This policy explains what information FinEstate collects, who processes it, and what rights you have. It describes what the site actually does today. If that changes, this page changes first.
Who runs this site
FinEstate is an independent personal finance, tax and real-estate blog written by Utkarsh Garg, based in Mumbai, India. It is published at thefinestate.com.
The site runs on WordPress and is hosted by Hostinger. It moved from Blogger to WordPress on 6 September 2026. Hostinger’s servers process your request when you load a page, and its access logs record your IP address as part of ordinary server operation.
The domain is registered with GoDaddy, which also provides the site’s DNS and the mailbox behind editor@thefinestate.com.
Advertising: there is none
FinEstate does not currently display advertising and sets no advertising cookies.
An earlier version of this page described a Google AdSense DART cookie. That was inaccurate and has been removed. No such cookie has been set.
If advertising is introduced in future, this page will be updated before any ad cookie is set, and the change will be noted on the homepage.
What is collected automatically
When you load a page, the following is collected through Google Analytics 4:
- Pages visited, time on page, and navigation path
- Referral source, meaning how you arrived
- Browser, device type and operating system
- Approximate location, derived from IP address. GA4 discards the full IP address and does not store it
- A first-party cookie that distinguishes one visitor from another
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools separately report the search queries that led people here. That data reaches us already aggregated — it identifies no individual and we cannot connect it to a person.
None of this is linked to your name. It is used to work out which articles are worth writing more of.
What you provide yourself
The newsletter. If you subscribe, your email address is processed by beehiiv, a newsletter platform based in the United States. beehiiv stores your address, records whether you open an email, and is subject to its own privacy policy at beehiiv.com. This is a transfer of your data outside India. By subscribing you consent to it. Unsubscribe using the link in any email, which removes you from beehiiv immediately.
We use it to send you a note when something is published. Nothing else.
Email. There is no contact form on this site. The only way to reach us is by writing to editor@thefinestate.com. If you do, we receive your address, your name if you give it, and your message. That mailbox is hosted by GoDaddy. We keep the correspondence only to reply to you.
Comments are switched off. Nothing is collected through them.
Who else is involved
Each of these has its own privacy policy:
- Hostinger — web hosting, server access logs
- GoDaddy — domain registration, DNS, and the editor@ mailbox
- Google Analytics 4 — audience measurement
- Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools — aggregate search data
- beehiiv — newsletter delivery, United States
- UpdraftPlus — site backups, which include the site database
- Telegram — the FinEstate Alerts announcements channel. If you join it, Telegram holds your account details under its own policy, not this one
- Telegram — the FinEstate Alerts announcements channel. If you join it, Telegram holds your account details under its own policy, not this one
- LinkedIn — the FinEstate company page. Anything you post there is governed by LinkedIn’s policy, not this one
FinEstate does not sell, rent or trade your personal data, and does not share it with anyone for their own marketing.
Cookies actually set
- Analytics cookies (
_ga,_gid) — set by Google Analytics 4 to tell visitors apart and measure sessions. First-party. - Functional cookies — WordPress and the LiteSpeed caching layer may set short-lived cookies to serve pages correctly. These carry no personal data.
- No advertising cookies.
You can block cookies in your browser. The site will still work; only the analytics stop.
How long it is kept
- GA4 data: 14 months, per the property setting
- Newsletter subscription: until you unsubscribe
- Email correspondence: 3 years from the last reply, then deleted
- Backups: rolling, overwritten as new backups are taken
Your rights under the DPDP Act 2023
Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, and the GDPR where it applies to you, you may:
- Ask what personal data we hold about you
- Ask us to correct it
- Ask us to delete it
- Withdraw consent at any time
- Nominate someone to exercise these rights for you
To do any of that, write to editor@thefinestate.com with the subject line “DPDP Rights Request”. Acknowledgement within 7 days, substantive response within 30 days.
Grievance Officer
Utkarsh Garg, Founder and Editor, FinEstate. Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
editor@thefinestate.com, subject line “DPDP Grievance”.
If our response does not satisfy you, you may escalate to the Data Protection Board of India once it is operational.
Children
FinEstate is written for adults and is not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data from minors. If you think a minor has sent us personal information, tell us and it will be deleted.
Changes
This page is updated when the site’s actual practices change, and the date at the top moves with it. For anything material — a new processor, or the introduction of advertising — a notice will sit on the homepage for 30 days first.