Skip to content
MyClay

Privacy
Policy

Last updated: August 29, 2026

MyClay ("MyClay," "we," "us," or "our") operates the website located at https://myclay.online (the "Site"), where readers can find articles, guides and reference material about working with clay. We respect your privacy, and this Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you use the Site, how we use and share it, and the choices you have. By using the Site, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please discontinue use of the Site.

MyClay is the data controller for the personal information described here. We are based in the United States, and information collected through the Site is processed there. We welcome readers from anywhere, and this Policy covers the rights that apply to you wherever you are: Section 12 sets out rights under the EU and UK GDPR, Section 13 covers California, and Section 14 covers other US state privacy laws.

1. Information We Collect

a. Information you provide to us. MyClay does not require you to create an account to read anything on the Site. We only collect personal information you choose to give us, such as when you:

  • contact us by email (for example, your name, email address, and the contents of your message);
  • subscribe to updates, if offered (your email address); or
  • submit a correction, suggestion, or copyright notice.

b. Information collected automatically (log files and usage data). Like most websites, we and our service providers automatically collect certain technical information when you visit, which may include your IP address, approximate location (derived from IP), browser type and language, device type, operating system, referring and exit pages, the pages you view, links you click, and the date and time of your visit. This information is used to operate, secure, analyse and improve the Site, and is generally not used to personally identify you.

c. Cookies and similar technologies. We and our third-party partners use cookies, web beacons, pixels, local storage and similar technologies to run the Site, remember preferences, measure traffic, understand how the Site is used, and display ads. See Section 2 and our Cookie Policy for details and your controls.

We do not intentionally collect Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, precise geolocation, or other sensitive personal information, and we do not ask you to provide it.

2. Cookies and How to Control Them

Cookies are small text files stored on your device. We use:

  • Essential and functional cookies that make the Site work and remember your preferences;
  • Analytics cookies that help us understand how visitors use the Site (see Section 4);
  • Behavioural analytics cookies used by our session-analytics partner (see Section 5); and
  • Advertising cookies set by Google and other advertising partners (see Section 3).

You can control cookies through your browser settings — most browsers let you block or delete cookies and block third-party cookies. Disabling some cookies may affect how the Site functions. You can also use the advertising and analytics opt-outs described in Sections 3 to 5.

Consent. For readers in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, we use a Google-certified consent management platform (CMP) to obtain your consent before any non-essential cookie — advertising, analytics or session replay — is set. Essential cookies are set without consent because the Site cannot function without them. You can change or withdraw your choice at any time through the "Cookie Settings" control on the Site, and withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it. Readers in US states with applicable privacy laws are shown an equivalent notice offering an opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information for targeted advertising.

3. Advertising — Google AdSense and Third-Party Advertising

MyClay displays advertising through Google AdSense to keep the Site free to read. To serve these ads:

  • Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
  • Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this Site and/or other sites on the Internet.
  • Third-party vendors and ad networks may place and read cookies on your browser, or use web beacons or your IP address, to collect information as a result of ad serving on the Site. Some ads may be personalised based on your interests; others may be non-personalised (contextual), based on the page content or general location.

Google may also use an advertising cookie (historically referred to as the "DART cookie") to serve ads to users based on their visits to this and other sites; this cookie does not store personally identifying information such as your name or email address.

Your advertising choices:

Consent for EEA, UK and Swiss readers. Google requires publishers to obtain legally valid consent before serving personalised ads to readers in these regions, under Google's EU user consent policy. We use a Google-certified CMP that participates in the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework to collect and record that consent, and we pass the resulting signal to Google through consent mode. If you decline, you will still see advertising, but it will be non-personalised (contextual) — based on the content of the page rather than on any profile of you.

If we display ads from additional third-party networks, those networks may use their own cookies and technologies subject to their own privacy policies, and you may be able to opt out through the industry tools above.

4. Analytics — Google Analytics (GA4)

We use Google Analytics 4 (GA4), a web-analytics service provided by Google, to understand how visitors find and use the Site so we can improve it. GA4 uses cookies and similar identifiers to collect information such as pages viewed, session duration, traffic source, approximate (city or region level) location, device and browser. In GA4, IP addresses are anonymised and are not logged or stored by default, and Google processes this data on our behalf as our service provider.

You can learn how Google uses data at https://policies.google.com/privacy. You can opt out of Google Analytics across all websites by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. You can also manage analytics cookies through our cookie banner or your browser settings.

5. Session Analytics — Microsoft Clarity

We partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioural metrics, heatmaps and session replay, to improve the Site. Website usage data is captured using first- and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of content and online activity. Clarity records interactions such as mouse movements, clicks, scrolling and pages visited, and it automatically masks sensitive input fields; it is not intended to capture information such as passwords or payment details. We use this information for site optimisation, security and fraud prevention, and understanding our audience. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, please see the Microsoft Privacy Statement at https://www.microsoft.com/privacy/privacystatement.

You can limit this collection by declining non-essential cookies through our cookie banner and by using your browser's cookie and Global Privacy Control settings.

6. How We Use Information

We use the information described above to: operate, maintain and secure the Site; publish and improve our articles and guides; respond to your enquiries and copyright notices; send updates you request; measure and improve performance and user experience; display and measure advertising; detect, prevent and address fraud, abuse and technical issues; and comply with legal obligations.

7. Legal Bases for Processing (EEA, UK and Switzerland)

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, we process your personal information only where we have a legal basis to do so under the GDPR and UK GDPR:

  • Consent (Article 6(1)(a)) — for advertising, analytics and session-replay cookies and the processing that follows from them, and for sending you updates if you have subscribed. You may withdraw consent at any time through our Cookie Settings control or by unsubscribing, without affecting the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.
  • Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) — for operating and securing the Site, keeping server logs, preventing fraud and abuse, and responding to messages you send us. We balance these interests against your rights, and you may object at any time (see Section 12).
  • Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) — where we must retain or disclose information to comply with the law.

We do not use your information for automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not knowingly process special categories of personal data.

8. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information for money. We share limited information with service providers and partners that help us operate the Site, each under its own privacy policy, including: Google (AdSense advertising and Google Analytics), Microsoft (Clarity session analytics), our website host and CDN, and any email provider we use. We may also disclose information when required by law, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, safety and security of MyClay, our readers or the public, and in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets (with notice as required).

Please note that using advertising and analytics cookies may be considered "sharing" of personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising under some US state laws (see Sections 13 and 14).

9. International Data Transfers

We operate from the United States, and our service providers — including Google and Microsoft — process data in the United States and other countries. If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, this means your personal information is transferred outside your home region.

Where such a transfer happens, it is made under an appropriate safeguard recognised by applicable law: the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where relevant), the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension and Swiss–US bridge where our provider is certified, or another lawful transfer mechanism. Google and Microsoft each publish the safeguards they rely on in their own privacy documentation. You may contact us at contact@myclay.online for more information about the safeguards that apply.

10. Third-Party Links

The Site links to third-party websites, including the reference sources cited at the end of our articles and the suppliers we mention. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies.

11. Children's Privacy

The Site is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Our analytics tools are likewise not intended for use by minors. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us personal information, please contact us at contact@myclay.online and we will delete it. If you are under 13, please do not use the Site or provide any personal information.

12. Your Rights in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland (GDPR)

If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the GDPR and UK GDPR give you the following rights over your personal information:

  • Access — to be told whether we hold personal information about you and to receive a copy of it.
  • Rectification — to have inaccurate information corrected and incomplete information completed.
  • Erasure ("right to be forgotten") — to have your information deleted where it is no longer necessary, where you withdraw consent, or where you object and we have no overriding legitimate ground.
  • Restriction — to limit how we use your information while a dispute about its accuracy or our legitimate interests is resolved.
  • Portability — to receive information you provided to us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, and to have it transmitted to another controller where technically feasible.
  • Objection — to object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and an absolute right to object to processing for direct marketing at any time.
  • Withdrawal of consent — to withdraw consent at any time, as easily as you gave it, through our Cookie Settings control or the unsubscribe link in any email. This does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.
  • Complaint — to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk); in the EEA, the list of authorities is published by the European Data Protection Board (edpb.europa.eu); in Switzerland it is the FDPIC.

To exercise any of these rights, email contact@myclay.online. We will respond within one month, as the GDPR requires, and may extend that by a further two months for complex requests, telling you if we do. We may need to ask for information to verify your identity, and we will not charge a fee unless your request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. Exercising your rights will never result in a worse service from us.

Because we do not require accounts, we usually hold very little that identifies you personally. Where a request concerns cookie-based data held by Google or Microsoft, we will tell you so and point you to their own request processes, since they hold that data rather than us.

13. Your California Privacy Rights (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA, gives you the right to:

  • Know the categories and specific pieces of personal information we collect, the sources, the purposes, and the categories of third parties with whom we share it;
  • Delete personal information we collected from you, subject to exceptions;
  • Correct inaccurate personal information;
  • Opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of your personal information (we do not sell personal information for money, but our use of advertising and analytics cookies may qualify as "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising);
  • Limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information (we do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes that would trigger this right); and
  • Not be discriminated against for exercising your rights.

To exercise the right to opt out of sharing for targeted advertising, you can decline non-essential cookies in our cookie banner and use the advertising opt-outs in Section 3. We honour Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals; when we detect a GPC signal from your browser, we treat it as a request to opt out of sharing for that browser. To make any other request, contact us at contact@myclay.online; we may need to verify your identity before responding. You may use an authorised agent where permitted by law.

14. Other US State Privacy Rights

Several other US states — including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon and Montana, among a growing list — give residents rights broadly similar to California's: to confirm whether we process your personal data and access it, to correct it, to delete it, to obtain a portable copy, and to opt out of targeted advertising and of the sale of personal data. Some states also provide a right to appeal a refused request.

We handle requests from all US residents the same way, regardless of which state you live in. Decline non-essential cookies through our consent notice to opt out of targeted advertising, or email contact@myclay.online for any other request. We honour Global Privacy Control signals as an opt out of sale and sharing for the browser sending them. If we decline a request, we will tell you why and how to appeal.

15. Your Choices and Rights (All Users)

Regardless of where you live, you may: adjust your browser and device cookie settings; use the Google and industry advertising opt-outs (Section 3); install the Google Analytics opt-out add-on (Section 4); unsubscribe from any emails using the link in the message; and contact us to ask about the information we hold. We will respond consistent with applicable law.

16. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical and organisational measures — including HTTPS encryption and access controls — to protect information. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

17. Data Retention

We keep personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes described in this Policy or as required by law — for example, subscription data until you unsubscribe, correspondence for as long as needed to address your enquiry, and log and analytics data for a limited period. Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity data are retained according to those providers' configurable retention settings.

18. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will post the updated Policy on this page and revise the "Last updated" date above. Your continued use of the Site after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.

19. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, or to exercise your rights, contact us at:

MyClay
Email: contact@myclay.online
Website: https://myclay.online