Privacy policy: what IoT Crest collects

What we collect

Reading the site sends the usual web server request: your IP address, the page you asked for, the time, and the browser identification string your browser supplies. The hosting server keeps these in its access log for a limited period for security and error diagnosis.

The typefaces, images, stylesheets and scripts are all served from iotcrest.com itself. The site is delivered through Cloudflare's network, which sits between you and the server: Cloudflare sees the same request, and it can add two things of its own, described under cookies and analytics below. The only other things a page loads are Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, described under counting visits below.

The message box

Every page has a message box in the corner for questions, corrections and topic requests. It is the only form on the site, it runs on iotcrest.com's own server, and it loads nothing from any other service. When you press send it passes on your message, your email address and your mobile number for WhatsApp or SMS (both required, so the editor can reply; the site itself publishes no number), the address of the page you sent it from including any campaign tags in that address, the site that linked you to the page if your browser reports one, your IP address and the time. That goes by email to one mailbox the editor reads, and the same details are written to a log on the server that cannot be reached from the web, so a message is not lost if the email fails. Messages are kept for as long as needed to reply and to keep a record of the conversation, then deleted. The endpoint also keeps a short-lived, hashed record of the sending IP address to limit repeat messages; it holds no message content.

Sponsorship inquiries go through the inquiry form on passieon.com, the studio behind this site, and what that form collects is set out in Passieon's privacy policy.

Cookies and analytics

IoT Crest uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count page views. Cloudflare, the network the site is delivered through, adds its script from static.cloudflareinsights.com to every page. It counts views without cookies and without identifying visitors, and the counts are seen only by the site's operator in Cloudflare's dashboard. IoT Crest sets no cookies of its own and loads no advertising script; the cookies Google Analytics and Clarity set are listed in the next section. Cloudflare's bot-detection check can set a cookie named cf_clearance for iotcrest.com, marked HttpOnly and Secure and not readable by any page script; that was seen in a real browser on 25 September 2026. Both belong to Cloudflare and can be switched off in its dashboard. Sponsored articles are labeled, as the disclosure page explains, and they do not load anything from the sponsor.

Counting visits: Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity

Pages here load Google Tag Manager, which loads Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity. We use them to see which pages people read, which buttons they press and which links they follow, so we can make the site easier to use.

Google Analytics records the pages you visit, how you arrived, your rough location from your IP address, your device and browser, and the actions this site reports to it: pressing one of the main buttons (such as Advertise with us or the Contents button), following a link to another site (only that site's name is sent, never the page address), opening the message box, a message that sent, closing the box, downloading a file, landing on a missing page, and how far down a page you scrolled. It never receives your name, email address, mobile number or anything you typed.

Microsoft Clarity records how pages are used: clicks, taps, scrolling and mouse movement, which it can play back as a recording of the page. The message box is hidden from it, so a recording shows an empty box where you typed.

Both set cookies to tell one visit from the next. Google Analytics sets _ga and _ga_J2WB85N3X0 on this site, kept for up to two years. Clarity sets _clck, kept for a year, and _clsk, kept for a day, on this site, and Microsoft sets CLID, MUID, MR, SM, SRM_B and ANONCHK on its own addresses, clarity.ms and bing.com. What Google and Microsoft keep, and for how long, is decided by them and is set out in their own privacy statements.

The addresses involved: Tag Manager loads from www.googletagmanager.com, Google Analytics receives at www.google-analytics.com (or region1.google-analytics.com), and Clarity loads from www.clarity.ms and scripts.clarity.ms, syncs its cookie through c.clarity.ms and c.bing.com, and sends what it records to one collection address under clarity.ms that Microsoft picks for each visit, such as a.clarity.ms, e.clarity.ms, t.clarity.ms, u.clarity.ms or y.clarity.ms.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, none of this loads unless you press Accept on the banner. Everywhere else it loads by default. Wherever you are, you can change your choice here, and Reject stops it loading on every page after that. Your choice is kept in your browser's local storage for a year; to answer the banner the page asks iotcrest.com which country your connection comes from, and that answer is kept only until you close the tab.

Your rights

Beyond the server's access log described above, which is kept for a limited period and is not used to identify readers, and the Google Analytics and Clarity records, which Google and Microsoft keep and which carry no name or contact details, this site holds only what you send through the message box. You can ask what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted, through the message box, giving the email address you used and saying which of the three you want. A sponsor who has written to Passieon can do the same by replying to the email that answered their inquiry.