Last updated: 24 August 2026
Dad Joke HQ is a small site that collects dad jokes and lets people send in their own. This page explains what it stores, why, and what it does not do. It is written to be read, not to be skimmed past.
The short version
If you just read jokes, the site stores nothing that identifies you. If you send in a joke, it stores the joke, and your first name only if you chose to type one. There is no account to make, no newsletter, and nothing here is sold to anybody.
What gets collected when you send in a joke
The submission form on Send Us a Joke asks for 3 things, and only 1 of them is required:
The joke. Required. It is stored so a human can read it and decide whether to publish it.
A topic. Optional. Used to file the joke on the right page.
Your first name. Optional. If you fill it in and the joke gets published, it appears next to the joke as the credit. Leave it blank and the joke goes up with no name attached.
The form does not ask for an email address, and there is no field to give one. So you will not get a reply, and you cannot be added to a list, because there is no list.
Spam protection and your IP address
To stop bots flooding the form, the site counts how many submissions have come from one connection in the last hour. It does this without storing your IP address: the address is put through a one-way hash with a site-specific secret, and only that hash is kept. It cannot be turned back into your IP. The counter deletes itself after 1 hour.
Your web host also keeps standard server logs, the way essentially every web server on the internet does. That is handled by Hostinger, the company hosting this site, under their own policy.
Cookies
Dad Joke HQ does not set any tracking cookies of its own. WordPress, which the site runs on, may set a functional cookie if you leave a comment or log in — for a normal visitor reading jokes, neither of those happens.
Third parties can set their own cookies. That is covered in the next section.
Advertising
Dad Joke HQ intends to show advertising, and may already be showing it by the time you read this. Here is what that means for you:
Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings.
You can also opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info, or through the Network Advertising Initiative.
If and when other ad networks run on this site, they will be named here.
Analytics
If traffic measurement is running on this site, it is there to answer 1 question: which joke topics people actually read. It is not used to build a profile of you and it is not joined up with anything else.
What is never done here
Nothing collected on this site is sold.
Nothing collected on this site is traded or handed to a data broker.
There is no mailing list, so you cannot be added to one.
Submitted jokes that are not published are not used for anything else.
Children
This site is deliberately clean and a lot of the jokes are aimed at kids, but it is not built as a service for children and it does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. The submission form asks for a first name at most, and asks for it optionally. If you believe a child has sent in something that identifies them, write in and it will be removed.
Your jokes, and taking them back
If you sent in a joke and want it taken down, or want your name taken off it, write in and say which one. It will be removed. There is no form to fill in and no reason given is needed.
Changes to this policy
If this changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with it.
Getting in touch
Questions about any of this go to robert.nickels26@gmail.com, or through the Contact page.