Legal
Privacy Policy
How chaitanyalakamsani.com handles information — what is collected, what is not, and the choices available to you.
Last updated
In short
This is the personal website of an individual. It has no accounts, no forms, no comments, and no database. Nothing you type is collected here, because there is nowhere to type anything.
Two things do happen automatically: Google Analytics measures aggregate traffic and sets two cookies, and the hosting provider keeps standard server logs.
If you are in the EU, EEA, or the UK, analytics does not load until you accept it. You are asked first, and nothing belonging to Google runs — and no Google cookie is set — before you answer. One small first-party cookie records which country you are in, purely so the site knows whether it has to ask. You can change your decision at any time using Cookie Preferences in the footer.
Your theme preference (light or dark) is stored on your own device and is never sent anywhere. That is the whole picture; the rest of this page explains it precisely.
Who is responsible
This website (chaitanyalakamsani.com) is operated by Chaitanya Lakamsani, an individual residing in the State of Andhra Pradesh, India. This is a personal website. There is no company, organisation, or legal entity behind it.
For any privacy question, request, or grievance, contact contact@chaitanyalakamsani.com.
Your use of this website is also subject to the Terms of Service.
What is not collected
To be explicit about what this website does not do:
- No user accounts. There is no sign-up, no sign-in, and no profile.
- No forms. There is no contact form, no search box, no comment box, and no feedback widget anywhere on the site.
- No user-generated content. You cannot post, comment, or submit anything.
- No newsletter or mailing list. Your email address is never requested or collected.
- No file uploads.
- No database or server-side storage. The website is a set of pre-built static pages. There is no backend that stores information about you.
- No advertising, remarketing, ad-personalisation, or cross-device tracking.
- No selling or sharing of personal data. Information is never sold, rented, or traded.
What is collected automatically
Analytics
This website uses Google Analytics 4, a service provided by Google, to understand aggregate traffic — how many people visit, which pages are read, and roughly where visitors come from. It is used to decide what to write about next, nothing more.
Google Analytics processes:
- pages viewed, and the time and order in which they were viewed;
- the page or search engine that referred you;
- device type, operating system, browser, screen size, and language;
- an approximate geographic location (typically city or region level), derived from your IP address;
- a randomly generated identifier stored in the cookies described below, used to recognise repeat visits.
Your IP address is transmitted to Google as an unavoidable part of any internet request and is used to approximate your location. Google states that Google Analytics 4 does not log or store IP addresses.
Analytics loads only when all three of the following are true. If any one of them fails, no Google script is downloaded, no dataLayer is created, and no Google cookie is set:
- the site is deployed with a measurement ID configured;
- it is a production deployment — analytics is disabled entirely during development, so a measurement ID present on a developer's machine cannot record anything; and
- you are permitted to be measured — either your region does not require prior consent, or you have given it. See the next section.
I have not enabled Google Analytics advertising features, remarketing, or Google Signals. The data is used for aggregate measurement only, and no attempt is made to identify individual visitors.
Server logs
The website is hosted on Vercel. Like any web host, Vercel automatically records standard request information for the purposes of serving the site, diagnosing errors, and protecting against abuse. These logs typically include the IP address, user-agent string, requested URL, timestamp, and response status.
These logs are generated and controlled by the hosting provider as part of delivering the website. They are not used to build profiles of visitors.
Domain resolution
The domain is registered and its DNS managed through Cloudflare. Resolving chaitanyalakamsani.com to a server address necessarily involves DNS query metadata. No website content or personal data is processed by this step beyond what domain resolution requires.
Consent, and where it applies
Whether you are asked for consent depends on where you are.
If you are in the European Union, the wider European Economic Area (including Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein), or the United Kingdom, analytics cookies require your prior consent. You will see a banner offering Accept and Decline as two equally prominent, one-click choices. Neither is pre-selected. Until you choose, no Google script is loaded and no analytics cookie exists — analytics is not merely hidden or held back, the code that would load it is never run.
If you decline, nothing loads, and the site continues to work exactly as it does otherwise. Declining costs you no functionality whatsoever.
If you are anywhere else — including India, the United States, Canada, and Australia — analytics loads immediately without a banner, because the applicable rules in those places require disclosure (this page) rather than prior opt-in. You can still switch analytics off whenever you like, using Cookie Preferences in the footer; an explicit refusal is honoured everywhere, regardless of where you are.
If your country cannot be determined, the site assumes consent is required and asks you. This is deliberate: the safe failure is to ask someone who did not need to be asked, not to measure someone who should have been.
How your country is determined
The hosting network reports a two-letter country code with the incoming request, derived from the network address your browser connects from. That code — and nothing else — is stored in a short-lived cookie so the page can tell whether it needs to ask you. Your network address itself is not stored by me, and the country is used for one purpose only: deciding whether to request consent.
I deliberately do not use your browser language, timezone, or locale for this, because those describe a preference rather than a location — this site is published in four languages, and a Telugu or Spanish reader may be anywhere in the world. Nor do I ask for device location, which would be far more intrusive than the banner it would be deciding on.
Consent expiry and withdrawal
A consent decision lasts 12 months. After that it expires, is treated as though it had never been given, and — if you are in a region where consent is required — you will be asked again. This applies to a refusal as well as an acceptance, so neither answer becomes a permanent decision you cannot revisit.
You can change your mind at any time using the Cookie Preferences link in the footer of every page. It reopens exactly the same choice, in the same words, wherever in the world you are. Withdrawing consent is precisely as easy as giving it — one click in each direction, from the same control — which is deliberate.
When you withdraw consent, the analytics code stops for the rest of that page view and does not load on any subsequent page. Any _ga cookies already set by Google remain in your browser until they expire or you clear them; you can remove them immediately through your browser settings, and Google will receive nothing further from your visits regardless.
If you make a decision in one browser tab, other open tabs of this site follow it too.
Cookies
There are three cookies in total, and only one of them is set by this website itself.
| Cookie | Set by | Purpose | Duration | Needs consent? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
cl-country | This website | Stores a two-letter country code so the site knows whether it must ask you for analytics consent. Contains no identifier, no network address, and no timestamp — just the country code, or XX when it could not be determined | Session — deleted when you close your browser | No. Strictly necessary to operate the consent mechanism itself; without it the site could not tell whether consent is required |
_ga | Google Analytics | Distinguishes one visitor from another using a randomly generated identifier | 2 years | Yes, in the EU/EEA/UK |
_ga_<container-id> | Google Analytics | Maintains analytics session state | 2 years | Yes, in the EU/EEA/UK |
The two Google cookies are the only ones that carry an identifier, and in consent regions they do not exist until you accept. There are no advertising cookies, no session cookies, no login cookies, and no cross-site tracking cookies of any kind.
cl-country is set on every visit, including where consent is not required and including when analytics is switched off entirely — it is what makes the regional rule possible in the first place.
How to refuse or remove cookies
You are not required to accept the analytics cookies. You can:
- use Cookie Preferences in the footer to decline, or to withdraw a previous acceptance — the simplest route, available on every page, anywhere in the world;
- block or delete cookies through your browser settings, for this site specifically or in general;
- install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, which prevents Google Analytics from measuring your visits on any website;
- use your browser's private browsing mode, which discards cookies when the window is closed;
- enable a "Do Not Track" or tracking-protection feature, if your browser offers one.
Refusing analytics has no effect on the website. Every page works identically without it.
Browser storage
The website may store up to two items in your browser's local storage:
| Key | Value | Purpose | Written when |
|---|---|---|---|
theme | light or dark | Remembers the appearance you chose, so the site does not flash the wrong colours on your next visit | You choose Light or Dark |
analytics-consent | A small record holding your decision and the date it was made, for example {"decision":"rejected","at":1750000000000} | Remembers whether you accepted or declined analytics, and when — the date is what allows the decision to expire after 12 months | You choose Accept or Decline |
Neither is a cookie. Neither is ever transmitted to any server — they are readable only by this website, on your own device — and neither contains an identifier or any personal information. Your consent record is kept in local storage rather than in a cookie precisely so that it never travels over the network.
analytics-consent does not exist until you actually make a choice. Choosing the System theme option deletes the theme key entirely, and using Cookie Preferences deletes the consent record before asking you again. Clearing your browser's site data removes both.
Nothing else is written to local storage, and nothing at all is written to session storage or IndexedDB.
Fonts and external resources
The typefaces used on this site are downloaded at build time and served directly from this website's own domain. Your browser makes no request to Google Fonts or to any other font service, content delivery network, or external stylesheet.
Once analytics is running — which, in consent regions, means after you have accepted — the only third-party address your browser contacts is Google's analytics endpoint. Apart from that, every script, style, font, and image on this website is served from chaitanyalakamsani.com itself. Before consent, and if you decline, there is no third-party contact at all.
Third parties
The parties that may process information as a result of your visit are:
| Service | Role | What it handles |
|---|---|---|
| Google (Google Analytics 4) | Analytics provider | Analytics events and cookies described above |
| Vercel | Hosting provider | Serves the website; standard server logs |
| Cloudflare | Registrar and DNS | Domain resolution metadata |
Each operates under its own privacy policy. Because these providers operate globally, information handled by them may be processed on servers outside India, including in the United States and the European Union.
Links to other websites
This website links to other sites — including my own separate projects on subdomains such as cashledger.chaitanyalakamsani.com and calclab.chaitanyalakamsani.com, and to third-party sources cited in articles.
Separate projects have their own privacy policies and their own data practices. In particular, applications that offer accounts or store your data are covered by their own policies, not by this one. This policy applies only to chaitanyalakamsani.com.
I am not responsible for the content or privacy practices of any external website. This site sends a restrictive referrer policy with every page, which limits what other websites learn about where you came from when you follow a link.
Contacting me by email
Email addresses on this site are plain mailto: links. Clicking one opens your own email application — the website does not process, transmit, or store your message.
If you do email me, your message and address arrive in an ordinary mailbox. They are used only to read and reply to your message, kept no longer than needed for that correspondence and any record I may reasonably need to keep, and never added to any mailing list.
Retention
I do not operate a database and therefore hold no personal data about visitors myself.
- Analytics data is retained by Google for the period configured in the analytics property. Google Analytics 4 permits user-level and event-level data to be kept for either 2 or 14 months, after which it is deleted; aggregated reporting statistics may be retained by Google for longer.
- Server logs are retained by the hosting provider according to its own retention schedule.
- Email correspondence is retained in my mailbox for as long as it is relevant.
- Your theme preference and your consent decision stay on your device — I never receive either. The theme lasts until you change it or clear your browser data; the consent decision expires automatically after 12 months, after which it is discarded and you are asked again where consent is required.
- The
cl-countrycookie lasts only until you close your browser.
Security
The website is served exclusively over HTTPS with strict transport security enabled. It sends a set of protective response headers on every request, and denies access to device features it never uses, such as the camera, microphone, and location, as well as browser advertising-topics interfaces.
Because the site is a collection of static pages with no accounts, no forms, and no database, there is no store of visitor information that could be breached. No method of transmission over the internet is entirely secure, and no absolute guarantee can be given.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your personal data, including under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 in India and, for visitors in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulation. These commonly include the right to access your data, to have it corrected or erased, to object to or restrict its processing, to withdraw consent, and to complain to a supervisory authority.
To withdraw consent, use Cookie Preferences in the footer of any page. That is the fastest route and requires nothing from me.
Because this website holds no personal data itself, other requests generally need to be directed to the relevant provider:
- Analytics data is held by Google. You can prevent its collection entirely using the opt-out methods described above, or exercise your rights directly with Google.
- Server logs are held by the hosting provider.
- Email you have sent me is held by me, and I will action any request about it.
You are welcome to contact me at contact@chaitanyalakamsani.com with any question, request, or grievance about privacy, and I will help as far as I am able, including by directing you to the right provider.
Children
This website is intended for a general audience. It is not directed at children, and it does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, of any age — there is no mechanism on the site by which anyone could submit personal information.
Changes to this policy
This policy may be updated when the website changes or when the law requires it. The revision date at the top of this page always reflects the current version. Material changes will be reflected in that date; please check it from time to time.
Governing law
This policy is governed by the laws of India. Subject to applicable law, any dispute relating to it shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the competent courts having jurisdiction over the owner's place of residence in the State of Andhra Pradesh, India.
Language
This policy is written in English. If any translated version of this policy is published, it is provided for convenience only, and the English version governs in the event of any inconsistency or dispute.
Contact
Chaitanya Lakamsani Andhra Pradesh, India
Privacy and legal: contact@chaitanyalakamsani.com General enquiries: hello@chaitanyalakamsani.com