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MYSTERIOUS GALAXIES

Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information Mysterious Galaxies collects when you visit the site, why, and what choices you have. Mysterious Galaxies is a personal video-essay project run by Todd O’Rourke, at mysteriousgalaxies.com.

Comments

When you leave a comment on an episode or essay, the site stores the name, email address, and website you enter in the comment form, together with the comment itself. It also records the IP address and browser user agent of the device you comment from, which helps detect spam. Your email address is not shown publicly, and commenter avatars are not displayed, so no request is made to an outside avatar service.

If you leave a comment, you can choose to save your name, email, and website in a cookie so you do not have to retype them next time. That choice is yours, and the cookie stays on your device.

Cookies and local storage

The site does not use advertising cookies. The following may be stored on your device:

  • Google Analytics cookies (their names begin with “_ga”) that hold an anonymous identifier so returning visits can be counted. The analytics section below has more detail.
  • The comment cookie described above, only if you opt in.
  • Your Night or Day reading preference, saved as a single value (“mg-reading”) in your browser’s local storage. It stays on your device and is not sent back to the site.

Embedded video

Episode pages show a still image in place of each YouTube video and load the player only after you click it. Until you click, YouTube receives no request from your visit and sets no cookies. When you play a video, it loads through youtube-nocookie.com, which is YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, and from that point YouTube and Google collect data under their own terms. See the Google Privacy Policy for details.

Fonts, analytics, and third parties

The site’s fonts are served from this domain rather than an outside font network, so viewing a page does not share your visit with a font provider.

The site uses Google Analytics to measure how many people visit and which pages they read. Google Analytics sets cookies and receives information about your visit, including the pages you view, your approximate location, your device and browser type, and how you reached the site. This is used in aggregate to improve the site, not to identify you. Google Analytics uses your IP address to estimate location but does not store it. Google processes this data under the Google Privacy Policy. You can opt out on every site by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

The site is also connected to Google Search Console, which reports how the site appears in Google Search. It draws on Google’s own search records and does not collect anything extra from your visit.

Affiliate links

Some essays and episodes include affiliate links to books, currently through Bookshop.org for print and Libro.fm for audiobooks. If you follow one of these links and buy something, the channel may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The links are disclosed where they appear on the page. When you click one, you are handed off to the retailer or its affiliate network, which may set a cookie to credit the referral and which handles your visit and any purchase under its own terms and privacy policy. Mysterious Galaxies does not receive your payment or account details from these purchases.

Server logs and security

The web host keeps standard server access logs, which include IP addresses and requested pages, for operation and security. Caching and security features on the host may process this information to keep the site running and to block abuse.

How long information is kept

Comments and their metadata are kept indefinitely so that follow-up comments can be recognized and threaded. You can ask to have your comments and the associated data removed at any time.

Google Analytics data is held by Google for the retention period set in the site’s analytics configuration.

Your rights

You can request a copy of the personal information the site holds about you, which is mainly the comments you have left, or ask for it to be corrected or deleted. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the GDPR or the CCPA. To make a request, use the contact route below.

Contact

For any question about this policy or your data, reach Todd O’Rourke through the about page or at toddmorourke.com/contact.

Changes to this policy

This policy may change as the site changes. The date below shows when it was last updated.

Last updated 5 July 2026.