Who
State of the Future Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, publishes this site. Questions and requests about your data go to lawrence@stateofthefuture.io.
The public pages
No cookies, no analytics, no tracking scripts, no third-party requests when a page loads. The site is served by Cloudflare, which keeps standard server logs (IP address, page requested, time) for a short period to run and protect the service. The newsletter sign-up button opens Substack, whose own privacy policy applies from there.
The members' edition
If you sign in, this is what happens with your email address:
- Checking your subscription. Paid subscriptions are billed by Substack through Stripe. The site asks Stripe whether your address has a live subscription, using a key that can only read; it cannot charge you or change anything. A list of subscribed addresses is kept in Cloudflare's storage and refreshed daily so sign-in is quick.
- Sending the sign-in link. The one-time link is emailed through Resend, from servers in the European Union. Resend keeps delivery logs for a short period.
- Staying signed in. One cookie,
sotf_member, holds your email address in signed form for 30 days. It is strictly necessary for the service, which is why there is no cookie banner. Sign out removes it. - The weekly digest. Paid subscribers get a Monday email of what changed. Every digest carries a one-click link to stop it; stopping the digest does not affect your access.
The legal basis for all of this is the contract you have as a paid subscriber: you pay for the members' edition, and the above is what it takes to let you in. Nothing is sold, shared for advertising or used to profile you.
Where it is held, and for how long
Cloudflare processes requests at its edge worldwide, with the data above held in its key-value storage. Stripe holds your billing record under its own terms, which you accepted when subscribing on Substack. Resend holds email logs in the EU. The subscriber list on this site is rebuilt daily from Stripe, so an address disappears from it within a day of a subscription ending. Sign-in tokens last 15 minutes. Digest opt-outs are kept so you are not emailed again.
Your rights
You can ask what is held about you, have it corrected or deleted, or object to its use, by emailing the address above. Deleting your subscription data means cancelling the subscription on Substack, since that is where the record lives. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Changes
This notice was written on 2 November 2026 and will be updated here if anything above changes.