PRIVACY POLICY

Effective date: November 3, 2026

Hammer & Hail (“we”) publishes a free weekly heavy metal zine and the website hammerandhail.com. It’s run by Raymond Swinney II. This policy explains what we collect and what we do with it.

What we collect

Zine signup. When you subscribe we store:

• your email address
• the signup date and time, and the date you unsubscribe if you do
• a status (signed up, unsubscribed) and private tokens used for your unsubscribe link
• a one-way hashed version of your IP address (salted, so we can’t read the original IP), used to block spam signups

We don’t ask for your name.

Community board (/board). If you post or report a post we store what you type (name or nickname, title, message and, for new threads, an optional contact handle), the time, and a hashed version of your IP address. That hash is used for rate limits and bans, and it’s removed after 30 days. Posts are reviewed before they appear. Approved posts, including the name and contact handle you entered, are public. Rejected posts are deleted 30 days after review.

Spam protection. Forms on the site use a hidden spam-trap field. The board also uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that you’re human. Your IP address is passed to Cloudflare for that check.

Email to us. If you email press@hammerandhail.com, we keep your message and address to reply and keep records.

Cookies, analytics and advertising

The site doesn’t set its own cookies. Our only analytics is Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits and page loads. Cloudflare states that it doesn’t use cookies or track you across sites.

Advertising (Google AdSense). We use Google AdSense to show ads. Google and its partners are third-party vendors that use cookies (and similar technologies such as device identifiers) to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website and other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.

You can opt out of personalized advertising in Google’s Ads Settings, or opt out of some third-party vendors’ use of cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info/choices (US) or www.youronlinechoices.eu (EU). Learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. Visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland are asked for consent before personalized ads are shown.

eBay affiliate links. Two kinds of links on the site are eBay Partner Network affiliate links:

• the “Find on eBay” buttons on New Releases, Coming Soon and Collectibles
• the “Shop Hammer & Hail on eBay” storefront link on the homepage and in the footer of every page

Hammer & Hail may earn a commission if you buy after clicking one, at no extra cost to you. Our site sends nothing about you to eBay. When you click one of these links you go to ebay.com, and eBay may set its own cookies (or use similar tracking) to record that the visit came from us and to track any purchase. That is governed by eBay’s privacy policy and cookie notice, not ours.

How we use it

• to send you the weekly zine
• to run and moderate the board
• to stop spam and abuse
• to answer your email

We don’t sell, rent or trade your information.

Who else handles data

• Cloudflare hosts the site and database, and runs the analytics and Turnstile.
• Google (Google Groups) delivers the zine email. Your address is added to our Google Group mailing list.
• Google (AdSense) shows ads on the site and may set cookies or read device identifiers in your browser, as described above.
• eBay (eBay Partner Network), only if you click one of our eBay links (Find on eBay buttons or the storefront link). eBay tells us about resulting sales and commissions in aggregate; it doesn’t give us your name or contact details.
• Our site emails us (Raymond) a short notice when someone signs up or unsubscribes. The notice includes the address.

Third-party links

We link to Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music, YouTube, label and band shops, Instagram, X and other sites. Cover images on release pages may load from Spotify’s image servers (i.scdn.co). Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we don’t control them. Our eBay links (Find on eBay buttons and the eBay storefront link) are affiliate links (see Cookies, analytics and advertising above).

Unsubscribing

Every zine email links to your personal unsubscribe page. You can also email press@hammerandhail.com. After you unsubscribe we stop sending to you and remove you from the mailing group. We keep a record that you unsubscribed so we don’t re-add you by mistake, unless you ask us to delete it.

Keeping and deleting data

We keep subscriber records while you’re subscribed, and afterward as an opt-out record. To have your data deleted, or to see or correct it, email press@hammerandhail.com. We’ll do it within 30 days. An issue that has already been emailed can’t be recalled.

Children

The site isn’t aimed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you think a child gave us information, email us and we’ll delete it.

Security

Data is stored with Cloudflare. IP addresses are stored only in hashed form. No system is perfectly secure.

Changes

If we change this policy we’ll update the date above. Big changes will be noted on the site or in the zine.

Contact

Hammer & Hail, Raymond Swinney II
Email: press@hammerandhail.com