Privacy Policy

StartupNews.ph ("we", "us", or "our") is a digital news platform operated by StellarPH. We respect your privacy and are committed to handling your personal data responsibly and in line with the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10173).

This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have.

1. Information we collect

We only collect what we need to run the site and deliver the newsletter:

• Newsletter signups: your name and email address, together with the preferences you select (for example, weekly or daily digest).
• Contact form submissions: the name, email, subject, and message you send through our contact page.
• Analytics: anonymous, aggregated usage data (pages viewed, referrer, rough country, device type). We use Plausible Analytics, a privacy-first tool that does not use cookies and does not track individual users across sites.
• Server logs: our hosting and security providers automatically record standard request data (IP address, user agent, timestamp) for short periods to prevent abuse.

2. How we use your information

• To send you the newsletter you subscribed to.
• To respond to questions or submissions you send us.
• To understand which stories are popular so we can improve the site.
• To keep the site secure and protect against spam, scraping, and abuse.

We do not sell your personal data. We do not use your data for advertising profiling.

3. Who we share data with

We share limited information only with the service providers we rely on to run the site:

• Sendy (self-hosted on our infrastructure) — stores newsletter subscriber details and sends emails.
• n8n (self-hosted) — receives newsletter and contact submissions and routes them to the correct destination.
• Vercel — hosts the website.
• Cloudflare — provides DNS, caching, and protection against attacks.
• Plausible Analytics (self-hosted) — produces anonymous usage statistics.

We do not share your data for any other purpose unless required by law.

4. Cookies and tracking

StartupNews.ph does not set advertising or tracking cookies. Our analytics tool is cookieless. The only cookies we may use are strictly necessary ones (for example, to remember that you have closed the newsletter popup).

5. Data retention

• Newsletter data is kept for as long as you remain subscribed. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in every email, or on our unsubscribe page.
• Contact form messages are kept only as long as needed to reply and for a reasonable follow-up period.
• Server and security logs are automatically rotated within a short window.

6. Your rights

Under the Philippine Data Privacy Act you have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal data, and to object to its processing. To exercise any of these rights, email us at hello@startupnews.ph and we will respond within a reasonable time.

7. Security

We use HTTPS across the site, a strict content security policy, and rate limiting on our APIs. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data.

8. Children

StartupNews.ph is aimed at a general adult audience. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you believe a child has submitted data to us, please contact us and we will delete it.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date above. Significant changes will be announced on the site or by email to subscribers.

10. Contact

Questions about this policy or about how we handle your data? Email us at hello@startupnews.ph or use the contact form.