Privacy Policy

The short version

• We collect only what you give us: an email for the newsletter, your name and contact details on a form, a profile if you create an account.
• We do not run third-party analytics, advertising trackers, or social pixels. Our page counting is first-party and anonymous.
• We never sell or rent your information, to anyone, for anything.
• You can ask us to show you, correct, or delete anything we hold about you by writing to [email protected].

What we collect, and when

Reading the site

Reading Creations requires no account and no personal information. We keep a first-party count of page views so we know which articles matter to readers; it records the page visited, not who you are, and it is never joined to a profile. We do not use Google Analytics or any third-party tracking service.

The newsletter

Signing up asks for your first name, cell number, and email address. We use them to send the newsletter and, if you have opted in, occasional notes about the magazine, its events, and its partners. Every email includes a way to unsubscribe, and unsubscribing always works.

Forms

The contribute, support, contact, advertising, and subscription forms send what you type to our editorial team, along with the page you sent it from. If you attach a file, we store it so the team can read it. Form submissions are used to answer you and for nothing else.

Member accounts

Creating an account asks for your email (verified by a one-time code, so there is no password to store or breach), your first and last name, and your cell number. You may add a profile photo. Comments and conversation posts you write are stored with your account and shown with your first name.

The app for iPhone and iPad

The app collects nothing extra to read with. It talks to the same magazine this website does, and an account there is the same account described above. Three things are particular to a phone, and all three are worth naming.

Alerts. If you turn on notifications, Apple gives us a device token — an address for your copy of the app, not a name. We store it so we can send a note when the day's pieces are published, and we use it for nothing else. Turning alerts off in iOS Settings stops them; signing out removes the token from our records altogether.

Saved pieces. Anything you save to read offline stays on your device. We are not told what you saved.

Reporting and blocking. Reporting a reply records which reply, and who reported it, so a person can look at it. Blocking someone is private and one-directional: their words stop being shown to you, they are not told, and nothing of theirs is deleted.

Deleting your account, from the app

Open the account button at the top right, then Delete account. It happens immediately and it is deletion rather than deactivation: your account, your replies, your conversation posts, your likes and your sign-in sessions all go. It cannot be undone, and you do not need to ask us or wait for us. Reading needs no account, so the magazine stays open to you afterwards.

Where your information lives

The site runs on Cloudflare's network. Form submissions, newsletter signups, accounts, and comments are stored in Cloudflare's database and file storage in the United States. Transactional email (sign-in codes, form notifications) is sent through Cloudflare's email service from our own domain. Fonts are served by Google Fonts, which receives the standard technical request data any web server sees. Our bot protection is Cloudflare Turnstile, which runs its check without tracking you across sites.

Apple, and what the App Store sees

Downloading the app is a transaction between you and Apple, and Apple's own privacy policy governs it. Apple gives us aggregate figures — how many people downloaded the app, how many crashes it had — with nobody identifiable in them. We receive no personal information about you from Apple, and the app asks for no permission to track you, because there is nothing to track: it carries no advertising SDK, no advertising identifier, and no analytics service.

Advertising inside the app works the way it does on the site. Ads are sold by the magazine and served from our own storage, and we count how many times each one was shown or tapped in total. Those counts are not attached to you, your account or your device.

How long we keep things

Newsletter signups stay until you unsubscribe. Form submissions stay while they are useful for answering you and are cleared out when they are not. Accounts and what you wrote stay until you delete them, which you can do yourself in the app or by writing to us. Sign-in codes expire in minutes and sign-in sessions expire on their own.

What we never do

• Sell, rent, or trade your personal information.
• Run advertising trackers or retargeting pixels. Ads in the magazine and on the site are served by us, from our own storage, with no tracking attached.
• Send marketing on behalf of third parties without it coming from us, clearly marked.
• Keep information we no longer need.

Marketing choices

When you sign up for the newsletter or create an account, you are opted in to occasional marketing from Creations unless you untick the box at signup. You can opt out at any time: use the unsubscribe link in any email, or write to [email protected] and we will take care of it.

Your rights

Wherever you live, we honor the same set of rights: ask what we hold about you, correct it, export it, or have it deleted. Email [email protected] from the address in question and we will respond within 30 days. You do not have to wait for us to delete an account: the app deletes it outright from the account screen, along with your replies, posts and likes.

Children

The site is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, and if we learn we have, we will delete it.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date above and note the change in the newsletter. Questions belong at [email protected], or through the contact page.