Privacy policy

The Sixth Desk is published by Jon Kaye. This page explains what personal data we hold, why, and what your rights are. Questions to desk@thesixthdesk.com.

What we collect

When you join the waitlist or subscribe, we collect your email address. Our publishing platform also records technical data about signups, including an approximate location derived from your IP address, and delivery, open and click data for the emails we send you. If you write to us, we keep the correspondence.

If you allow optional analytics and advertising measurement, Google Analytics and the Meta Pixel may receive information about your browser or device, pages visited, campaign and link identifiers such as UTM parameters or fbclid, and whether you begin checkout or purchase a membership. We do not send Google or Meta your card details.

Paid subscriptions are handled by Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe directly; we never see or store them.

How we use it

We use your email address to send the briefing and administer your membership. For paid members this is necessary to provide the subscription; for people who join the waitlist or receive marketing email, we rely on consent. Every email includes an unsubscribe link. We use aggregate delivery, open and click data to understand what is being read, on the basis of legitimate interests. We use billing data to run subscriptions and process refunds.

With your consent, we use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used and the Meta Pixel to measure campaign performance, including whether a Meta advertisement leads to checkout or a membership purchase. We do not sell your personal data.

Who processes it for us

The Ghost Foundation hosts this site, holds the member database and sends our email through Ghost(Pro). Stripe processes subscription payments. Microsoft 365 handles our correspondence. If you allow optional measurement, Google processes analytics data and Meta processes advertising measurement data. These providers process data to provide their services to us. Some may process data outside the UK using applicable international-transfer safeguards.

Retention

We keep your membership and correspondence data while you are on the list or subscribed, and for as long as reasonably needed for accounting, dispute handling and legal obligations. If you unsubscribe or cancel, you can ask us to delete data we no longer need to retain by emailing us.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of your data, have it corrected or erased, restrict or object to its use, or have it ported elsewhere. Email desk@thesixthdesk.com and we will deal with it directly. If you are unhappy with how we have handled something, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Cookies and measurement

Ghost sets essential cookies needed for membership features and to keep members signed in. Ghost also provides cookie-free, first-party site analytics.

Google Analytics and the Meta Pixel load only if you select Allow in the measurement notice. They may then set or read cookies or similar identifiers. We store your choice for up to 12 months in a consent cookie shared across thesixthdesk.com and briefing.thesixthdesk.com.

You can decline optional measurement without losing access to the site. You can change your choice using Measurement settings in the footer of the main The Sixth Desk landing page.

Last updated 3 September 2026.

Aggregate website request counts

We count daily requests for the main Sixth Desk landing page to understand overall website traffic. Our counter stores only a date and a total. It does not store IP addresses, visitor identifiers, advertising click IDs, full URLs or browsing histories, and it does not place or read cookies or use browser storage. Known automated requests and prefetches are excluded where possible; these figures are request counts, not a count of identifiable or unique people.

The counts are processed using our hosting provider, Vercel, and stored in our private Supabase database. We retain daily totals for up to 400 days, with older totals removed when new counts are recorded. They are not sent to Meta or Google and are not linked to individual memberships. Hosting providers also process requests and may keep separate operational and security logs as described elsewhere in this policy.

Google Analytics and Meta advertising measurement remain optional. They load only if you choose Allow. You can decline or change that choice using Measurement settings at the foot of the main website.