Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Letteropolis (“we”, “us”) collects, uses and protects personal information when you use our website, mobile apps, RSS feeds and emails (the “Service”). It should be read alongside our Terms of Service.

Our approach is simple: we collect what we need to run a reading and writing platform, we do not sell your data, and we do not use advertising or cross-site tracking.

Account information

When you sign up we collect your email address, username, password and birth month and year. Your password is stored only as a salted one-way hash — we never see or store it in plain text. Your birth month and year are used to confirm you meet our minimum age and are not shown on your profile. You may optionally add a display name, bio and avatar.

Sign in with Google

If you choose to sign in with Google, Google shares your account identifier, email address and basic profile information with us so we can create or link your account. We do not receive your Google password. You can see which sign-in methods are linked in your account settings.

Two-factor authentication

If you enable two-factor authentication, we store the secret that pairs your authenticator app with your account, plus a set of single-use recovery codes, so we can verify the codes you enter at sign-in.

Content you create

We store the stories, chapters, articles, series, comments, drafts, tags and images you create or upload. Published content and your public profile are visible to everyone; drafts are visible only to you and any co-authors you add.

Activity on Letteropolis

We record the writers you follow, the work you bookmark (bookmarks can be public or private), the notifications we generate for you, and reports you submit about content. This is what powers your feed, your bookmarks page and your notifications.

Sessions and devices

Each time you sign in we record the sign-in session, including your IP address and browser or device type, so we can keep you signed in, show you your active sessions in Settings → Sessions, and detect suspicious activity.

View counts

To show how many times a story or article has been read, we combine your IP address and browser type into a one-way hash and use it to count at most one view per visitor per day. The hash is kept for 24 hours and then discarded; only the total count is stored. It is not linked to your account or used to profile you.

Communications with us

If you email us, we keep the correspondence so we can help you and keep a record of what was agreed.

We use personal information to:

• create and secure your account, and keep you signed in;
• publish and display the work you choose to share, and power search and discovery;
• deliver your feed, bookmarks, follows and in-app notifications;
• send the emails described in Section 4;
• enforce our Terms, review reports, and protect members from spam, abuse and fraud;
• diagnose problems and improve the Service; and
• comply with our legal obligations.

We do not use your content or personal information for advertising, and we do not sell or rent it to anyone. Where laws such as the GDPR apply, we rely on performing our contract with you, our legitimate interests in running a safe service, your consent (for optional emails) and legal obligations as our legal bases.

Essential emails — email verification and password resets — are part of running your account and cannot be turned off.

The weekly digest of new work from writers you follow is off by default. You can turn it on or off at any time in Settings → Account.

In-app notifications (for example, when someone follows you or comments on your work) appear on your notifications page and are not sent by email.

We use a small number of strictly necessary cookies:

• lp_access and lp_refresh — secure, httpOnly cookies that keep you signed in. They cannot be read by page scripts and are used only for authentication.

Your browser’s local storage also remembers preferences on your device, such as your chosen design theme and reading font size. These never leave your device.

We do not use advertising cookies, third-party analytics, tracking pixels or social media trackers. Because we only use essential cookies, there is no cookie banner.

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only in these limited cases:

• Publicly, when you choose to. Your published work, public profile, public bookmarks, follows and comments are visible to anyone, may appear in search results and RSS feeds, and may be indexed by search engines.
• Service providers who process data on our behalf under contract — for example, cloud hosting, image storage and delivery, and transactional email delivery. They may use it only to provide their service to us.
• Sign-in providers. If you use Google sign-in, Google knows that you signed in to Letteropolis, under its own privacy policy.
• Legal and safety reasons — when we believe in good faith that disclosure is required by law, or necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of our members, the public or Letteropolis.
• Business changes. If Letteropolis is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, information may transfer as part of that transaction, subject to this policy.

We protect your information with measures including encrypted connections (HTTPS), salted password hashing, httpOnly session cookies, optional two-factor authentication, and role-based access controls on our staff and moderation tools. Uploaded images are re-processed on upload and stored with cloud object storage.

No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities where required by law.

We keep personal information only as long as we need it:

• Account and content — for as long as your account is active, or until you delete the content.
• Deleted accounts — when you delete your account we immediately remove your email address, username, display name, bio, avatar and password, and sign you out of every session. Content you published should be deleted beforehand if you want it removed. Limited records may be kept where needed for security, to enforce our Terms, or to meet legal obligations.
• View-count hashes — 24 hours.
• Backups — deleted data may persist in backups for a limited period before it is overwritten.

You can manage much of your information yourself:

• Edit your display name, bio and avatar in Settings → Profile.
• Change your username, email address and password, turn two-factor authentication and the weekly digest on or off, and delete your account in Settings → Account.
• Review and sign out of active sessions in Settings → Sessions.
• Make bookmarks private, and edit, unpublish or delete your work at any time.

Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal information, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to withdraw consent. To make a request — including a request for a copy of your data — email [email protected] from the address on your account. We may need to verify your identity, and we will respond within the time required by applicable law. You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.

Letteropolis is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them — our sign-up asks for your birth month and year and does not allow anyone under 13 to register. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact [email protected] and we will delete it.

We and our service providers may process information in countries other than the one you live in, where data-protection laws may differ. Where required, we use appropriate safeguards for these transfers.

We may update this Privacy Policy as the Service evolves. We will change the “Last updated” date above, and for material changes we will notify you on the site or by email before they take effect.

For privacy questions or requests, email [email protected]. For anything else, see our contact page.