Privacy Policy

Forward Not Back collects very little personal information. The site has no accounts, and no analytics, advertising pixels or other trackers. The only personal information we collect directly is the email address you give us when you join the newsletter, with the date and time you signed up, and whatever you include when you email us. Some technical information, such as your IP address, also reaches the companies that host the site, serve its fonts and play its videos. This policy explains each of these, and your choices, in plain terms.

1. Who we are

Forward Not Back is a nonpartisan political show hosted by Bob Grady. Its website, fwdnotback.com (the “site”), is operated by MK&SJ, LLC (“we,” “us” or “our”). We are responsible for the personal information we collect as described in this policy, and we are its “controller” under European data protection law.

This policy covers the site, the newsletter and emails you send to contact@fwdnotback.com. It doesn’t cover other websites or platforms the site links to, including social media where you may follow the show; their own privacy policies apply. Your use of the site is also governed by our Terms of Use.

2. What we collect

Your email address, if you join the newsletter. You can sign up in the pop-up, in the site’s footer or on the newsletter page. Your browser sends the address you enter to a Google Form, and it is stored in a Google Sheet in a Google account we control, along with the date and time of your sign-up, which Google Forms records automatically. The people who run Forward Not Back can see the list. Joining is up to you: if you don’t give us your email address, the only difference is that you won’t get the newsletter.

The sign-up form also has a hidden “honeypot” field that people don’t see. Spam bots tend to fill it in, and when that happens the sign-up is ignored and nothing is sent.

What you send us by email. If you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you include, such as your name, your message and any attachments.

Technical information our service providers receive. When you visit, your browser connects to the services that deliver the site. They see your IP address and browser details and handle them under their own policies:

• Hosting. The site is a static website hosted on GitHub Pages. GitHub may log visitors’ IP addresses and request data, such as the page requested and when, under GitHub’s privacy statement. The site has no server, database or user accounts of its own.
• Fonts. The site’s fonts load from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com), which shows Google your IP address and browser details.
• Video. Video that is part of the site itself, such as the home page’s background video, is served with the rest of the site. Talks and interviews are YouTube videos. Their preview images load from YouTube’s image server (i.ytimg.com) when the page loads, and the YouTube player (from youtube-nocookie.com) loads only when you press play. Once a video plays, YouTube and Google may collect information and set cookies or similar technologies under Google’s privacy policy.
• Newsletter form. Because your browser sends the newsletter form straight to Google, Google also receives your IP address and browser details when you submit it.

A small note stored in your browser. So the newsletter pop-up doesn’t keep coming back, the site saves a note called fnb-newsletter-pop in your browser’s local storage, on your own device. It records when you closed the pop-up, or that you joined. It doesn’t contain your email address and is never sent to us. You can remove it at any time by clearing this site’s data in your browser.

What we don’t collect. The site has no accounts, purchases, donations, comments or uploads, and no analytics, advertising pixels or other trackers. We don’t ask for sensitive information, such as your political views.

3. How we use it

• Newsletter. We use your email address only to send you updates about the show, its events and Bob Grady’s work, and to manage your subscription, such as removing you when you unsubscribe. Our team sends these emails, and we may later send them through an email service provider.
• Replying to you. We use what you send us by email to read it, reply and handle what you ask, such as an event inquiry, a privacy request or a copyright notice.
• Running the site. Our service providers use technical information, such as your IP address, to deliver the pages, fonts, images and videos your browser requests. The note in your browser keeps the pop-up from reappearing.
• Legal reasons. We may use or disclose information when the law requires it, or when needed to protect our rights or anyone’s safety.

We don’t use personal information for targeted advertising, to build profiles of you or to make automated decisions about you.

4. Legal bases (EEA and UK)

If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the United Kingdom, the law requires a legal basis for each use of your personal information. We rely on:

• Consent for the newsletter. You give it when you sign up, and you can withdraw it at any time by unsubscribing. Withdrawing stops future emails but doesn’t affect anything we did before.
• Legitimate interests for running the site and answering people who contact us: delivering the site’s pages, fonts, images and videos, keeping the site working and secure, remembering that you closed the pop-up and replying to your emails. You can object, as explained in section 9.
• Legal obligation where we must keep or disclose information to comply with the law.

5. Who we share it with

We share personal information with the service providers that help us run Forward Not Back:

• GitHub hosts the site.
• Google provides the site’s fonts, the form and spreadsheet that hold the newsletter list, YouTube video and our email.
• An email service provider, if we later use one to send the newsletter, would receive your address so it can send our emails.

GitHub and Google also handle the technical information described in section 2 under their own privacy policies. Beyond these providers, we disclose personal information only when the law requires it, or when needed to protect our rights or anyone’s safety.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We don’t give, rent or trade the newsletter list to anyone for their own marketing.

6. Cookies and similar technologies

The site sets no cookies of its own. The only thing it stores in your browser is the pop-up note described in section 2, which stays on your device.

There are no analytics, advertising pixels or other trackers on the site today. If that changes, we will update this policy first.

Once you play a YouTube video, YouTube and Google may set cookies or use similar technologies, and may collect information about your online activity over time and across websites, under Google’s policies. Google explains how it uses information from sites that use its services. You can block or delete cookies and site data in your browser’s settings. The site still works without them, though the pop-up may appear again.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. The site doesn’t respond differently to these browser signals, because it doesn’t track visitors over time or across other websites and we don’t sell or share personal information, so there is nothing for them to turn off. If that changes, we will honor these signals where the law requires.

7. How long we keep it

• Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe, ask us to delete yours, or the newsletter ends, whichever comes first.
• Emails you send us are kept for as long as we need them to reply, follow up and keep a record of our correspondence. You can ask us to delete them.
• Technical information collected by GitHub and Google is kept under their own policies.
• The pop-up note stays in your browser until you clear it.

8. Security

We take reasonable steps to protect the information we hold. The newsletter list is kept in a Google account we control, and we give access to it only to the people who run Forward Not Back. The site has no accounts or passwords and takes no payments.

Still, no website, email service or internet connection is completely secure, so we can’t guarantee the security of information you send us. Please don’t email us sensitive information you don’t need to share.

9. Your choices and rights

Unsubscribe any time. Every newsletter email includes unsubscribe instructions or a link. You can also email contact@fwdnotback.com to unsubscribe or to ask us to delete your address.

U.S. state privacy rights. If you live in California or another U.S. state with a consumer privacy law, you may have the right to:

• know what personal information we have collected about you, where it came from, why we use it and who we disclose it to, and get a copy of it;
• correct inaccurate personal information;
• delete your personal information;
• opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information, targeted advertising and certain profiling, although we don’t do any of these; and
• not be discriminated against for using any of these rights.

California law also asks us to describe what we collect using its categories:

• Identifiers, such as your email address, which you give us, and your IP address, which our service providers receive from your browser;
• Internet or other electronic network activity information, such as browser details and the pages requested, which those same providers receive; and
• Customer records information, such as your name or phone number, if you include it in an email to us, along with anything else you choose to write.

We get this information from you and your browser, use it for the purposes in section 3, disclose it only as described in section 5, and keep it as described in section 7. We have not sold or shared personal information. We don’t ask for sensitive personal information, and we don’t use any to infer characteristics about you.

Rights in the EEA and UK. If you are in the EEA or the United Kingdom, you have the right to:

• access your personal information and get a copy of it;
• have inaccurate information corrected (rectification);
• have your information deleted (erasure);
• ask us to limit how we use it (restriction);
• object to our use of it based on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time;
• receive the information you gave us in a portable, machine-readable format (portability);
• withdraw your consent at any time, for example by unsubscribing; and
• complain to a data protection supervisory authority, such as the one where you live or work. In the UK, that is the Information Commissioner’s Office.

How to make a request. Email contact@fwdnotback.com and tell us what you’d like. There’s no charge. To protect your information, we may ask you to confirm the request from the email address it concerns. You can also have an authorized agent make a request for you, and we may ask for proof that they are authorized.

We will respond within the time the law requires. If we turn down a request, we will tell you why. Where your state’s law gives you the right to appeal, you can do so by replying to our decision, and if you disagree with the outcome of your appeal, you can contact your state’s attorney general.

10. Children

The site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. In the EEA and UK, we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has given us personal information, email contact@fwdnotback.com and we will delete it.

11. International transfers

We are based in the United States, and the personal information we hold, such as the newsletter list and emails you send us, is stored in the United States. If you visit from another country, including from the EEA or UK, your information will be sent to and handled in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those where you live. Google and GitHub describe how they protect information that moves between countries in Google’s privacy policy and GitHub’s privacy statement.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the effective date at the top of this page. If we ever add analytics, advertising pixels or other trackers to the site or the newsletter, such as open or click tracking from an email service provider, we will update this policy before we do.

13. Contact

Questions, requests or concerns about your privacy? Email MK&SJ, LLC at contact@fwdnotback.com.