Your data, and what we do with it

• Account: your email, your password (stored only as a salted hash, so we never see it), and a display name. If you sign in with Google, we receive your email and name from Google instead of a password.
• Preferences & location: the topics you choose, the sources, stories, and issues you follow, and an optional country, state, and city you provide for local coverage and election reminders. If you use the elections page, you can mark yourself as registered to vote; that flag is self-reported and stays in your profile.
• Activity: the stories you view, bookmark, share, or skip, and your reading history. This powers your reading archive and stats. If you turn on personalization (optional, off by default), it also shapes your feed ranking through a taste profile we keep; turning personalization off deletes that profile.
• Aggregate usage: daily counts of initial public page entries, source-to-arc links, sharing actions, and arc follow attempts and successes. Counts are grouped by page type, public source, arc, or story pathname where available, an allowlisted campaign category, and a broad referrer category (direct, search, social, internal, or other). These counts do not store raw query strings, referrer URLs, IP addresses, account IDs, or visitor or session identifiers. We do not connect these counts into individual browsing histories. Authentication, account, and admin pages do not send these events. The campaign category comes only from the current page URL, while the referrer category describes how the document was opened. A campaign is not carried to later pages, and these counts do not measure visitor journeys or campaign conversions. Moving between pages within the site does not add another landing count.
• Signup attribution: a valid campaign tag in a referral link may be stored in your browser for up to 30 days. If you sign up during that time, the first tag is sent with signup and associated with your account. This is separate from aggregate usage counts.
• Operational logs: hosting and service access logs may contain IP addresses, request URLs, and request times for operation and security. They are separate from the aggregate usage counts described above.
• Billing: if you subscribe, payments are handled by Stripe. We store a Stripe customer ID, never your card number.

To operate your account, rank your feed (personalized only if you opt in), process subscriptions, send the emails you ask for, keep the service secure, and understand aggregate usage so we can improve Since Then. That's it. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

Only the service providers we need to run Since Then, and only the data each needs to do its job:

• Stripe: subscription payments
• Google: optional “sign in with Google”
• Resend: sending email
• Hetzner: hosting
• Cloudflare: DNS and database backup storage
• Sentry: service error reporting; aggregate usage event requests are excluded
• Anthropic: generating some story summaries

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights and safety of our users and the service.

We use first-party storage to keep you signed in. Signup referral tags use localStorage with a 30-day expiry. Aggregate usage counting does not set cookies or create persistent visitor or session identifiers, and does not use third-party analytics scripts.

We skip aggregate usage events when your browser sends Do Not Track or enables Global Privacy Control. Account features and signup referral attribution are separate from these counts.

We keep your account data for as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, we remove your personal data and cancel any active subscription. Aggregate daily usage counts expire from the live database through a daily cleanup of the 90-day window. Database backups may retain earlier copies until backup rotation removes them. Browser signup referral tags expire after 30 days; a tag attributed at signup remains part of account data.

You can review and update your information in Settings, or delete your account and all your data at any time from Settings → Account. Deletion is permanent and can't be undone. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the GDPR (EU/UK) or CCPA (California), including the right to access, correct, delete, or object to certain uses of your data. To exercise any of these, use the controls in your account or email us below and we'll help.

Since Then isn't intended for anyone under 13, and we don't knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll remove it.

We'll update this policy as Since Then evolves and note the date above; for material changes we'll give you notice. Questions or requests: privacy@sincethen.news.