Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 8, 2026

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy (the "Policy") describes how this website (the "Website"), created, owned, and operated by Sherwin Vishesh Jathanna ("Owner," "we," "us," or "our"), handles information in connection with your visit. The Owner respects the privacy of every visitor and has intentionally designed the Website to collect as little information as possible. This Policy explains, in plain and unambiguous terms, what limited measurement takes place, what does not take place, and the choices available to you. By accessing or using the Website, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Policy.

2. Our Commitment to Privacy by Design

The Website is a personal portfolio. Its purpose is to present the work, experience, and writing of Sherwin Vishesh Jathanna to anyone who wishes to view it. It is not a commercial platform, it does not host advertising, it does not maintain user accounts, and it has no business model that depends on the collection, profiling, or monetization of visitor data. Consistent with that purpose, the Website operates on a principle of data minimization: if a piece of information about you is not necessary, the Website does not ask for it, does not record it, and does not retain it.

3. No Cookies

This Website does not use cookies. No first-party cookies are set by the Website to track, identify, profile, or store information about you or your device. The Website does not employ tracking pixels, browser fingerprinting techniques, local storage based identifiers, or any other technology whose purpose is to recognize you across visits or across other websites. Because the Website does not use cookies, no cookie consent banner is required, and none is displayed. You will never be asked to accept or manage cookie preferences on this Website.

The only thing the Website itself ever places in your browser's own storage is a single small, non-identifying value that decides which short status line appears on the home page. It contains no identifier of any kind, it is never transmitted anywhere, it cannot be read by any other website, and your browser discards it on its own as soon as you close the tab. An earlier version of the Website also kept a flag noting that you had dismissed the AirTouch instructions. That flag has since been removed entirely, and if your browser still holds one from a previous visit, the Website now deletes it rather than reading it.

4. Analytics

The Website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google LLC, for one narrow purpose: to understand how many people visit the Website and which pages they view. This measurement exists solely so that the Owner can gauge, in the aggregate, whether the Website is being visited and which portions of it attract interest.

No IP address is recorded through this process. Google Analytics, as configured and operated for this Website, does not log or store the IP addresses of visitors, and no IP address is recorded, stored, or otherwise retained by the creator of this Website, Sherwin Vishesh Jathanna. The information available to the Owner consists of aggregated, statistical data, such as total visit counts and page view counts, and is used strictly for analytics purposes. It is not used to identify, contact, locate, or profile any individual visitor, and it is not combined with any other data source for any such purpose.

The analytics data described above is used exclusively by the Owner to understand overall traffic to the Website. It is not sold, rented, traded, or shared with any third party for marketing, advertising, or any other purpose. For more information about how Google processes data in connection with its analytics service, you may consult Google's own privacy documentation, which governs Google's conduct independently of this Website.

The Website is hosted on a commercial hosting platform, and that platform's own cookieless analytics is enabled alongside Google Analytics. It serves the same narrow purpose of counting page views in the aggregate, it sets no cookies, and it builds no advertising profile. As is true of every website in existence, requests for pages must reach the hosting provider in order for anything to load at all, and such requests are handled under that provider's own privacy terms rather than under the Owner's control. The Owner neither receives nor retains IP addresses from this process.

5. AirTouch and Your Camera

The Website offers an optional feature called AirTouch, which lets you move the cursor, click, and scroll using hand gestures instead of a mouse or a trackpad. AirTouch is switched off by default. It begins only when you deliberately turn it on from the navigation menu, and it ends the moment you turn it off. When it begins, your browser, not the Website, asks your permission to use the camera. You are entirely free to decline, and every page, project, and word on the Website remains fully available to you if you do.

Nothing your camera sees leaves your device. The video is never uploaded, never transmitted to the Owner or to any third party, never recorded, and never written to a file, a database, or any other form of storage. No server is involved in AirTouch at any point. The hand tracking model runs entirely inside your own browser, on your own machine, using files that your browser downloads from this Website in the same ordinary way it downloads an image or a stylesheet. Each frame is examined in memory and discarded immediately afterward.

What the feature derives from a frame is a small set of coordinates describing where the joints of a hand appear in the picture, used for the sole purpose of positioning the cursor and recognizing a pinch or a scroll. Those coordinates exist for the fraction of a second that the frame exists and are then gone. No microphone, audio input, or recording of any kind is requested or used at any time. The small live preview shown while AirTouch is running is drawn locally by your own browser and is visible to nobody but you.

AirTouch performs no biometric identification whatsoever. It does not recognize faces, it makes no attempt to determine who you are, and it does not create, store, compare, transmit, or share any faceprint, handprint, or other biometric template or identifier. Nothing about your camera, your surroundings, your hands, or your gestures is sent to analytics or anywhere else, and the Owner has no way of knowing whether you used the feature at all.

AirTouch collects nothing and stores nothing. Beyond transmitting no data, it writes nothing whatsoever to your device: no record that you used the feature, no settings, no preferences, and no note that you have already read its instructions. The short instruction card is shown each time you open the Website afresh, and your having dismissed it is held only in the page's own working memory for as long as that page remains open, which your browser clears the instant you reload, close the tab, or open the Website in a new one. Nothing about AirTouch outlives your visit, and no trace of it is left behind on your device.

When you turn AirTouch off, close the tab, or navigate away, the camera stream is released and your device's camera indicator light turns off. Should you prefer that the Website never request the camera again, you may block camera access for this site permanently in your browser settings, and the Website will continue to work exactly as it otherwise would.

6. Information You Voluntarily Provide

The Website does not collect names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, or any other personal information from visitors as a condition of browsing. The only circumstance in which the Owner receives personal information through the Website is when you choose, entirely of your own volition, to provide it, for example by sending an email to the contact address published on the Website or by submitting a message through the contact functionality. In that case, the information you provide is used solely to read and respond to your message. It is not added to any marketing list, it is not sold or shared with any third party, and it is retained only as long as an ordinary email correspondence would be.

7. No Sale or Disclosure of Information

The Owner does not sell, rent, lease, trade, or otherwise disclose any visitor information to third parties. There is no advertising on the Website, no data brokerage, no affiliate tracking, and no sharing of information for cross-context behavioral advertising. Because the Website collects no personal information in the first instance, there is, as a practical matter, nothing to sell and nothing to disclose.

8. Third-Party Websites and Services

The Website contains links to external websites and services, including without limitation GitHub, LinkedIn, published articles, and project repositories. When you follow such a link, you leave the Website, and this Policy no longer applies. Those external websites operate under their own privacy policies and practices, over which the Owner has no control and for which the Owner assumes no responsibility. You are encouraged to review the privacy policy of any external website you visit.

9. Children's Privacy

The Website is a general audience portfolio and is not directed to children under the age of thirteen. The Website does not knowingly collect any personal information from anyone, including children. If you believe that a child has nonetheless provided personal information through the Website, please contact the Owner at the address below and it will be deleted promptly.

10. Data Security

Although the Website deliberately minimizes the information it handles, the Owner takes reasonable measures to keep the Website itself secure, including serving it over encrypted HTTPS connections. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is completely secure, and the Owner cannot guarantee absolute security of any information you choose to transmit, such as the contents of an email you send.

11. International Visitors

The Website may be accessed from anywhere in the world. Because the Website does not collect personal information and does not record IP addresses, the compliance burden that typically accompanies international data transfer rules is largely inapplicable. Visitors from all jurisdictions receive the same treatment: minimal measurement, aggregated statistics only, and no personal profiling.

12. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights regarding personal information, such as the right to access, correct, or delete data held about you. Because the Website does not collect or retain personal information about visitors, there is ordinarily no data to access, correct, or delete. If you have corresponded with the Owner by email and wish for that correspondence to be deleted, you may request deletion at any time using the contact information below, and the request will be honored. If you prefer not to be counted in aggregate analytics at all, you may use a browser extension or setting that blocks Google Analytics; the Website will function identically with such tools enabled.

13. Changes to This Policy

The Owner may update this Policy from time to time to reflect changes in the Website or in applicable law. Any revision will be posted on this page, and the "Last updated" date at the top of this page will reflect the date of the most recent revision. Your continued use of the Website after a revision is posted constitutes your acknowledgment of the revised Policy. Should the Website ever change in a way that materially affects visitor privacy, for example by introducing cookies, this Policy will be updated before or at the time such a change takes effect.

14. Contact Information

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or the privacy practices of the Website, please contact Sherwin Vishesh Jathanna at sjathann@asu.edu. Inquiries are typically answered within a reasonable time.

Machine-readable version of this page: https://www.sherwinvishesh.com/privacy.md | site index: https://www.sherwinvishesh.com/llms.txt