Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 17, 2026

This page explains what personal data samsteppe.com collects, why, and what rights visitors have regarding it.

Who is responsible for this data

This site is operated by Sam Steppe. Any question about data collected here, or any request to access, correct, or delete it, can be sent through the contact form.

What is collected, and why

Using the contact form:
The name, email address, and message submitted are sent to the site operator’s inbox in order to reply. This is processed under legitimate interest — responding to a message a visitor has chosen to send. The form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, a privacy-friendly bot-detection check that runs on submission; it does not track visitors across other websites.

Leaving a comment:
The name, email address, and comment text submitted are stored to display the comment, also under legitimate interest — displaying a comment the visitor has chosen to post publicly. Comments are checked by Antispam Bee, a spam filter that runs locally on this site — no data is sent to a third party for this. Email addresses are never displayed publicly.

Simply visiting the site:
Like virtually every website, basic technical information (such as IP address) is logged by the hosting provider (Zoner, Finland) as a normal part of running and securing a website. This data is not accessed or used beyond that.

What this site doesn’t do

No analytics or tracking tools are used, no ads are run, and no data is shared with advertisers, sold, or traded.

How long data is kept

  • Contact form messages: kept in the site operator’s inbox until no longer needed for the conversation they relate to.
  • Comments: kept indefinitely as part of the public discussion, unless removal is requested.

Visitor rights

Because this site is based in Finland and subject to GDPR, visitors have the right to:

  • Ask what personal data is held about them
  • Request correction or deletion of that data
  • Request that a comment be withdrawn or anonymized

Any of these can be requested through the contact form.

A note on reasonable limits: These requests will be honored for data the site operator can directly access — the inbox and the comments section. Some data may briefly persist in automated backups, or in hosting and security logs maintained by third-party providers (such as the host or Cloudflare’s bot-protection service); this data ages out automatically as part of normal, routine operation and is not something the site operator can manually search or edit. This reflects GDPR’s own standard of reasonable effort, rather than an unlimited guarantee.

Changes to this policy

As new features are added to this site (analytics, cookie consent tools, membership features, etc.), this policy will be updated to reflect them.