California Privacy Notice (CCPA)

Introduction and Scope

Capitalgridworks provides this notice to California residents under the California Consumer Privacy Act / California Privacy Rights Act ("CCPA/CPRA"). It describes how we collect, use, and disclose personal information about California consumers and what rights you have with respect to that information. This notice supplements — and should be read together with — our general Privacy Policy.

Categories of Personal Information Collected

In the past twelve (12) months Capitalgridworks may have collected the following categories of personal information from or about California consumers: identifiers (such as IP address and email address when you subscribe); internet or network activity (browsing history on the site, referring URL, time of request); geolocation data at the coarse-grained, city-level resolution derived from IP; commercial information (which newsletters you have subscribed to); inferences drawn from this information (such as aggregated content preferences); and audio or visual information only if you voluntarily submit it (for example, a photo attached to a tip you send through our Contact form).

Sources of Personal Information

Sources of the personal information we hold about California consumers include: you, directly (when you subscribe, contact us, or submit a tip); your browser and device (request headers, IP address, cookie identifiers); and our limited list of operational service providers (hosting, CDN, email delivery, analytics). Capitalgridworks does not purchase personal information from data brokers or rent contact lists.

Business and Commercial Purposes

We use the personal information identified above for the following business or commercial purposes, in each case as described to you at the point of collection: providing the editorial product (rendering pages, sending newsletters you have opted into); responding to your messages and inquiries; operating, maintaining, securing, and improving the site; producing aggregated readership analytics; serving advertising in a non-personalized form by default and, where applicable, with your consent; detecting and responding to security incidents; and complying with our legal obligations.

Disclosure to Service Providers and Third Parties

Capitalgridworks discloses personal information only to a short list of service providers that act on our behalf and only for the business purposes outlined in this notice. These vendors are bound by contract to use the information solely for the contracted service and to delete it when their engagement ends or when it is no longer required to provide the service. We do not disclose personal information to any third party for that party's own marketing or commercial purposes.

Sale and Sharing of Personal Information

We do not sell or share personal information in the manner described by the CCPA — that is, we do not exchange personal information for monetary or other valuable consideration with third parties, and we do not disclose personal information to third parties for the purpose of cross-context behavioral advertising. This has been true for the entire preceding twelve-month period and remains our standing policy.

Sensitive Personal Information

Capitalgridworks does not collect sensitive personal information from California consumers other than as incidentally contained in voluntary submissions (for example, a message you choose to send through the Contact form). We do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you, and you accordingly have no right-to-limit request to make against us. We will, of course, honor any limitation you wish to apply going forward.

Your California Privacy Rights

Under the CCPA, California consumers have the following rights: (1) the right to know what personal information we have collected about you, including the categories of information, the sources, the purposes, and the categories of third parties to which we disclose it; (2) the right to access the specific pieces of personal information we hold; (3) the right to correct inaccurate personal information; (4) the right to request deletion of personal information; (5) the right to opt out of any sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell or share, but the right exists); (6) the right to limit the use of sensitive personal information; and (7) the right to non-discrimination for exercising any of these rights.

How to Exercise Your Rights

Verifiable consumer requests under the CCPA can be submitted to Capitalgridworks through our Contact form or to the email address shown on the Contact page. To prevent fraudulent access requests, we will verify your identity using reasonable means tied to the data we hold — typically by confirming control of the email address tied to a subscription or by matching identifiers you provide against information already in our records. We respond to verified requests within the 45-day window required by the statute, with one 45-day extension where reasonably necessary.

California consumers may use an authorized agent to exercise their CCPA rights. To process a request submitted by an agent, Capitalgridworks requires the agent to provide signed written permission from the consumer or a power of attorney, plus reasonable verification of the consumer's identity. We may also contact the consumer to confirm that they have indeed authorized the agent to make the request.

Consumers Under 16 Years of Age

Capitalgridworks does not sell or share personal information about consumers under the age of 16 and does not have actual knowledge of collecting personal information of children under 13. If we ever decided to sell or share personal information about consumers between the ages of 13 and 16, we would do so only with the affirmative authorization of the consumer (opt-in) as required by the CCPA. Parents and guardians may submit deletion requests on behalf of their children via the Contact form.

Right to Non-Discrimination

We are committed to the CCPA's anti-retaliation principle: Capitalgridworks will treat California consumers equally regardless of whether they exercise their CCPA rights. There is no premium or paid tier where rights-exercising consumers receive a lesser experience — the editorial content is the same for everyone. We do not offer financial incentives in exchange for collecting personal information.

Retention of Personal Information

Capitalgridworks follows a proportional retention policy. Newsletter records remain only while the subscription is active, with a minimal suppression entry kept post-unsubscribe to prevent accidental re-add. Contact-form records are retained for up to 24 months for follow-up and recordkeeping. Server logs are kept no longer than 90 days. Any aggregated analytics dataset that contains no identifiers is retained for long-term editorial planning.

Changes to This Notice and How to Reach Us

We may update this California Privacy Notice from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or in applicable law. The current version is always the one published on this page, with the "Last updated" date indicating when it became effective. For questions about this notice, or to exercise any of your CCPA rights, please contact Capitalgridworks through the Contact form linked in the site footer — that is the canonical privacy-correspondence channel for California consumers.