Last updated 13 September 2026.
Materials Lab is a personal science blog at materials101.science. It is not a company and it does not sell anything. This page sets out, plainly, what the site collects, why, and what you can do about it.
The short version
- You can read every page on this site without giving any personal information.
- If you leave a comment or subscribe to the newsletter, you give me your name and email on purpose, and I keep them only to do that job.
- Nothing is sold, rented or shared with advertisers.
Comments
When you leave a comment, the form collects the name, email address and (optionally) website you type in, plus your IP address and browser user-agent string. The IP and user-agent are used only for spam detection.
An anonymised string created from your email address (a hash) may be sent to the Gravatar service to check whether you have a profile picture. Gravatar’s own privacy policy is at automattic.com/privacy. Once your comment is approved, your profile picture — if you have one — is visible beside your comment.
Comments and their metadata are kept indefinitely so that follow-up replies still make sense in context. You can ask me to delete yours at any time.
Newsletter
If you subscribe, your email address and the date you subscribed are stored by the email provider that sends the newsletter, and used only to send it. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link; unsubscribing removes you from the list. I do not share the list with anyone.
Cookies
This site does not use advertising or tracking cookies.
- If you leave a comment, you may opt in to saving your name, email and website in cookies so you do not have to retype them. These last one year and are entirely for your convenience.
- If you log in (only I do), WordPress sets session and preference cookies.
- The hosting provider may set a cookie used for page caching and security.
You can clear or block cookies in your browser at any time. Nothing on this site stops working if you do, except the comment convenience above.
Embedded content from other sites
Posts may embed content — a video, a dataset viewer, a paper link. Embedded content from another website behaves exactly as if you had visited that website directly: it can collect data about you, use cookies and track your interaction with it, under its own policy, not this one.
Server logs
The web host keeps standard access logs — IP address, time, page requested, browser — for security and troubleshooting. These are retained for a limited period by the host and are not used to build any profile of you.
Analytics and search
The site is registered with search engine webmaster tools (for example Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools), which report aggregate search data about the site. They do not identify individual visitors to me. If site analytics are added in future, this page will be updated before they go live.
Who your data is shared with
Only the services needed to run the site: the web host, the spam filter, the email provider for the newsletter, and Gravatar as described above. No one else. Nothing is sold.
Your rights
You can ask me for a copy of any personal data I hold about you, ask me to correct it, or ask me to erase it. Email the address on the Contact page and I will do it. There is no charge and I do not need a reason.
Children
This site is aimed at students, researchers and engineers. It is not directed at children under 13 and I do not knowingly collect their information.
Changes to this policy
If what the site collects changes, this page changes first. The date at the top tells you when it last did.