Privacy

Last updated September 7, 2026

Who we are

Philomath is run by Philomath Press, which is the data controller for everything described here. If you want to reach a person about any of this, write to phillip@philomath.press and it will reach Phillip Compeau directly.

What we collect, and why

If you join our mailing list

We collect your email address, and your first and last name if you give them. We use them to tell you when a course is starting and when we announce a new one, which is what you agreed to when you ticked the box. You have to tick that box yourself, and we then send a confirmation email that you have to click before you are added, so nobody ends up on the list by accident or because somebody else typed their address.

If you become a member

We collect your name and email address, and a record of what you subscribed to and when. Payments are handled by Memberful and Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe and never touch our servers, so we never see or store a card number.

When you simply read the site

Our host records ordinary server logs, and Google Analytics records which pages are visited and roughly where in the world visitors are. Analytics is aggregate: we use it to see which courses people care about, not to build a profile of you.

Cookies and browser storage

We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, and there is nobody buying this data from us. What the site actually stores is:

• Login cookies (pml_session, pml_member, pml_name), set only if you log in as a member. They keep you logged in and let the page greet you by name. They expire after 24 hours.
• Referral and campaign values, stored in your browser under keys beginning phl_ for 90 days. These record which link brought you here, so that an instructor who introduced you to a course is credited and paid. They hold a campaign name, not anything about you.
• Google Analytics (property G-NQCV2KQ5JE), which sets its own cookies to count returning visits.

Videos are embedded through YouTube's no-cookie domain and load nothing from YouTube until you press play.

Who else sees your data

Only the companies that run parts of this service for us, and only so that they can run them:

• Mailchimp, for the mailing list.
• Memberful and Stripe, for memberships and payments.
• Vercel, which hosts this site.
• Google Analytics, for the visit statistics above.
• Discord, if you choose to join the member community, under Discord's own privacy policy.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing. These companies are based in the United States, so your data is processed there under the standard contractual clauses their terms provide.

How long we keep it

Mailing list details stay until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. Membership and payment records are kept while you are a member and then for as long as our accounting and tax obligations require. Analytics data expires on Google's own schedule.

Your rights

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, the GDPR gives you the right to ask for a copy of what we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to how we use it, and to withdraw your consent at any time. California residents have comparable rights under the CCPA. We extend all of this to everyone, wherever you live, because keeping two standards would be sillier than keeping one.

Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link, which is the fastest way to withdraw consent. For anything else, email phillip@philomath.press and we will answer within 30 days. You will not be asked why.

If you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to your national data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office.

Children

Philomath is meant for adults, and our courses are not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect their data. Our pre-college programs run through Carnegie Mellon University and are covered by the university's own policies, not this one.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that matters, we will change the date at the top, and we will say so on the mailing list rather than quietly editing it.