Makerland respects your privacy and doesn't do much with user data. But we still collect some basic information depending on your relationship with Makerland. Learn about what we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding your data stored with Makerland.
Makerland is an independent, solo-run homelab and blog. This policy explains what information is collected from people who simply visit the site, and what additional information is collected from "lab partners" — people who have been given a login to access systems and services on the Makerland network.
Makerland does not sell personal data, run advertising, or build behavioral profiles of visitors. Data collection is limited to what is needed to keep the site secure, operate a newsletter, and run shared infrastructure for lab partners. This policy may be updated from time to time; the date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.
General visitors. The site sits behind Cloudflare, which automatically processes standard connection data — IP address, browser/user-agent string, and request metadata — to provide security and content delivery (DDoS mitigation, bot filtering, and similar protections). The site itself does not run separate visitor analytics or tracking scripts.
Newsletter. If you sign up for the Makerland newsletter, the email address you provide is collected and stored solely to send you newsletter updates. Signing up is optional and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Browser storage. The site uses your browser’s local storage to remember interface preferences, such as light/dark theme and layout choices. This data stays on your device and is not transmitted to or read by Makerland servers.
Outbound links. Buttons linking out to social media profiles are simple links — clicking one takes you to that platform’s own site, where its own privacy policy applies. Makerland does not embed tracking pixels or widgets from those platforms on this site.
Lab partners. People granted a login to Makerland’s internal systems ("partners") have an account consisting of a username and basic account information (such as name and email address). Identity for these accounts is managed through Microsoft, so this account information is shared with and stored by Microsoft as the identity provider. Account information is additionally stored on Makerland’s own on-premises systems, hosted in U.S. data centers.
Depending on which services a partner uses, additional data may be collected or stored within that service — for example, network access logs through Cloudflare One, dashboards and metrics viewed through Grafana, files uploaded to shared file storage or cloud services, email sent or received through Makerland email, and messages or files shared through Microsoft Teams. Login activity and related security/auditing information (such as timestamps and source system) is logged across systems on the network for all partner accounts.
Visitor connection data processed by Cloudflare is used to keep the site online and secure — filtering malicious traffic, mitigating abuse, and troubleshooting technical issues. It is not used to build advertising profiles.
Newsletter email addresses are used only to deliver the newsletter you signed up for, and for nothing else.
Partner account information is used to provision and manage access to lab systems and services, support collaboration between partners, and maintain accountability and security across shared infrastructure. Login and audit logs are used to detect unauthorized access, investigate security incidents, and maintain the integrity of the systems on the network.
Makerland does not sell personal data to third parties or use it for targeted advertising.
Cloudflare provides security, content delivery, and hosting infrastructure (including Workers and Pages) for the public site, and Cloudflare One for partner network access. Cloudflare processes connection-level data described above as part of providing these services.
Microsoft serves as the identity provider for partner accounts and underlies services like Makerland email and Microsoft Teams; basic account information for partners is stored and processed by Microsoft as a result.
The newsletter is delivered using a third-party email delivery provider. If you sign up, your email address is shared with that provider solely to send you the newsletter.
Monitoring tools, file shares, configuration management, compute, hosting, and other cloud or self-hosted services used by partners may process or store whatever data a partner submits to or generates within those services, as part of providing that service to the partner. Refer to the CMDB for internal services to understand data residency. Makerland’s primary datacenters and colocation presense are hosted by Data Management Associates of Brevard, Inc, Amazon Web Services, Inc, and Microsoft.
Links to social media platforms point to those platforms’ own sites, which have their own independent privacy practices.
Makerland may disclose information if required to do so by law, or to protect the security and integrity of its systems and the people who use them.
You can ask, at any time, what personal information Makerland holds about you, request that it be corrected, or request that it be deleted, subject to any legitimate need to retain it (for example, security logs tied to an active partner account).
Newsletter subscribers can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any newsletter email, which removes your address from future sends.
Lab partners can request a copy of their account information or request that their account and associated data be removed when their access to the lab ends, subject to reasonable retention of security and audit logs needed to protect the network.
To make any of these requests, reach out using the contact information below.
Questions about this policy, or requests regarding your personal data, can be sent to privacy@makerland.xyz.