Privacy

Last updated 2 November 2026.

In short

The mailing list: your email address, kept by Buttondown in the US, used only to send the newsletter, at most once a month. Every issue has an unsubscribe link.
The contact form: your name, email address and message, kept on our server for 12 months so that we can reply.
Reading the site: no cookies. We count visits with Plausible, which sets none either.
Questions: write to [email protected].

Who is responsible

Cultural Robotics looks after this website and its mailing list: the researchers who organise the Cultural Robotics workshops and books (see the steering group). They decide together how the site and the list are used, and answer for them: data protection law calls this the “controller”.

Write to [email protected] about anything on this page.

How signing up works

You type your email address in the form at the foot of any page and press the button. The address goes straight to Buttondown, the service that runs our list. This website never sees it or stores it.
Buttondown may ask you to pass a short check, to keep out automated sign-ups.
Buttondown emails you a link. You receive nothing from us until you click it.
After you press the button you are on Buttondown’s own pages, which set their own cookies. Buttondown’s cookie policy lists them.

What Buttondown keeps

your email address;
when you signed up and when you confirmed;
your IP address, which Buttondown uses to check that sign-ups are genuine;
the website you signed up from;
whether each issue reached you or bounced, and whether you reported it as spam;
the date you leave, if you do.

We do not track whether you open an issue or which links you click.

What we use it for

To send the Cultural Robotics newsletter: at most one issue a month, and none in a month with nothing new. Each issue lists the month’s news, open calls and coming events, and one of the organisers checks it before it is sent. The only automatic email is Buttondown’s confirmation link.

We rely on your consent, which you give by confirming, and you can withdraw it at any time. We do not sell the list, use it for anything else, or give it to an AI service.

Who can see it

the organisers who hold the newsletter account, in Singapore, and the site’s developer, in Japan;
Buttondown, LLC, which stores the list and sends the email for us. It relies on other companies, such as Amazon Web Services for hosting, and publishes the full list.

The list is kept in the United States. Buttondown’s data processing agreement includes the contract terms approved by the EU and the UK for data held there (the “standard contractual clauses” and the “UK Addendum”). We give the list to nobody else, unless the law requires it.

Leaving the list

Every issue ends with an unsubscribe link. One click takes you off the list.
Or write to [email protected], and we will take you off.
Buttondown keeps a record that you left, so that you are not added back by mistake. To have that erased too, ask us (see “Your rights”).

If you signed up on the old site

The old Squarespace site had its own sign-up box. We are moving the few addresses collected there to this list, and the first issue sent after the move says so. You can leave at any time, from any issue.

If you write to us

Email to [email protected] is forwarded by Cloudflare to the organisers’ inbox, [email protected], which Google stores under its own terms. We keep emails only as long as we need them, except the ones we may need later as a record: consent to publish something, a correction or takedown, or a request to unsubscribe or delete.

The contact form

The form on the Contact page asks for your name, your email address and your message. We keep them, with the time and the page you sent them from, in this website’s database on our server in Singapore, and email a copy to the organisers. You get one automatic email saying your message arrived; it repeats nothing you wrote, and an address gets at most one a day. Both emails are sent through Brevo, in France. Messages are deleted from the website 12 months after they arrive.

To tell people from automated senders, the form uses Cloudflare Turnstile. Cloudflare sees your IP address and some details of your browser, and tells us only whether you passed. To stop floods, the website counts the messages from one connection for an hour, under a scrambled key; it never stores the address itself.

This website

Cookies and your browser

Reading this site sets no cookies. Organisers who sign in to edit it get login cookies.

The site keeps two small notes in your browser, and only after you click: cb-theme remembers whether you chose light or dark, and cb-field-paused whether you paused the moving background. They stay in your browser and are never sent to us.

Cloudflare

Every visit passes through Cloudflare, Inc., in the US, which protects the site and provides its secure connection. Like any network that carries a website, it sees your IP address, the page you ask for and your browser’s details. It acts for us under its data processing addendum.

The server and its log

The site runs on a server rented from DigitalOcean, LLC, in Singapore. Its log records each request: your IP address, the time, the page, the page you came from and your browser. Only the site’s administrators can read it. The log is kept in five files of 10 MB; when they are full, the oldest is deleted. The server’s backups hold copies until they are replaced.

Visitor statistics

We count visits with Plausible Analytics, from Plausible Insights OÜ in Estonia. Each page loads a small script from plausible.io, which reports the page, the page you came from, your type of device, browser and operating system, and your country. Plausible sets no cookies and does not keep your IP address. We see only totals, and editors signed in to the site are not counted.

Other companies’ content

The site’s fonts come from its own server. Links to publishers, ORCID, YouTube and conference systems are ordinary links: nothing loads from those sites until you click.

If you are named on this site

The names, affiliations, ORCID iDs and abstracts on this site come from the publications themselves, from Crossref, and from the HRI 2025 posters as presented. To have something about you corrected or removed, write to [email protected] with the page’s address.

Your rights

Write to [email protected] to see what we hold about you and get a copy, to correct it or delete it, or to ask us to stop or limit using it. It is free, and we reply within one month.

Tell us first if you want to complain. You can also complain to a data protection regulator where you live, for example:

in the EU, the authority where you live or work (list of EU authorities);
in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk);
in Singapore, the Personal Data Protection Commission (pdpc.gov.sg);
in Australia, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au);
in Japan, the Personal Information Protection Commission (ppc.go.jp).

Changes to this page

If this page changes in a way that matters, the next issue of the newsletter says so. The date at the top shows the latest change.