Privacy notice · Article 13 GDPR
What we do with what you tell us
In force from 15 August 2026 · version 1.0
The short version, which is also the true one:
We ask for a name, a place, and — only if you want the feast days — an email address.
We keep no visitor statistics, set no cookies, run no advertising, sell nothing to anybody
and profile no one. Your IP address is never stored as such: only a one-way digest of it,
for one hour, so that nobody can flood the register. Everything you have given us can be
removed by writing one line to the address below.
The rest of this page says the same thing at greater length, because the law asks
for precision and because you are entitled to it.
1 · Who is responsible
For anything that is not about data — a question, a schism, a correction to the Book — the
general address is
greenbeans@thegreatbeaninthesky.com.
A request about your data sent there is still a valid request and will be treated as one: the
two addresses exist for tidiness, not to catch anybody out.
No Data Protection Officer has been appointed: the processing carried out here is neither
large-scale nor systematic monitoring, and does not require one under Article 37 GDPR.
Write to the address above and a person will read it.
2 · What we ask, why, and on what basis
| What | Why | Legal basis | Kept for |
|---|
| Ordination: name and place |
To issue your certificate and its progressive number, and to keep the register of the
ordained |
Your explicit consent — Art. 6(1)(a) and Art. 9(2)(a) |
Indefinitely, until you ask otherwise |
| Ordination: email address |
Two messages a year about the feast days. Nothing else, ever |
Your separate consent — Art. 6(1)(a). Without the tick the field is discarded and
never written down |
Until you withdraw it |
| Pod register: name of the pod, place, one line about it |
Publication in the register, so that others can find you |
Your consent, given by submitting it for publication — Art. 6(1)(a) |
Indefinitely, until you ask otherwise |
| Fiasco Book: your text and the place it came from |
Publication in the Book |
Your consent, given by submitting it for publication — Art. 6(1)(a) |
Indefinitely, until you ask otherwise |
| A one-way digest of your IP address |
To count how many entries have come from one place in the last hour, and stop floods |
Our legitimate interest in keeping the register usable — Art. 6(1)(f) |
One hour, then erased automatically on the next visit to the site |
Nothing on this site is compulsory. If you give us nothing you can still read every word
of the Book, cast the beans, and go about your day.
3 · The awkward part, said plainly
The Great Bean in the Sky is a parody. Ordination is a joke about patience, and the three
vows are meant to be funny. None of that changes the legal position: a record saying that you
have joined a faith is, formally, a record that reveals religious or philosophical
beliefs, and Article 9 GDPR treats such records as a special category to be handled with
particular care.
So we handle it that way. We process it on the basis of your explicit consent
under Article 9(2)(a), given deliberately: you tick three vows, then you press a button that
says what it will do. We do not infer it from anything else, we do not combine it with any other
information, and we do not pass it to anyone. If you would rather have a certificate without a
register entry, write to us and we will remove the entry and leave you the number.
Please do not name other people
A fiasco is your own. If your account involves somebody else — a mother-in-law, a client, a
daughter sitting her exams — leave them unnamed. Moderation removes entries that identify third
parties, and it does so before publication, not after.
4 · What we never do
- No cookies of any kind, and no browser storage. There is no cookie banner because there
is nothing to consent to.
- No analytics, no visitor counting, no heatmaps, no pixels, no tracking of any sort.
- No advertising, and nothing is sold, rented, swapped or shared with anyone for any
purpose.
- No profiling and no automated decision-making within the meaning of Article 22 GDPR.
Whether an entry is published is decided by a person reading it.
- No newsletter to anyone who did not tick the box. The email field is discarded at the
server if the tick is absent, even where the address was typed in.
5 · Who else touches the data
Three suppliers, each acting as a processor under Article 28 GDPR and bound by the
corresponding terms:
- Vercel Inc. — hosts the site and runs the functions that receive what you
submit. As part of serving any web page it necessarily sees your IP address.
- Neon Inc. — provides the database in which the register, the Book and the
ordinations are stored. The instance is located in the European Union.
- Google Ireland Ltd. — the two typefaces used on this site are requested
from Google Fonts when the page loads, which discloses your IP address to Google. If you would
rather this did not happen, a content blocker will stop it and the site will fall back to the
fonts already on your device, with no other loss.
Both Vercel and Google are established in the United States. Where data reaches them there,
the transfer rests on the European Commission's adequacy decision of 10 July 2023 concerning the
EU–US Data Privacy Framework, and, in addition, on the Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by
Decision (EU) 2021/914.
6 · How long things are kept
The digest of your IP address is erased once it is more than an hour old: it exists only to
count entries within that window, and after it there is nothing to count. The erasure is not on a
timer but on use — every visit to this site clears whatever has expired — so in practice it
happens within minutes of the hour running out, and it is never consulted afterwards in any
event.
Entries in the register and in the Book stay for as long as they are of use to somebody, which
in practice means until you ask for them to go. Ordinations are meant to last: the progressive
number is issued once and is not reassigned.
An erasure request is carried out as the schema provides: the personal data is removed and the
number remains, without a name attached to it. This keeps the numbering honest without keeping
you in it.
7 · What you can ask for
Articles 15 to 22 GDPR give you the right to obtain access to your data, to have it corrected,
to have it erased, to have its processing restricted, to object to processing carried out on the
basis of legitimate interest, and to receive it in a portable form. Where processing rests on
consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time; withdrawal does not affect what was lawful
before it.
Write to whitebeans@thegreatbeaninthesky.com.
Say which entry you mean — the name of the pod, the
opening words of the fiasco, the number on the certificate — and it will be dealt with without
undue delay and in any case within one month, as Article 12(3) requires. There is no charge.
If you think the matter has been handled badly you may complain to a supervisory authority,
which for Italy is the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali
(garanteprivacy.it), or to the authority of the
Member State where you live or work. You may also go to court.
8 · Children
This site is not addressed to children. Ordination presupposes a consent that Article 8 GDPR
reserves, in Italy, to those aged fourteen and over. If you believe a child has entered something
here, tell us and it will be removed.
9 · Changes to this notice
If what we do changes, this page changes first, and the date at the top changes with it.
Anything requiring fresh consent will be asked for again rather than assumed.