Hosted in the EU, on our own servers
- Our entire stack (the app, the databases, object storage and search) runs on servers we manage in the European Union (Germany). There is no US hyperscaler in the path.
- Because the data never leaves the EU, it isn’t exposed to US data-transfer regimes (the Schrems II problem). European data, under European rules.
- Self-hosting also means no third party gets a side-channel copy of your traffic in exchange for a “free” service.
Analytics that can’t identify you
- We measure traffic with Umami, which we self-host on our own infrastructure, never a third-party cloud.
- It is cookieless and storage-free: no cookies, no localStorage, no device fingerprint, no cross-site identifier.
- It records only anonymized aggregates: page views, referrer, country. It cannot single out an individual. Processed under legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); no consent-banner gymnastics required.
No trackers. No ad-tech. No exceptions.
- No Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no advertising cookies, no data brokers. None of it, ever.
- We don’t run ads, so we have no incentive to profile you. The business doesn’t depend on your data.
- Images are served exclusively from our own pipeline. We don’t hot-link third-party images, so no outside server learns what you read.
- A strict Content-Security-Policy is enforced right in your browser: it blocks any script, connection or image from a domain we haven’t explicitly allowed. Even an accidental third-party request simply can’t fire.
Transparent, AI-assisted journalism
- Pollar is AI-assisted and human-edited. Summaries and the daily brief carry a visible AI disclosure. We don’t pass machine-written text off as hand-written.
- Our sourcing, methodology and corrections process are published openly in our editorial standards, aligned with European media-credibility norms (EMFA).
- Published in four EU languages: English, Polish, German and French. Each member state is treated as equally relevant.
- And the AI itself runs in the EU: when you personalise your feed, your typed preferences are interpreted on Google Cloud Vertex AI in the Netherlands (europe-west4). What you enter never goes to a US AI cloud, and we don’t send your email or account identifiers with it.
Accessible by design, built for everyone
- Pollar is built to WCAG 2.1 level AA, the standard the European Accessibility Act requires: full keyboard operation, screen-reader text alternatives (even for data charts), and a 4.5:1 contrast ratio in light and dark. Colour is never the only signal.
- Accessibility is ongoing engineering work, not a launch-day checkbox. We audit it as we ship every change.
- We publish a full accessibility statement with a direct channel to report any barrier.