Privacy Policy - blockcritics.com

Last updated: 19 August 2026

This policy explains what information Blockcritics collects when you visit blockcritics.com, why we collect it, and what control you have over it. Blockcritics is an independent publication covering blockchain and web3 technology. We are the controller of the personal data described below.

If you have a question about anything here, write to legal@blockcritics.com.

Information you give us

Contact and tip submissions

If you send us a message through a form on this site, we receive the name, email address and message content you enter. We use this only to respond to you and, where relevant, to follow up on a story. Form submissions are stored in our website database and are also delivered to us by email.

Comments

If you leave a comment on an article, WordPress stores the name, email address and website you provide, along with the comment content, your IP address and your browser user-agent string. This is standard WordPress behaviour and helps us detect spam.

Comments are screened by Akismet, an automated anti-spam service operated by Automattic. To do this, Akismet receives the comment content and the associated metadata, including your IP address. If your comment is judged to be spam it may be held or discarded.

If you use an email address registered with Gravatar, a hashed version of that address may be sent to the Gravatar service so your avatar can be displayed alongside your comment.

Newsletter and alerts

If you subscribe to our newsletter or alerts, we store the email address you provide so we can send you the updates you asked for. Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link, and you can also ask us to remove you at any time by writing to legal@blockcritics.com.

Information collected automatically

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand which articles are read and how people arrive at the site. Google Analytics sets cookies and receives information including your IP address, the pages you view, your approximate location, and details about your device and browser. We use this in aggregate; we do not use it to identify individual readers. Google’s handling of this data is governed by its own privacy policy.

We also use Google Site Kit, which connects this site to Google services such as Analytics and Search Console.

Server logs and caching

Our host records standard web server logs, which include IP addresses, requested URLs, timestamps and user-agent strings. These are used for security, troubleshooting and abuse prevention. We use LiteSpeed Cache to serve pages faster, which may set cookies necessary for the caching and optimisation of the site.

Language preference

If you select a language, a cookie may be set to remember that choice on future visits.

Your cookie choices

When you first visit blockcritics.com you are asked to make a choice about cookies. Nothing optional is switched on before you decide: analytics, functionality and advertising cookies all start in a denied state, and we only enable the categories you agree to. If you ignore the banner, they stay off.

The banner offers four categories:

Strictly Necessary — required for the site to work, and cannot be switched off. This includes the cookie that remembers your cookie choice.
Performance — Google Analytics, so we can see which articles are read. Off unless you allow it.
Functionality — remembering preferences such as your language.
Targeting or Advertising — we do not currently run advertising cookies. The control is there so your preference is already recorded if that ever changes.

Technically this is implemented with Google Consent Mode, which means the Google tag on the page respects your decision rather than simply being told about it afterwards.

Changing your mind

You can change or withdraw your choices at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer of every page. That reopens the same preference panel with your current settings, and saving there takes effect immediately.

Your choice is stored in a cookie named bc_consent on your own device for 180 days, after which we will ask again. Clearing your browser cookies also clears it, and the banner will reappear on your next visit.

Third parties who receive data

Some of your data is necessarily processed by the services that make this site work:

Hostinger — our web host, which stores the site and its database and records server logs.
Google — Analytics and Site Kit, as described above.
Automattic — Akismet spam filtering and Gravatar avatars.
Google Fonts and a font icon CDN — these are loaded from external servers, which means your IP address is visible to them when a page loads.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers for their own marketing purposes.

How long we keep data

Comments and their metadata are kept indefinitely so that follow-up replies remain readable in context. Contact and tip submissions are kept for as long as they are useful to the story or the conversation, and are deleted on request. Newsletter subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe. Analytics data is retained according to the settings in our Google Analytics property.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to certain processing, or to withdraw consent you previously gave. Readers in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom have these rights under the GDPR; readers in California have comparable rights under the CCPA.

To exercise any of these, email legal@blockcritics.com. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and you can opt out of Google Analytics using Google’s browser add-on.

Children

This site is intended for a general and professional audience. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS and we take reasonable measures to protect the information we hold. No website can promise perfect security, and we cannot guarantee that transmissions to or from this site are completely secure.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the site changes or as the services we rely on change. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page. Significant changes will be noted on the page itself.

Contact

Questions, requests and complaints about privacy should go to legal@blockcritics.com.