Privacy Policy

Effective August 8, 2026

The short version: we collect the minimum needed to run an account-based reading service — your email, your stories, and basic usage and security data. We don't sell your data, we don't run advertising trackers, and your stories are private to your account.

1. What we collect

• Account: your email address, used to sign you in (via emailed links) and to contact you about the service.
• Your stories: the scenarios you play, the choices and text you enter, and the story passages generated for you.
• Usage: counters used to apply fair-use limits (such as generations per day) and basic product usage information.
• Technical & security: IP address and request metadata used for rate limiting, abuse prevention, and bot protection; standard server logs.

2. How we use it

• To operate the service: sign-in, saving and continuing your stories, enforcing limits.
• To generate story text: your story content (not your email or identity) is sent to the AI model providers that produce the narration.
• To keep the service safe: abuse prevention, rate limiting, and enforcing our terms.
• To communicate with you: sign-in links and service emails, and occasional product updates (such as new stories or features) — every non-essential email includes an unsubscribe.

3. Who processes your data

• Cloudflare — hosts the service, stores its database, delivers our emails, and provides bot protection (Turnstile).
• AI model providers (via OpenRouter) — receive story text only, to generate narration. They do not receive your email address or account identity.

We don't sell personal data, and we don't share it with advertisers.

4. Cookies

We use a session cookie to keep you signed in, and Cloudflare Turnstile may set a cookie as part of bot protection. No advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

5. Retention and deletion

We keep your data while your account exists. Deleting your account (from the account page) permanently removes your account, stories, and usage data from our database. Server logs and backups age out on short, fixed schedules.

6. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete your personal data. Deletion is self-serve; for anything else, email us and we'll help: support@secretnovel.com.

7. Age

SecretNovel is for adults 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18; if we learn we have, we'll delete it.

8. Changes

If this policy changes materially, we'll flag it on the site or by email. The effective date above always reflects the current version.