What I collect, and why
Bullpen is a project I build in public. It has no accounts or sign-in yet, so I hold nothing about you by name. If you accept, two analytics tools measure how the site is used. If you don’t, they never load.
Last updated 1 October 2026
What I collect
Nothing, until you choose. If you accept, these two tools run on the landing site and in the trading app:
- Google Analytics 4 records the pages you view and a few interactions, listed below, along with technical details such as your browser, device type, where you came from and an approximate location.
- Microsoft Clarity records how you move around a page: clicks, scrolling and mouse movement, shown to me as heatmaps and session recordings. What you type into form fields is masked, so it is not recorded.
Besides page views, I send four kinds of event: which part of the series you open, which parts of the architecture explorer you move between, which decision you open, and which other site a link takes you to. For that last one I send only the site’s host name, never the full address. No event carries your name, an email address or anything you typed.
Why
I want to know how the site is used: which parts of the series people read, whether the architecture explorer makes sense, and where a page breaks on a phone. I use it to fix things and decide what to write next.
Cookies
Neither tool sets a cookie before you accept. My own cookie is written when you make a choice, and not before.
| Cookie | Set by | What for | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
bullpen_consent | Bullpen (me) | Remembers whether you accepted or rejected analytics. | 6 months |
_ga | Google Analytics | Tells visitors apart. | 2 years |
_ga_<container id> | Google Analytics | Keeps the state of your session. | 2 years |
_clck | Microsoft Clarity | Keeps a pseudonymous visitor ID. | 1 year |
_clsk | Microsoft Clarity | Joins your page views into one session recording. | 1 day |
Clarity also sets a few cookies on Microsoft’s own domains (CLID, ANONCHK, MR, MUID and SM). I can’t read or delete those from this site; your browser’s cookie settings can. Microsoft describes MUID as a cookie used across its sites for advertising, among other things. I tell Clarity that advertising storage is denied, and I don’t use Clarity for advertising.
Advertising is off
For Google, ad_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization are always denied, and Google signals and ad personalization are switched off. Only analytics_storage changes, and only when you accept. For Clarity, advertising storage is denied too.
Changing your choice
Use Cookie settings in the footer of any page, here or in the trading app. It reopens the choice. If you withdraw, both tools stop, I delete the cookies of theirs that this site can reach, and the page reloads without them. Cookies on Microsoft’s domains stay until your browser clears them.
The tools’ own policies
Google and Microsoft handle the data they receive under their own terms: Google’s privacy policy and Microsoft’s privacy statement.
Questions
If you have a question, or want something looked at, reach me through my site.