Last updated: 23.08.2026 · Applies to pocketmechanica.com
The short version
You can read this entire site without giving anything. There is no login, no account, and nothing on these pages requires you to identify yourself.
Three things collect data, and all three are things you choose to do: taking Find Your Feel and saving the result, sending a message through a contact form, and joining the mailing list. Nothing else asks for anything.
Saved Feel profiles are used to build a public taxonomy of how objects feel. That is the point of collecting them, it is stated on the page where you submit one, and it is explained in full below.
Nothing here is sold to advertisers. There are no advertising trackers on this site.
Who is responsible
Pocket Mechanica is operated by Prateek Sadhana, Smørblomstenga 24, 4823 Nedenes, Norway. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Norwegian Personal Data Act (personopplysningsloven), that person is the data controller for this site.
Contact for anything on this page: contact@pocketmechanica.com.
This site is small enough that it is not required to appoint a Data Protection Officer, and has not appointed one. Requests go to the address above and are handled by the controller directly.
What is collected, and why
Find Your Feel
Taking the quiz sends nothing. All six questions and the scoring run inside your browser. No answer leaves your device while you are answering, and nothing is stored unless you press the save button at the end.
If you choose to save your profile, this is submitted:
- The profile line itself — the outcome name and your six axis values, for example Track & Break — motion: linear · agency: continuous · breakaway: firm · sharpness: crisp · sound: low · context: solo. The field is shown to you, filled in, before you send it.
- Your email address, if you enter one. It is optional. Leave it blank and the profile is saved with no way to link it to you.
- Whether you ticked the mailing list box.
- Your IP address and browser user agent, recorded automatically by the form software with every submission. This is used for spam filtering and nothing else.
Submissions are stored in this site’s own WordPress database. Before storage, the content is checked by Akismet, an anti-spam service operated by Automattic, which receives the submitted content, your IP address, and your user agent in order to decide whether it is spam.
Contact forms and email
If you write to Pocket Mechanica — through the contact page, the brand owner page, or directly by email — the message, your name if you give one, your email address, and the same IP and user-agent data described above are received and kept so the message can be answered.
Email is hosted by Titan (Flock Ltd). Their servers hold the contents of correspondence in the ordinary way that any email provider does. Titan’s own infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services in the United States. Titan additionally engages its own sub-processors, which at the time of writing include an artificial-intelligence platform; the current list is published by Titan and can be checked there.
Mailing list
Joining the list is a separate tick box, never bundled with anything else. If you tick it, your email address is used to send occasional notes on mechanisms, materials, and new writing. Every message carries an unsubscribe link. Addresses are not shared, sold, or rented, and are removed on request or on unsubscribe.
Site statistics
This site uses Jetpack Stats (Automattic) to count page views and see which articles are read. It records a truncated IP address, referring page, browser, and operating system. It is used to decide what to write next. It is not used to build a profile of you, and there is no advertising network attached to it.
Server logs and security
The hosting platform keeps standard access logs — IP address, time, page requested, response code — and runs automated protection against attacks and brute-force login attempts. This is ordinary infrastructure logging, held on the platform’s own retention schedule, and is not read routinely.
Comments
Where comments are open, leaving one stores what you wrote, the name and email you supplied, and your IP address and user agent. Comment content is checked by Akismet as described above. Your email address is not published.
Legal basis for each use
| What | Basis under GDPR Article 6 |
|---|---|
| Saving a Feel profile | Consent — you press the button, having been shown the field |
| Email address given with a profile or a message | Consent, and legitimate interest in replying to you |
| Mailing list | Consent, given by a separate tick box |
| Spam filtering | Legitimate interest in keeping the site usable |
| Site statistics | Legitimate interest in knowing what is read |
| Server logs and security | Legitimate interest in keeping the site online and secure |
| Writing about people and companies (see below) | Journalistic purposes, GDPR Article 85 and personopplysningsloven § 3 |
Where the basis is consent, you can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing it does not affect anything done before you withdrew.
What Feel profiles are used for
This is the part worth reading properly, because it is the reason the quiz exists.
Pocket Mechanica is building a public vocabulary for how small mechanical objects feel — the Feel Map. Six questions sorting one person proves nothing. Several hundred people answering the same six questions show whether those categories describe real groups or whether the map is wrong and needs redrawing.
Saved profiles are therefore used to:
- test and revise the Feel Map taxonomy;
- produce aggregate, anonymous findings — counts, distributions, and patterns across many people — which may be published on this site, discussed in articles, presented to makers, or included in research and commercial work by Pocket Mechanica, including work carried out for brands;
- improve the questions themselves.
Aggregate findings never contain your email address and never identify an individual. A published figure will look like “of 250 profiles, 38% resolved to a firm breakaway preference” — never a list of people or profiles that can be traced back to anyone.
Individual profiles submitted with an email address are held identifiably for 24 months, after which the email address is deleted and the profile is retained in anonymous form. Profiles submitted without an email address are anonymous from the moment they arrive.
If Pocket Mechanica ever wants to use this data in a way that goes beyond what is described here, this page will be updated first and, where the law requires it, fresh consent will be asked for.
Who else handles your data
| Processor | What they handle | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Automattic — WordPress.com hosting | The site itself, its database, form submissions, server logs | United States |
| Automattic — Jetpack Stats | Page-view statistics | United States |
| Automattic — Akismet | Spam checking of form and comment submissions | United States |
| Titan (Flock Ltd) | Email hosting for @pocketmechanica.com | United States (Amazon Web Services) |
These are processors acting on instructions, not independent users of your data. No one else receives it. Nothing is sold.
Transfers outside the EEA
The providers above are based outside the European Economic Area, so data reaches the United States. Those transfers rely on the safeguards in each provider’s own data processing agreement — Standard Contractual Clauses and, where the provider is certified, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Copies of the relevant terms are available from the providers, and can be pointed to on request.
How long things are kept
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Feel profile with an email address | 24 months, then the email is deleted and the profile kept anonymously |
| Feel profile without an email address | Indefinitely, anonymous from the outset |
| Messages sent through a form or by email | 24 months after the exchange ends, unless it is an ongoing working relationship |
| Mailing list address | Until you unsubscribe or ask for removal |
| Comments | As long as the comment is published |
| Statistics and server logs | The hosting platform’s own retention schedule |
Cookies
Pocket Mechanica sets no advertising cookies and runs no advertising network. There is no cross-site tracking here.
Cookies that may be set are functional or statistical ones from the platform itself — remembering a comment form’s details, and Jetpack’s own measurement. Find Your Feel sets no cookie: the quiz holds your answers in the page’s memory and forgets them when you close the tab.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The site will continue to work.
Links away from this site
Some links on this site are referral links — most often to WANEDC, marked with ?ref=PM — and Pocket Mechanica earns a commission on orders placed through them. This is set out in full on the disclosure page.
Pocket Mechanica does not track you across that link. The parameter simply tells the destination site where you arrived from, and any tracking that happens after you land there is governed by their privacy policy, not this one. The same applies to any other external site linked from here, and to embedded video.
People and companies written about here
This site publishes interviews and profiles of makers and brand owners, most of them in China. Doing so involves processing personal data — names, quotations, professional biography, sometimes photographs.
That processing is carried out for journalistic purposes, which GDPR Article 85 and personopplysningsloven § 3 exempt from parts of the regulation in order to protect freedom of expression and information. In practice Pocket Mechanica works to a stricter standard than the exemption requires:
- Interviewees are told what the interview is for before it happens.
- Quotations from private conversations are not published without consent.
- Drafts are shown to the subject before publication where the material is about them.
- Factual corrections are made on request, and marked.
If you are written about here and want something corrected or removed, write to contact@pocketmechanica.com.
Client and commercial work
Pocket Mechanica also carries out paid consultancy for brands. Data belonging to those clients is held separately from anything on this site and is not mixed with editorial material or with reader data. Editorial coverage cannot be bought. The reverse also holds: nothing a reader submits here is passed to a client in a form that identifies them.
Your rights
Under GDPR you can ask for:
- Access — a copy of what is held about you.
- Rectification — correction of anything wrong.
- Erasure — deletion of what is held.
- Restriction — a pause on processing while something is disputed.
- Portability — your data in a machine-readable form.
- Objection — to any processing based on legitimate interest.
- Withdrawal of consent — at any time, for anything based on consent.
Write to contact@pocketmechanica.com. Requests are answered within one month. There is no charge.
One honest limit: a Feel profile submitted without an email address cannot be found or deleted, because there is nothing in it that connects it to you. That is a consequence of it being genuinely anonymous, not an evasion. If you want to be able to withdraw a profile later, submit it with an email address.
If you think your data has been mishandled, you can complain to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet — datatilsynet.no, Postboks 458 Sentrum, 0105 Oslo. If you live elsewhere in the EEA, you may complain to your own national authority instead.
Children
This site is written for adults and is not directed at children. Please do not submit a Feel profile, a message, or an email address if you are under 16. If you become aware that a child has done so, write to the address above and it will be deleted.
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Material changes — particularly any change to how Feel profiles are used — will be announced on the site rather than made quietly.
Questions about anything on this page: contact@pocketmechanica.com. See also the disclosure page for how Pocket Mechanica makes money, and about for who is behind it.