Privacy policy

This Privacy Policy explains what Flinchd (https://flinchd.com) does and does not do with information when you use the Site. The short version: you can use the whole Site without giving us anything, the only personal data we ever hold is an email address you chose to give us, and we never sell or share personal data with anyone.

1. No tracking, and nothing you have to give us

You can read and listen to everything on Flinchd without telling us anything at all. There is no paywall and no compulsory sign-up, and there is no comments section.

Two things are offered and neither is required: an optional account, which asks for an email address and nothing else (section 4c), and an optional weekly email (section 4d). Both are things you have to ask for, and having one never enrols you in the other.

We do not use analytics or tracking scripts, tracking pixels, fingerprinting, or social media plug-ins.

2. What is stored in your browser

To make the Site pleasant to use, a few settings are stored in your own browser's local storage. They never leave your device and are never sent to us:

• your preferred text size;
• which stories you have finished reading (so we can suggest something new);
• whether you have confirmed your age for stories rated 16+ (kept only for the current browser session);
• your cookie choice, if third-party advertising is switched on;
• whether an advertisement has already been shown this session;
• where you got to in each story, in text or audio, so you can resume;
• a small taste profile (which genres and age bands you finished) that powers the "Picked for you" row. It is computed and kept only in your browser.

You can clear all of this at any time by clearing your browser's site data for Flinchd.

3. Server logs

Like every website, the servers that deliver the Site (operated by our hosting provider, Vercel Inc.) automatically record technical information about each request, such as IP address, browser type, requested page and time. These logs are used only to keep the Site running securely and to diagnose faults. They are retained for a short period by the hosting provider under its own policies and are not used to identify or profile you.

4. Advertising

Story pages may display one small advertisement card for about five seconds when the story opens.

When third-party advertising is enabled, the advertising partner (currently Google AdSense, operated by Google LLC) may use cookies or similar technologies to serve and measure ads. This happens only after you choose "Allow ad cookies" in the notice shown on your first visit. If you choose "Essential only", no third-party advertising code is loaded and no third-party cookies are set; instead you may see a plain house notice with no tracking.

Google's use of advertising cookies is described at policies.google.com/technologies/ads. You can opt out of personalised advertising at adssettings.google.com.

4a. Audio narration

Story pages may offer an audio version read by a synthetic narrator. When you press play for the first time, the story text is sent to our speech provider (ElevenLabs Inc.) to generate the recording, which is then stored by our hosting provider so it can be replayed without generating it again. Nothing about you is sent with it: no name, no identifier, no location. Only the story text and the narrator choice. A short ambient music loop matched to the story's genre may play underneath; it is a static file on our site and involves no third party. The narrator you last chose and whether you want music are remembered in your browser's local storage.

4b. Votes and continue codes

If you vote to expand a story, we store the story, the day, and a salted one-way hash of your network address so the same connection cannot vote twice in a day. The hash cannot be turned back into an address and is not linked to anything else. Vote counts are public.

If you use "Continue on another screen", we store a random six-character code with the story and your position for 24 hours, then it is deleted. Nothing about you is attached to it.

4c. Optional reader accounts

You can read and listen to everything on Flinchd without an account. If you choose to sign in, we ask for one thing: an email address. We send a one-time code (and a one-tap link) to it; there is no password. We store the address, the stories you have saved to your list, and where you are in each story (a position in the text, or a number of seconds into the narration). This is used only to show you your list and your place on any device you sign in on. We do not send newsletters or marketing to that address, we do not link it to advertising, and we do not share it. The weekly edition described in section 4d is a separate list that you have to join yourself; having an account never puts you on it. Sign-in is handled by Supabase (supabase.com) on servers in the United States, which processes the address on our behalf. Delete your account at any time from the account page; that removes the address, your list and your progress from our servers immediately.

4d. The weekly edition

At the end of a story you may be offered "Friday Night Flinch", a weekly email carrying one story. It is entirely optional and it is separate from your account: signing in never adds you to it, and subscribing never creates an account.

If you subscribe we store your email address, the story you were reading when you subscribed, and the date. That is all. We use the address for one thing, which is sending the weekly edition, and every edition carries a one-click unsubscribe. We do not advertise in it, we do not sell or rent the list, and we do not use the address for anything else. Ask us at info@flinchd.com and we will remove you and delete the record.

The list is held in our Supabase database, on servers in the United States, and is not readable from the website: the public key can add an address and cannot read the list back.

4e. Story submissions

If you send us a story through the submissions page we store the name you asked us to print, your email address, the story, any note you added, and the date. The email address is used only to reply to you about that story. Nothing you send is published automatically; a person reads it first. If we publish it, the story and your chosen credit appear on the Site; your email address never does. If we decline it, or if you ask us to, we delete the submission. The queue is held in our Supabase database on servers in the United States and is not readable from the website: the public key can add a submission and cannot read the queue.

5. Children

Flinchd is written for readers aged 13 and over and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from anyone under 13, or from anyone at all. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us at info@flinchd.com and we will delete it.

6. Email

If you email us, we will use your email address and the content of your message only to reply to you and to deal with your request. We keep such correspondence for as long as needed to resolve the matter and for our legal records.

7. We do not sell or share personal data

We do not sell, rent, trade or share personal data with anyone for their own purposes, and we never will. We do not use personal data for profiling or automated decision-making.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live you may have rights to access, correct, delete or restrict the processing of personal data about you, to object to processing, to data portability, and to complain to a supervisory authority. Because we hold no personal data about visitors beyond the email correspondence described above, the simplest way to exercise these rights is to email us at info@flinchd.com.

9. International visitors

The Site is operated from India and hosted on infrastructure that may be located in other countries. By using the Site you understand that requests are processed wherever our hosting provider's servers are located.

10. Security

The Site is served over HTTPS. Because we store no personal data, there is very little to protect, but we keep the Site's software up to date and limit access to its administration.

11. Changes

We may update this policy. The date at the top of this page shows when it last changed.

12. Contact

Flinchd, by email at info@flinchd.com.

Counting who is reading

The home page says how many people are on the site. That number is counted rather than estimated: each open tab checks in every forty-five seconds and is told how many tabs have checked in recently. A tab you have left in the background stops checking in, so it is a count of people reading, not of windows open.

The check-in carries one random identifier, generated in your browser and kept in your browser's storage. It is not linked to your account, your email or your reading, it tells us nothing about who you are or what you are reading, and rows older than a few minutes are of no use to anybody including us. Clearing your site data erases it.