Privacy

No account, and nothing we run tries to work out who you are. What we keep is a count of which products people click through to buy, and where the visit came from. The advertising and analytics tools from Google, Meta and Microsoft are another matter, and each is described below.

What we never record

We do not store your IP address, your browser's user-agent string, or any account or contact detail — there is no account to make. There is no Google Analytics.

This page used to say there was no heatmap and no session recording. As of 29 September 2026 that is no longer true, and the sentence has been changed rather than quietly dropped — see Session recording and heatmaps below.

One exception, and it is Google's advertising tag. Because this site runs advertisements, it loads Google's tag (googletagmanager.com) on every page so that a click through to a retailer can be reported back to Google Ads as a conversion. That tag is Google's code, not ours; it sets its own cookies and Google's own privacy policy governs what it does with them. It is one of three third-party scripts on the site; the other two, Meta's pixel and Microsoft Clarity, each have their own section below.

What we do record, and when

One row, at the moment you click a link out to a retailer. It holds which product you clicked, which route you took (the maker's own site or Amazon), the website you arrived from, and the country your request came from as your network reports it. Nothing is written while you browse.

Advertising clicks carry an identifier

If you reach this site from a paid advertisement, the advertising network adds a per-click identifier to the address — Google calls it gclid, and sends gbraid or wbraid instead on some Apple devices. We read it from the address you arrived on, hold it for the rest of your visit in your own browser's session storage, and store it on the click row if you go on to click through to a retailer.

What it is used for: attributing an advertising click to an outbound click. It is the only way to tell whether an advertisement we paid for led to anyone actually clicking through to buy something, rather than guessing. It is not used to build a profile, it is not combined with anything else we hold, and it is never sold or shared.

How long it is kept: the identifier is deleted after 90 days. A nightly job clears it from every click row older than that. The click itself stays, with the advertising campaign it belongs to, because a count of clicks per campaign names a channel and not a person — but the per-click identifier is gone, and with it any route back to an individual visit.

We also read the campaign labels an advertisement may add (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content). These name the advertisement and the search term it was shown against. They are kept, because they are what campaign reporting is made of, and they carry no identifier.

Conversion reporting

When you click through to Amazon from this site, two things are recorded. One is our own click row, described above. The other is a conversion event sent to Google Ads, which tells Google that an advertising click led to someone clicking through to buy. It carries only which conversion it is — not the product you clicked, and nothing about you. (This sentence used to say it carried the product; the event stopped carrying it, and the page is corrected rather than left wrong.) It is sent only for clicks through to Amazon — not for clicks to a maker's own shop — because that is what the advertisement is being measured against.

Meta pixel

As of 8 October 2026 this site loads the Meta pixel (connect.facebook.net), Meta's advertising measurement code, on every page. We use it to find out whether advertisements we run on Facebook and Instagram lead to anyone clicking through to buy.

What it sends to Meta: a page view each time a page loads, and one event, named BuyClick, when you click a link out to a retailer, carrying only which route you took (Amazon or the maker's own shop). It sends no price, no product and nothing you type. As with any request your browser makes, Meta also receives the address of the page, the site you came from, your browser and device details and your IP address, and the pixel sets Meta's own cookie (_fbp). If you are logged in to Facebook or Instagram in the same browser, Meta can connect these events to your account.

What it does not do: we have switched off Meta's automatic advanced matching, both in the pixel's settings and in the code, so it is never given your email address, phone number or name, and it does not scan the page for them.

Opting out: you can stop Meta using activity from sites like this one to show you advertisements in Your activity off Meta technologies and in your ad preferences; an ad or tracker blocker will stop the pixel loading at all. What Meta does with the data it receives is governed by Meta's privacy policy.

Session recording and heatmaps

This site uses Microsoft Clarity. It records how pages are used — where a pointer moves, what is clicked or tapped, how far a page is scrolled, and the sequence of pages in a visit — and replays that as an anonymous session, alongside aggregate heatmaps showing where people click and how far they read. We use it to find out where a page confuses people or hides the thing they came for.

Everything you type is masked. Every field on this site that accepts typed text carries an explicit masking attribute: the Black Friday reminder email, the price-watch email, and every box on the tip form. Masked text is replaced with asterisks before the recording leaves your browser, so the recording never contains your email address or anything else you wrote. Filter checkboxes on the shop page are not masked, because ticking "cast iron" is not personal data.

Clarity is Microsoft's product, it sets its own cookies, and what it collects is held by Microsoft under their privacy statement. That is a genuine addition to what leaves this site, which is why it has its own section here instead of a line in a list.

Retailers

When you click through to Amazon or to a maker's own shop you are on their site under their terms, and what they record is theirs — including, for Amazon, the affiliate tag that tells them the visit came from here. See our affiliate disclosure for how that works.

Questions

If you want to know what is held against a particular advertising click, the identifier in the address you arrived on is the only handle that exists, and it stops existing after 90 days.