Privacy

Effective date: September 29, 2026.

Who we are

The Illustral is operated by Gerónimo Pérez, based in the Dominican Republic. This notice describes how we handle information when you visit our website or contact us.

For privacy questions or requests, email editorial@theillustral.com.

Information used to deliver the website

You can read The Illustral without creating an account. We do not currently offer reader accounts, comments, a contact form or a newsletter signup.

Hostinger provides our web hosting and content delivery services. When your browser requests a page or file, those services receive technical information, including your IP address and information about the request. Hosting and security systems may record request details to operate the website, diagnose problems and prevent abuse.

Our fonts are served from our own website. Some article images are served through Sanity's content delivery network. Loading those images sends your IP address and request information to that service. Sanity describes technical logging for operation and security in its Privacy Policy.

Article text is retrieved from our editorial system during website generation. Readers do not need access to the private editorial workspace.

Contacting us

Our editorial mailbox is hosted through Hostinger. When you email us, we receive your email address, displayed sender name, message, attachments and associated message details. We use that information to respond, assess a story suggestion, investigate a correction or handle the matter you raise.

Within The Illustral, mailbox access is currently limited to Gerónimo Pérez. This does not exclude the technical processing needed by the email provider and its authorized service providers to deliver, protect and maintain the service.

Emailing us does not subscribe you to marketing messages. Please send only information relevant to your enquiry. The mailbox is not a dedicated confidential reporting channel.

Retention and backups

Our retention policy is to keep routine enquiries for no more than 12 months after the matter is closed, with monthly reviews to remove messages and attachments that have reached that limit. Records needed for corrections, contracts, disputes or legal obligations may be retained for longer while that purpose remains valid; their continuing need is reviewed annually.

Deleting a message from the mailbox does not necessarily delete every provider backup or technical copy immediately. Hostinger has not confirmed to us a separate deletion period for individual messages and attachments in those systems.

Hostinger documents daily website backups retained for 7 days and weekly website backups retained for 6 weeks. These are website recovery periods, not email retention periods or a guarantee about every internal technical replica.

Hostinger Email access logs are available in its customer dashboard for 30 days. Dashboard availability does not establish the full retention period of all internal records. We have not received a single confirmed retention schedule covering Hostinger's internal web, CDN and security logs.

Optional analytics and your choice

We use Google Analytics 4 (GA4), provided by Google, to understand which pages readers visit and how the publication is used. Analytics is optional. We do not load Google's analytics tag or send analytics requests before you accept. If you reject analytics, the tag is not loaded and analytics data is not sent.

After acceptance, GA4 uses first-party cookies such as _ga and _ga_1XQ7FMNY7D to distinguish browsers and maintain session information. Requests to Google include technical information such as your IP address and browser information, along with the page's canonical address and cookie identifiers. This information is not described as completely anonymous. We do not send names, email addresses, message contents, URL query parameters, URL fragments or referring-page addresses to Analytics. The analytics context is separate from the page's links and forms.

We use this integration only for statistics. Advertising storage, advertising user data and advertising personalization remain denied, and Google signals are disabled. No additional Google Tag Manager container is installed.

Choose Accept analytics or Reject analytics in the notice. We store that choice in this browser's local storage under illustral.analytics.v1 for six months from your choice. This preference is used to remember your decision, including rejection. Analytics cookies are configured to expire no later than the remaining duration of that choice, without extending their expiry on visits. Cookie expiry and preference storage are separate from retention of data already received by Google; this notice does not claim a configured Google Analytics data-retention period.

You can change or withdraw your choice at any time using Privacy preferences in the footer and choosing Reject analytics. Withdrawal stops measurement and removes Analytics cookies accessible to this site. It does not automatically delete data already sent to Google. Clearing browser storage removes your saved choice; choices apply separately in each browser. If your browser cannot save the choice, analytics remains off on that page.

Security and advertising

The hosting provider may apply browser verification when security conditions require it. Such checks can use JavaScript and cookies to help distinguish ordinary visits from abusive traffic. Their use depends on security settings and traffic conditions. This is separate from advertising tracking. The provider has not supplied us with a universal cookie name or duration for these checks.

We plan to offer advertising space, but Google AdSense and other advertising services are not currently active. Before introducing advertising that changes the handling of visitor information, we will update this notice and implement the privacy choices required for those services.

Providers and international processing

Hostinger supplies hosting and email services. Sanity supplies our editorial content platform and image delivery. Google provides optional audience analytics when you accept it. These providers use infrastructure and authorized service providers in multiple countries, so information may be processed outside the Dominican Republic or your country of residence.

Their published terms describe data processing arrangements, subprocessors and transfer mechanisms where applicable. We do not represent that all information is stored in a single country.

Provider information is available in Hostinger's Privacy Policy, Hostinger's Data Processing Addendum, Sanity's Privacy Policy, Sanity's Data Processing Addendum and Sanity's Subprocessor List.

For Google's processing, see Google's Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

Those providers' own websites and account systems may have features that are not used on The Illustral's reader website.

Your privacy requests

You can contact us to ask what information we hold about you, request access or correction, or request deletion. Depending on the law applicable to your situation, you may also have rights to object to or restrict processing, withdraw consent where processing relies on it, or seek assistance from a competent authority or court.

We will assess requests under the applicable law and may ask for information reasonably necessary to verify that a request concerns you. Please do not send identity documents unless we request them through an appropriate process.

Where information must be retained for a legal obligation, an ongoing matter or the protection of legal rights, we will explain the relevant limitation. These requests can be sent to editorial@theillustral.com.

External links and changes

Our articles link to research and other source material. When you follow an external link, the destination's own privacy practices apply.

We will update this notice when our practices change and show the effective date when an updated version is published.