I’m Denise Travis, and Sagely Chic is a one-person operation. This page explains what happens to your information when you read the site, sign up for the newsletter, run your measurements through one of the calculators, or write to me.
I’ve kept it in plain English. Where it gets technical, that’s because being vague would have been less honest, not more. If anything here is unclear, email me at contact@sagelychic.com.
Who is responsible for your information
Sagely Chic (sagelychic.com) is owned and operated by me, from the United States. I decide what information this site collects and what happens to it, which under laws like the GDPR makes me the “data controller.”
Every privacy question, request, or complaint goes to the same place: contact@sagelychic.com.
What is collected when you simply read the site
Like every website, Sagely Chic runs on a server that keeps a log of requests. Those logs record your IP address, the browser and device you’re using, the page you asked for, the site that referred you if there was one, and the date and time. Nobody sits and reads them. They exist so the site can be kept online, kept fast, and protected from attacks.
The site also uses caching software (LiteSpeed Cache) so pages load quickly. It sets a small technical cookie so the correct version of a page reaches your browser. That cookie doesn’t identify you and isn’t used for advertising.
Analytics
I use Google Analytics 4, connected through the Google Site Kit plugin, to understand which posts people actually read. It shows me how many visitors arrive, which articles hold attention and which get abandoned halfway, roughly what part of the world readers are in, and whether the site behaves properly on phones. It tells me how many people read the wide-leg trousers guide last month. It does not tell me who they were.
Google Analytics sets cookies and processes this data on Google’s systems. What Google does with it is described in the Google Privacy Policy, and their explanation of how Analytics data is used by sites like mine is here. If you’d rather not be counted at all, Google publishes a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics on every site you visit.
Site Kit also connects this site to Google Search Console, which reports the search terms that led people here. Search Console data reaches me already aggregated and never identifies individual searchers.
Advertising
Advertising is what pays for this site. Nobody is charged to read it, and the ads are the reason that’s possible.
The ads you see here are placed by a third-party advertising company that acts as a service provider to this site, together with the advertising partners it works with. They collect and use certain data for advertising purposes, and they publish their own privacy statement describing how they handle it. That statement governs their practices and is linked from the advertising and privacy notices shown on the site.
What that means in practice
To select and measure ads, these companies use cookies, pixels, web beacons, and similar technology to collect information such as your IP address, approximate location, device type, browser, operating system, and the pages you look at here and on other websites. Some of the ads are interest-based, meaning they’re chosen using a profile assembled from browsing activity across many sites rather than anything you did on Sagely Chic alone. Advertising partners may also use techniques that recognise your browser by its characteristics rather than by a cookie, and may match a hashed, non-readable version of an email address where one has been provided.
I don’t receive that profile, and I’m not shown who you are. What reaches me is a revenue figure and a report of how ads performed on particular pages.
How to limit advertising tracking
- If you’re in the United States, use the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link at the bottom of the page. Selecting it restricts personalised advertising and related uses of your data. You’ll still see ads; they just won’t be chosen from a profile about you.
- Turn on Global Privacy Control in a browser or extension that supports it. That signal is recognised here and treated as a valid opt-out request.
- Adjust the interest categories Google associates with your browser at My Ad Center.
- Use the industry-wide opt-out tools: the DAA WebChoices tool, the Network Advertising Initiative, YourAdChoices, or, in Europe, Your Online Choices.
- On a phone or tablet, your device settings include their own controls for limiting ad tracking.
One irritating quirk worth knowing: most of these opt-outs are themselves stored in a cookie. Clear your cookies and you clear the opt-out along with them, and you’ll need to set it again.
The newsletter
If you subscribe, I collect your email address and, where the form asks for it, your first name. Sign-up forms appear in a few places on the site, including one that pops up while you’re reading.
That address is used for one thing: sending you the newsletter. The list is hosted by MailerLite on my behalf, and MailerLite records basic delivery information such as whether an email was opened and whether a link was clicked, so I can tell whether what I’m sending is worth anyone’s time. Their handling of it is covered by the MailerLite privacy policy.
Your email address is not passed to other companies for their own marketing. Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, it works immediately, and you never have to give a reason. You can also just email me and I’ll take you off the list myself.
When you write to me
The contact form asks for your name, email address, and message. Those details are emailed to me and stored in the site’s database so I can find the conversation again. I use them to reply to you and for nothing else — writing in doesn’t add you to the newsletter.
Messages sent through the form are screened for spam, which involves checking the submission and the IP address it came from against known spam patterns.
The calculators
Sagely Chic has several tools that ask for measurements: the body shape calculator, the body frame size calculator, the waist-to-hip ratio calculator, the ring size calculator, the shoe size converter, and the dress size converter.
These run entirely inside your browser. The numbers you type are never sent to my server, never written to a database, never saved on your device, and never seen by me. The maths happens on your screen and nowhere else. Close the tab and it’s gone.
I’m aware that asking a woman for her waist measurement requires some trust, so I’d rather you didn’t have to take my word for it: the code that does the calculating sits in the page itself and can be read by anyone who views the page source.
Share buttons and links to other sites
The share buttons on posts are served from my own site rather than loaded from Facebook or Pinterest, so they don’t hand anything over to those companies while you’re only reading. If you click one, you’re then on their platform and their privacy policy takes over.
Posts also link out to retailers, designers, and the Instagram accounts of women whose style is worth following. Once you follow a link off Sagely Chic, what happens next is between you and that site. I can’t control how other companies treat your information, and I’d encourage you to read their policies rather than assume they match mine.
There’s also a verification tag on the site that confirms to Pinterest that I own this domain. It doesn’t track you.
Affiliate links
Some posts contain affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, I may earn a commission, and the price you pay is the same either way.
For that to work, the retailer or affiliate network places a cookie recording that you arrived from Sagely Chic, usually lasting somewhere between a day and a month depending on the programme. What comes back to me is a summary: items ordered, commission earned. Not your name, not your address, not your card details. My editorial guidelines explain how affiliate relationships do and don’t affect what gets recommended.
Comments
Comments are currently switched off across the site, so there’s no comment form collecting names, email addresses, or IP addresses, and no comment data being stored. If I turn them back on, this page will be updated first and will say precisely what gets collected.
Cookies, briefly
A cookie is a small file a website stores in your browser and reads back on your next visit. The ones in use here fall into four groups:
- Necessary — caching and basic site function. Without these the site doesn’t work properly.
- Analytics — Google Analytics, to count and understand readers.
- Advertising — set by the site’s advertising partners to select and measure ads.
- Affiliate — set by a retailer or network at the moment you click a shopping link.
Every browser lets you see which cookies are stored, delete them, and block new ones. aboutcookies.org explains how for each one. Blocking everything will break parts of this site and most others, so it’s worth being selective.
Browser signals
The Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal is honoured on this site. If your browser or extension sends it, it’s treated as a valid request to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information for advertising.
The older “Do Not Track” (DNT) header is a separate thing, and one the industry never agreed on how to interpret. This site does not respond to the DNT header specifically. GPC is the signal that works here.
If you live in the United States
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon, and a growing number of other states give residents rights over their personal information. Depending on where you live, those include the right to know what is collected and who receives it, to get a copy, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, and to opt out of its sale, sharing, or use for targeted advertising. Exercising any of them will never cost you access to the site or get you worse treatment.
Here’s the part most sites bury, so I’ll put it plainly. Letting advertising partners collect information through this site counts as a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information under California law, and as targeted advertising under several other state laws. That’s true even though no money changes hands for your personal information specifically. The categories of information involved are identifiers such as your IP address and cookie IDs, internet activity such as the pages you view, and approximate location inferred from your IP address. The categories of business receiving it are advertising technology companies: supply-side platforms, programmatic exchanges, and demand-side platforms.
To opt out, use the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link at the bottom of the page, or switch on Global Privacy Control, or use the industry tools listed further up.
For any other request — a copy of your data, a correction, a deletion — email contact@sagelychic.com and say what you’d like. I may need to check you are who you say you are before acting, usually by replying from the address already associated with your information. I aim to respond within 45 days, and I’ll tell you if a complicated request needs longer. An authorised agent can make a request for you with written permission.
Sensitive personal information, as those laws define it, isn’t collected here and isn’t used to infer anything about you.
If you live in the UK, the EEA, or Switzerland
You have the right to access your personal data, correct it, have it erased, restrict or object to how it’s processed, receive it in a portable format, and withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing consent doesn’t undo what was lawfully done beforehand.
The legal grounds I rely on:
- Consent — for advertising cookies, analytics cookies, and the newsletter.
- Legitimate interests — keeping the site online and secure, defending against abuse, and replying when you write to me.
- Legal obligation — where I’m required to keep records or respond to a lawful request.
On your first visit from the EEA, the UK, Switzerland, or Quebec, a consent notice appears before advertising and analytics cookies are allowed to load, and nothing non-essential runs until you’ve answered it. You can reopen that notice and change your mind at any time using the ad preferences link at the bottom of the page.
This site is hosted in the United States and I’m based there, so your information is transferred outside your country when you visit. The service providers named on this page rely on safeguards such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses and, where applicable, the EU-US and UK-US Data Privacy Frameworks for those transfers.
Send requests to contact@sagelychic.com. If you’re unhappy with how I’ve handled something, you can complain to your national data protection authority — in the UK, that’s the Information Commissioner’s Office. I’d appreciate the chance to sort it out first.
How long information is kept
- Server logs — kept for a short period set by my web host, then rotated out automatically.
- Analytics — Google deletes event-level records after the retention period configured in the Analytics account; aggregate reporting continues to exist after that.
- Newsletter — until you unsubscribe or ask to be removed, after which your address is deleted apart from the minimum record needed to make sure you aren’t accidentally re-added.
- Contact form messages — kept while the conversation is still relevant, then cleared out periodically.
- Advertising data — held by the site’s advertising partners under the terms of their own privacy statement, not by me.
Keeping information secure
The site runs over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), WordPress and its plugins are kept up to date, and administrative access belongs to me alone and is protected by a strong, unique password.
I won’t pretend any website is impossible to breach. What I can promise is that very little about you is held here in the first place, and that if something did go wrong in a way that affected you, I’d tell you rather than hope you didn’t notice.
Children
Sagely Chic is written for adult women, most of them over fifty. The site isn’t directed at children under 13, or under 16 where local law sets that age, and I don’t knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has sent me their details, email me and I’ll delete them.
Changes to this policy
When something changes — a new tool, a new legal requirement — I’ll update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is significant, I’ll say so in the newsletter rather than quietly editing and hoping nobody reads it.
Getting in touch
Anything on this page, any request about your information, or anything that doesn’t seem right: contact@sagelychic.com. It’s a monitored address and I answer most messages within 48 hours. Formal requests under privacy law are answered within the timeframes those laws set.
— Denise
