Legal
Privacy Policy
This page describes what Indian Coffee Guide actually collects: first-party page views and outbound clicks, contact-form messages, and how Amazon Associates links work.
Last updated: September 5, 2026
Who runs this site
Indian Coffee Guide is a personal project by Sudhanshu Gautam in India. It is not a company, agency, or marketplace. For privacy questions or requests, use the contact form.
What we collect
We collect two kinds of information: anonymous browsing events that help us run the guide, and the details you choose to send through the contact form.
First-party page views
When a page loads, the site records a first-party event in monetization_page_view_events. Those rows include the page path, a page type (for example discover, coffee, roaster, or guide), roaster and product ids when the URL has them, the entry page path, the external referrer domain, campaign fields from the tab's entry URL, and a random session_id. Campaign attribution stays with that tab session when you follow internal links. A missing external referrer stays direct or unknown. These events do not include your name or email. Collection runs on the production site; preview deployments, local development and recognized automated browsers are excluded.
First-party outbound clicks
When you click a marked coffee or equipment seller link, we record a first-party event in outbound_click_events. Those rows can include the product and roaster (id and name when the button has them), the destination platform (Amazon, Flipkart, or the roaster), the target domain, the last-seen price we showed, the UI component you clicked, the page path, entry campaign fields, and the same session_id. Social links and links back to this site or its previews are excluded from seller activity. These events do not include your name or email.
We use these events to improve the guide, understand how people discover coffees and roasters, and attribute outbound clicks. That is first-party measurement on our own servers, not an advertising pixel network.
Contact form
The contact form collects your name, email, inquiry type, and message. Submissions are emailed to Sudhanshu so he can reply. We use that information only to respond to you. We do not add you to a newsletter or sell the message.
Session id, cookies, and local storage
The random session_id is stored in your browser's sessionStorage under the key icg_session_v2 for the current tab session, together with the entry page path, campaign parameters and external referrer domain. We do not save the full referrer URL or unrelated entry query parameters in that session record. If browser storage is blocked, the current page holds the session in memory. We do not use that value to identify you by name or identify returning visitors across separate visits. Theme preference can also be saved in localStorage so dark or light mode stays put.
Adding ?icg_analytics=off to a page URL disables these first-party events for that tab. The tab stores that choice as icg_analytics_disabled.
There is no cookie wall and the catalog is not blocked while you browse. We do not ask you to accept analytics before you can read the guide.
How long we keep it
Page-view and click events stay in those tables so we can see discovery patterns over time. There is no automatic deletion job published in the site code today. Contact messages live in the email inbox used to reply. If you want us to look up or delete what we have about you, ask through the contact form.
Affiliate links and Amazon
Some outbound links are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Those Amazon.in links use the Amazon Associates program on Amazon.in with Associates tag indiancoffe0c-21. If you follow an affiliate link, Amazon or another merchant may collect its own data under its own policy. See the affiliate disclosure for more.
Other services
The site is hosted and the contact email is sent through a transactional email provider. Those vendors see what they need to deliver the page or the message. We use Vercel Web Analytics on the production site for aggregate traffic reporting, including pages visited, referral information, browser, device and approximate location. Vercel describes its visitor identifier as a hash derived from the request, with a visitor session discarded after 24 hours, and says it uses no third-party cookies for this measurement. Read Vercel's analytics privacy documentation. These visitor reports are separate from our tab-session seller-click measurements.
A Cloudflare Web Analytics beacon is also present in the codebase and only loads when a site token is configured.
India DPDP, in plain language
India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act asks us to tell you what we collect and why, and to let you ask about it. This page is that notice. The purpose is to run and improve Indian Coffee Guide, understand discovery, attribute outbound clicks, and reply when you write in. You can use the contact page to ask for access to, or deletion of, personal information we hold (for example a contact-form message). Browsing events are not tied to your name.
Contact
Privacy questions and data requests go through the contact page.