Privacy
If you read notis without joining My notis, we keep nothing about you. If you join, we keep your email and what you choose to save, and you can take it with you or delete it at any time.
Reading without joining
We count that a page was read on a day: a date, a page address and a number. Not who read it. Visits from robots (search engines, AI crawlers, feed readers) are counted apart from readers'. We tell them apart by what the browser says it is, a line every browser sends; we look at it while counting and never keep it. No cookie, no address, no third party. Reactions and case follows are counted the same way, a number per story or case and a day.
When you save a story or follow a case without joining, it is kept in your own browser and never reaches us. A cleared browser loses it.
To stop robots and floods, we hold the address a request came from in the server's memory for a few minutes, and never write it down.
If you join My notis
We keep:
- Your email address, which is your account. We use it only to send you sign-in links.
- A name, if you give one. Only you see it.
- The stories you save and the cases you follow, and for each case the newest story you have seen, so we can show what is new.
- Your reactions, so your own page can count them. The public count still does not know who pressed.
- The day you were last here: a day, not a time.
- Your reading days, only if you switch them on. Only you see them, not even our admins. Switch them off and they are deleted at once.
- Your passkeys: the public half, which cannot sign anyone in on its own, and the name of the device.
One cookie keeps you signed in. It holds a random code, and we keep only a scrambled copy of it. It lasts 30 days from the last day you used notis, and signing out ends it.
The list of what you saved says what you read and cared about, so we are careful with it. It is never public and never shown to another reader. The newsroom that writes notis sees only totals, such as how many members saved a story, never who.
Joining, and keeping robots out
An account exists only once someone opens the link we email to the address. When you join, your browser also does a quick sum, which slows robots down. No puzzle, and no outside service is asked.
To stop anyone using our join form to flood a stranger's inbox, no address gets more than three emails from us an hour or ten a day. To keep count we hold, for two days, how many tries came from each internet address and for each email. Both are scrambled with a secret, and the secret for internet addresses is thrown away after two days, so the counts cannot be turned back into anyone's address. After two days the counts go too.
A sign-in link works for 15 minutes, once. An address that asks to join and never opens its link is deleted after 48 hours. We keep no copy of the emails we send. Only if our mail service could not be used would an email wait on our server instead, for up to seven days, and joining is open only while it can be used, so for a member that does not happen.
Who else sees it
Our emails are sent by Brevo, which sees your address and the email we send. Nobody else gets anything: no advertising networks, no analytics companies, no data brokers. An advertisement here is a box we place ourselves; it tells the advertiser nothing about you.
Taking it with you, or deleting it
On your own page you can download everything we keep about you, as a file, and delete your account. Deleting removes your rows for real, at once, not a flag that hides them.
Our backups still hold a copy for a while: the nightly copies on our server for 30 days, and the encrypted copies kept elsewhere for about six months. They are used only to put the site back after a failure, and if that ever happens we erase again every account deleted since the copy was made, before the site opens.
To do that, when you delete your account we keep its number and a random code that was made for it, and nothing else: not your email, not your name. We keep them for seven months, longer than any backup, and then they go too.
Who is responsible
Who is responsible for members' data will be named here before joining opens.
Why we may keep it
The legal basis for keeping members' data will be stated here before joining opens.
Asking us, and complaining
The address for questions about your data will be here before joining opens.
Where to complain if you think we got it wrong will be here before joining opens.