Privacy Policy

Who we are

AskColm.com is a free tax news aggregator built and run by Colm McCormack, based in Dublin, Ireland. It is a personal project offered free of charge to tax professionals, and there is no company behind it. Colm is the controller of the personal data described on this page, and can be contacted at colm@askcolm.com.

What we collect and why

If you subscribe to the newsletter we store your email address, the tax topics and regions you selected, and the date you signed up. We use this only to send you the weekly digest.

If you use the search box we store the text of your question, the number of articles found, the answer that was generated and whether you gave it a thumbs up or down. If you ask for an answer to be emailed to you, your email address is stored with that search and is used only to send that one email. Please do not enter confidential or sensitive information into the search box.

When you read articles we record anonymous counts of article expansions and thumbs up or down. These are not linked to your identity.

To stop abuse we limit how often the search, sign up and contact features can be used. To do this we store a one way scrambled version of your IP address (a hash that cannot be turned back into the address), alongside a timestamp. These records are deleted automatically within a few days.

We do not collect your name, payment details or precise location, and we do not use advertising or tracking cookies.

Legal basis

We send the newsletter on the basis of your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email. We keep search records and short term rate limiting data on the basis of our legitimate interest in running the service, understanding what readers want, and protecting it from abuse.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your email address or any other data.
• We do not share your data with advertisers, and there is no advertising on this site.
• We do not build profiles of individual readers or track you across other websites.

Who processes your data

We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf:

• Supabase hosts our database, including subscriber records and search logs.
• Resend delivers the newsletters and any search answers you ask to have emailed.
• Vercel hosts the website and provides privacy friendly, cookie free traffic statistics.
• Anthropic provides the Claude AI model. The text of your search question is sent to it so it can write an answer, and article titles and descriptions are sent to it so it can write the summaries shown on the site. Your email address is never sent to Anthropic.
• GitHub stores the site code and runs the scheduled job that collects articles. It does not receive reader data.

Some of these providers are based in the United States or process data there. Where that happens, the transfer relies on the safeguards set out in each provider's data processing terms, such as standard contractual clauses.

AI generated content

Article summaries and search answers on AskColm are written by AI from the titles and descriptions published by each source. They may contain errors and do not constitute tax advice. Every article links to the original source, which is where you should check the detail.

How long we keep your data

We keep your email address and preferences for as long as you remain subscribed. If you unsubscribe, we stop sending you email straight away. Unsubscribed records are cleared out periodically, and you can ask us to delete yours at any time. Search records are kept so we can understand what readers are interested in, and an email address attached to a search is removed whenever you ask us to.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access, correct or delete your personal data, to restrict or object to how it is used, to withdraw your consent, and to receive a copy of your data. To use any of these rights, email colm@askcolm.com. You also have the right to complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission at dataprotection.ie.

Links to other sites

Articles on AskColm link to the websites of the original publishers. Once you leave AskColm, those sites have their own privacy practices that we do not control.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top of this page will be updated. The latest version is always the one on this page.