Privacy

Last changed 9 October 2026

Keeping Up With BGA is the student newspaper of the British-Georgian Academy in Tbilisi, and is run by its student newsroom. Most of its readers are at school, so the site was built to work without knowing who they are.

The short version

• There are no reader accounts. You never give the site your name, email or phone number to read it.
• There is no advertising and no advertising tracker, and nothing about readers is sold or passed on.
• Readers are counted, not followed.
• If you choose a class for the week’s race between the classes, that number (1 to 12) is sent with each story you open, and kept on your own device. It is a class, not a person.
• If you are in a photograph or a story and want it taken down, ask and it will be.

Counting readers

When a page is opened, the site records which page it was, the time, whether it was a phone, a tablet or a computer, and the name of the site you came from, if there was one. Some buttons are counted the same way when they are pressed.

To tell one reader from another within a single day, your network address and browser name are mixed with a secret and that day’s date into a short code. The address itself is not stored. The code cannot be turned back into an address, and it changes every day, so a visit on Tuesday cannot be matched to one on Monday. These counts are what editors see when they ask how a story did, and they are kept as long as the paper is.

What is kept in your own browser

• Light or dark. Which edition you chose, so the page does not flash white on the way in.
• What you have read. When you last had the paper open and which stories you opened, so the “new” badges are right. This stays on your device and is never sent to the site.
• Reactions. The first time you press a reaction under a story, a cookie with a random number is set. It only stops the same browser pressing the same button twice. It lasts about a year.
• The poll. After you vote, a cookie remembers that this browser has voted. It is not linked to your slip or to what you chose.

None of these is used to follow you between sites. Clearing your browser’s data removes all of them.

Notifications

If you turn notifications on, your browser gives the site an address at its maker’s own notification service (Apple, Google or Mozilla) and a pair of keys to seal messages with. The site keeps those and nothing else: no name, and no record of which notifications you opened. A message travels through that service to reach you. Turning notifications off deletes the address at once.

The time capsule

A capsule is locked in your own browser before it is sent, with a code that browser makes and shows only to you. The site receives the locked letter, a fingerprint of the code that cannot be turned back into it, the class you chose and the day the capsule opens. Nobody at the paper can read what you wrote, and nobody can recover the code if you lose it. The same one-day code described above is kept with a capsule, only so that one browser cannot seal hundreds. Nothing ties a capsule to a person, so to have yours deleted, ask on the report page: you will be asked for the code, the only thing that tells your capsule from anybody else’s.

The poll

A vote is cast with the code on a paper slip. The site keeps a scrambled form of each code and whether it has been used, and a total for each choice, overall and for each ten minutes of the poll, so that how it moved can be told afterwards. There is no record of a single vote, no time beside any slip, and nothing that says who was handed which slip.

A vote on a paper slip is cast together with your school email address. The site keeps only a scrambled mark that the address has voted, so that it cannot vote twice. The mark is not kept beside the vote, and nothing links it to what you chose.

If you ask for a slip by email, the letter is sent to your school address through a mail service, Resend. The site keeps only a scrambled mark that the address has had its slip, so that it cannot have two: not the address, and not which code was sent to it.

Writing to the editors

What you send from the report page is kept and passed to the chief editor on Telegram: the reason you chose, the page, what you wrote, and a way to answer you if you decided to leave one. That contact is erased when the report is closed. The same one-day code described above is kept with the report, only so that one browser cannot send hundreds.

The camera and the voice

The poster camera asks to use your camera so that it can find a printed poster in front of it. The picture is worked on inside your phone and never leaves it. “Listen” reads a story aloud with your device’s own voice.

People in the paper

Stories name students and staff, and photographs show them, because that is what a school newspaper is. If you (or, for a younger student, your parent or guardian) want a photograph, a name or a mention removed, write to luka.makhatadze@bga.ge or use the form. You do not have to give a reason.

Editors

Students who write for the paper are known to it by their Telegram account: its number and username, the name and year they gave, and, if they chose, a line about themselves and a portrait for their page. An editor who signs in to the desk in a browser has a password, of which only a scrambled form is kept, and a sign-in cookie. An editor who leaves can ask the chief editor to remove their page.

Other companies

• Hosting. The site runs on Vercel and its database is kept by Neon. Like any web host, they handle your network address in order to send you the page.
• Telegram. Stories and photographs are filed through Telegram and stored there. Your browser receives them from this site, not from Telegram.
• Instagram and YouTube. A page that shows an Instagram post loads it from Instagram. A YouTube film is loaded only when you press play, from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced address. Each of them then sees your visit under its own policy, as it does for any link you follow off this site.

Asking about your data

Because there are no accounts, the site usually holds nothing that can be traced to you. If you believe it does (a report you sent, a photograph, a mention) and you want to see it, correct it or have it deleted, write to luka.makhatadze@bga.ge or use the form.

Changes

When the site begins to keep something it did not keep before, this page is changed first and the date at the top with it. See also the terms of use.