Privacy Policy

01. Who we are

NeatRead is based in Taiwan and runs neatread.net: the reading site, the publications hosted on it (including publications on their own domains), and the dashboard writers use at app.neatread.net. In this policy, “we” means NeatRead.

Each publication on NeatRead is run by its own writer or team. We are responsible for your account and for how the platform handles your information. A publication you join also receives some of your information (see section 4) and is responsible for how it uses it.

02. Information we collect

• Your account. Your email address. If you sign in with Google, the name and email address Google shares with us.
• Your profile. The first time you sign in with an email link, we ask for your first and last name, date of birth (to confirm you are at least 13) and gender. Job, phone number and a recovery email address are optional. If you make a public profile, the display name, bio, picture, links and support link you enter.
• What you do on the site. Posts you open, how far you read and for how long, stars, saved posts, highlights and notes, comments, poll votes, gift links you redeem, friends you invite, and when you press a writer’s Support button.
• Payments. When you subscribe to a paid plan, Stripe processes your card. We keep your plan, its status and its dates. We never see or store your card number.
• Email. Whether our emails reached you or bounced. Post and recap emails contain a small image that tells us when they are opened, and links in the weekly recap tell us when they are clicked.
• Technical information. Your IP address, used for security and to limit abuse; your country, device type and browser; and the site that linked you to us.
• Added by a publication. A publication’s team can add your email address, and optionally your name, to its weekly recap. We record which team member added you.

03. How we use it

• To sign you in and keep you signed in, and to give you the posts your membership or subscription covers.
• To send the email you have signed up for: a welcome, new posts, the weekly digest and the weekly recap. Sign-in links are sent only when you ask for one.
• To take payments and keep your subscription in step with Stripe.
• To protect paid and members-only posts: each copy carries an invisible mark unique to the reader, so a leaked copy can be traced to the account it came from.
• To show writers how their publication is doing. Writers see totals and trends, plus the member details described in section 4.
• To keep the platform safe: stopping spam, fraud, automated sign-ups and abuse.
• To run features that work on posts, not on you: AI-written summaries for the weekly recap, audio versions, preview suggestions and translations of posts between English and Chinese are made from a post’s text and never from your personal information.

04. What publications can see

When you sign in to a publication, you become one of its members. Its owners and admins can see your email address, any profile details you have added, your plan and its status, when you joined, the tags they have given you and, for the weekly recap, when it was last sent to you. They can download this list. They cannot see your card details, or your activity on other publications.

Each publication decides how it uses its member list, and is responsible for doing so lawfully. If a publication emails you, every email lets you stop it in one click.

05. Email and your consent

• Told before you join. Every sign-in and join form says that signing in makes you a free member of that publication and that new posts will arrive by email.
• The weekly recap is a choice. It comes on when you join a publication, and you can turn it off at any time. A publication’s team can also add you. If a publication added you, the recap says so.
• Stopping is immediate. “Stop the weekly recap” ends the recap only. “Unsubscribe from all email” stops every email from that one publication. Your account page lets you pause and resume email from each publication. Once you stop all email from a publication, only you can turn it back on.

06. Cookies and analytics

We set a sign-in cookie, which is needed for your account to work, and a first-party visitor cookie holding a random ID, kept for up to a year, so writers see how many different people read a post rather than how many times a page was loaded. We also set a language cookie that remembers the interface language you chose.

We measure traffic with Google Analytics. Reader pages load Google’s analytics script, which sets Google Analytics cookies (named _ga, kept for up to two years) to count visits and sessions. It tells Google the page address and title, the site that linked to it, your approximate location, your type of device and browser, and how you use the page, such as how far you scroll and which outside links you follow. Google’s advertising features and signals are switched off, and we never send Google your email address or account. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Google Analytics stores no cookie and sends Google only cookieless measurements. You can block it with your browser’s settings, an extension or Google’s opt-out add-on, and NeatRead works the same. We do not use advertising networks, retargeting or cross-site tracking.

07. Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run NeatRead. Each handles your information only to provide its service to us.

• Cloudflare: hosting, database, file storage, bot protection on our forms, and the AI features described above.
• Anthropic: translating posts between English and Chinese with its Claude AI, when Google’s Gemini cannot. It receives the text of published posts, not information about readers.
• Stripe: payments for paid subscriptions, once they are on sale.
• Resend: delivering email.
• Google: analytics, sign-in if you choose Google, and translating posts between English and Chinese with its Gemini AI. For translation it receives the text of published posts, not information about readers; on the free plan we use, Google may also use that text to improve its own products.

These providers may process information outside Taiwan, including in the United States and the European Union.

08. How long we keep it

• Your account and profile: until you delete your account.
• Detailed reading activity: 120 days. After that we keep only totals that do not identify you. Your stars, saved posts, highlights and notes, comments and poll votes stay until you remove them or delete your account.
• Whether you opened or clicked each weekly recap: until you delete your account.
• Sign-in links: 15 minutes, and each works once.
• Payment records: as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Backups: overwritten within 30 days.

09. Your rights

Under Taiwan’s Personal Data Protection Act, and under the GDPR, the CCPA and similar laws where they apply to you, you can:

• See and copy your data. Download it from your account page.
• Correct it. Email us what is wrong and we will fix it.
• Delete it. Delete your account from your account page (cancel any paid subscription first). Your comments are removed, except that a comment someone replied to is kept as an empty placeholder so the conversation still reads.
• Stop email and object to processing. Use any unsubscribe link, or write to us.

For anything the account page does not cover, email support@neatread.net. We answer within 30 days and do not charge.

10. Children

NeatRead is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email support@neatread.net and we will delete it.

11. Security

All traffic is encrypted with HTTPS, and our providers encrypt stored data. There are no passwords to steal: you sign in with a one-time link or with Google. Sign-in links expire after 15 minutes and work once. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will tell you as the law requires.

12. Changes to this policy

We will post any change here and update the date at the top. If a change affects how we use information we already hold, we will tell you by email or on the site before it takes effect.

13. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your information: