emails we measure, per recipient, whether the email was opened and which links were clicked. An open is reported by a tiny invisible image loaded from saarekiri.com when the email's images load; the links in the email pass through saarekiri.com before they reach their destination. We also store the time, the type of mail client (for example "Apple Mail proxy" or "Gmail") and the email's language.

We do not store your IP address, only a salted one-way hash of it, kept for 30 days to tell bots and link scanners from people. Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads images automatically; we flag those opens as automatic.

Links to saarekiri.com carry utm_source=saarekiri, utm_medium=email and utm_campaign=… so that our own site statistics know the visit came from the email.

We do this on the basis of legitimate interest (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)): to see which stories and links readers find useful and to make the letter better. We build no advertising profiles, and we never sell or share this data. We do not use Mailgun's tracking: the measuring is our own and the data stays in our database in Estonia (EU).

Per-person open and click records are deleted after 13 months; only the totals per email are kept.

If you do not want your emails measured, click "Don't track me" at the bottom of any letter. After that your emails come without the image and with plain links. You can also write to the address below. Test emails, confirmation emails and welcome emails are never measured.

Usage statistics

To see whether and how the site is used, we count page views and clicks to other sites (a story's source or a restaurant's website, say). We do this without cookies and without storing anything on your device. When a page opens, the site sends our server a short note: the page type and its address (without the query), the language, the name of the site you came from (for example "www.facebook.com") and the ad tags (utm) if the link had them; when you click a link to another site, that site's name.

Our server derives an anonymous visitor number from your IP address and browser type that changes every day, so the same person cannot be recognised from one day to the next. The IP address is not stored. The counts go to our own analytics system, Hernas Events, run by the same team on the company's server. There are no advertising or third-party trackers on the site.

Links to other sites carry utm_source=saarekiri, utm_medium=website and utm_campaign=… so that site knows the visitor came from Saarekiri. These tags contain nothing about you.

The text of searches is stored so we can improve what people find; it is not linked to you.

For how long

Until you unsubscribe. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link and a link to your subscription settings, where you can switch each email on or off. After you unsubscribe we keep the address marked "unsubscribed" so we never write to you by mistake; we delete it if you ask.

Recommendations in Facebook groups

In public Saaremaa Facebook groups people often ask whom to recommend (a plumber or an electrician, say), and others answer in the comments. We read the comments of these public posts to build a list of the island's businesses and tradespeople that people recommend.

We store the commenter's name and the link to their Facebook profile or page as shown with the comment, the comment's text and time, and the link to the post. When a comment recommends someone by name, we store that person's name, trade and contact as written in the comment.

We do this on the basis of legitimate interest (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)): so that people on the island can find a good tradesperson. Only the Saarekiri team sees this data; the AI service Claude (Anthropic) also reads the comments with the commenter's name on our behalf, to find the businesses recommended in them. We keep the comments with the name and link as an archive of these public posts; we delete them if you ask.

If you do not want your comments used this way, or you want us to remove your comment or your name from the list of recommended people, write to the address below.

The business directory and the "Add your business" form

We are building a directory of the businesses, organisations and tradespeople of Saaremaa, Muhu and Ruhnu. It is based on public data: the open data of the Estonian Business Register (Centre of Registers and Information Systems, RIK), OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) and Visit Saaremaa, plus recommendations in public Facebook groups (previous section) and what businesses send us themselves. A business appears on the site only after we have checked it.

When you send the "Add your business" form, we store the link, the name and the text you wrote, the form's language and the time, your browser type and a one-way hash of your IP address (to stop abuse; we do not store the IP address itself). When the link leads to a normal website, we read that page once; we never open Facebook or Instagram pages. The AI service Claude (Anthropic) reads the text you sent and the page on our behalf and turns it into the business's description and contacts. Only the business's details (name, trade, description, contacts, address, opening hours) go into the directory, and only after the Saarekiri team has checked them.

We do this on the basis of legitimate interest (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)): so that people on the island and visitors can find local businesses. We keep the form's data for as long as the business is listed. If you want your business or your data removed from the directory, write to the address below and we delete it.

When you report a mistake on a business page, we store what is wrong, your note, the time and the day's anonymous visitor number (to stop abuse). When you ask for a sign-in link to manage a business, we send it only to the business's confirmed address; if you leave your own address and a note instead, only the Saarekiri team sees them.

Cookies: the site has one cookie, and only for business owners. When an owner signs in with the link we email them, we store the cookie sk_owner in their browser (httpOnly, 30 days) so they can change their business's details. Signing out deletes it. Other visitors get no cookies.

Your rights

You can ask at any time what data we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, and withdraw your consent. If you think we break your rights, you can complain to the Estonian Data Protection Inspectorate (aki.ee).