Effective November 3, 2026.
This policy explains what CostPlain (costplain.com) collects, why, and the choices you have. CostPlain is an information site funded by advertising. For any privacy question, email contact@costplain.com.
What we collect
We do not offer accounts, comments, newsletters or purchases, so we do not ask for your name or payment details. If you email us, we keep your message and address only to answer you and to keep a record of corrections.
Like any website, our servers and our security provider receive technical data with each request, such as your IP address, browser type and the page you asked for. This is used to deliver the page, keep the site secure and fix errors.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which articles are useful. It sets cookies such as _ga and _ga_* and reports pages viewed, approximate location, device and how you arrived. We do not use it to identify you. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland it only runs after you accept it in the consent banner.
Advertising and Google AdSense
This site is funded by advertising, which may be served by Google AdSense and other ad partners. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your earlier visits to this and other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads based on those visits.
Ads can be personalized, based on your interests, or non-personalized, based only on the page you are reading and your general location. Where consent is required, personalized ads and advertising cookies are used only if you accept them; otherwise only non-personalized ads may be shown. You can opt out of personalized advertising in your Google ad settings, and learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/ads. You can also opt out of some third-party vendors’ use of cookies at aboutads.info.
We do not use affiliate links and we do not sell your personal information. Our cookie policy lists the cookies in more detail.
Your consent choice
Your choice in the consent banner is stored in your browser and asked again after a year. You can change it at any time through the Cookie settings link at the bottom of each page.
Hosting and security
Requests pass through Cloudflare, which protects the site and processes technical data such as your IP address. Our servers run on DigitalOcean. Server logs are kept only as long as needed for security and troubleshooting.
Children
This site is written for adults and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, including under the GDPR, the UK GDPR and California law, you may have the right to access, correct or delete your data, to object to or restrict its use, to withdraw consent, and to complain to your data protection authority. Email us and we will respond within 30 days.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we update the effective date above. Material changes are noted on this page.