Privacy and cookies

Last updated 4 October 2026.

Benschmark is a personal blog by Ynias Bensch. This page explains what the site stores and loads when you read it. There is no newsletter, no comment form, no advertising and no account: the only personal data the site asks for is what you choose to send through the contact form.

Analytics

With your permission, the site uses Google Analytics 4 (Google Ireland Ltd.) to count visits and see which articles are read, including whether an article was read to 75%. Google Analytics is only loaded after you choose Accept analytics in the cookie banner. If you decline, or don't answer, nothing is loaded from Google.

Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses. Advertising features, ad personalisation and Google Signals are switched off. Data is kept for 14 months.

Cookies and local storage

  • theme (local storage): your light or dark theme choice. It never leaves your device.
  • consent (local storage): whether you accepted or declined analytics, so the banner does not come back on every page.
  • _ga and _ga_* (cookies, set by Google Analytics, up to 14 months): only after you accept analytics. They tell visits apart without identifying you by name.

You can change your choice at any time with , also in the footer of every page. Declining removes the Google Analytics cookies.

Hosting

The site is hosted by Netlify, which processes standard request data (such as IP address and browser type) to deliver pages and protect against abuse. Pages, fonts and images are served from this site itself; the only exception is reCAPTCHA on the contact page.

Contact form

When you send a message through the contact form, your name, email address and message are stored by Netlify Forms and forwarded to Ynias Bensch. They are only used to reply to you, and you can ask for them to be deleted at any time.

To keep out spam, the contact page loads Google reCAPTCHA (Google Ireland Ltd.). It shows a checkbox, sets cookies and sends information about your browser and how you use the page to Google to tell people from bots. reCAPTCHA is only loaded on the contact page; Google's privacy policy and terms apply to it.

Questions

Use the contact form with any question about your data.