Privacy

IvoryPen is designed to know as little about you as possible. This page lists everything we do collect, why, and when it is deleted.

In short

• Readers get no cookies, and there is no analytics, advertising or tracking on the site.
• Responses store only the name and text you enter. No email address is asked for.
• Contact messages are used only to answer you and are deleted after 90 days.
• Server logs are kept for about two weeks for security and then deleted.

When you read

Reading IvoryPen needs no account. Like almost every website, our web server records standard access logs: the IP address of the request, the page requested, the browser’s user agent and the time. We use these logs only to keep the service secure and running, for example to spot abuse or fix errors. They are rotated and deleted after about two weeks.

When you write a response

The response form asks for a name and your response. Both are stored so that the response can be reviewed and, once approved, shown publicly under the story with the name you chose and the date. The form does not ask for an email address. Responses that are never approved are deleted automatically after 30 days.

When you use the contact form

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, a topic and your message. We use them only to read and handle your request and, when needed, to reply to you by email. Contact messages are deleted automatically after 90 days.

Spam protection

To stop automated spam, the IP address of anyone sending a response or a contact message is checked against a short rate limit. This happens in memory only. IP addresses are not stored in the site’s database.

Writers

Writers join by invitation. A writer’s profile (name, handle, portrait, bio, optional website and location) and their published stories are public by design. Writers can ask at any time for a story or their whole profile to be removed.

Cookies

Readers and responders receive no cookies at all. The only cookie IvoryPen sets is a session cookie for the site’s administrators when they sign in to moderate.

Third parties

Two outside services deliver files to your browser, and like any web request they receive your IP address and browser information when they do:

• Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com) serves the typefaces used across the site.
• Unsplash (images.unsplash.com) serves the photographs on the home page.

Their own privacy policies apply to those requests. No other third party receives data about your visit, and the site loads no third-party scripts. All traffic is encrypted with HTTPS using Let’s Encrypt certificates.

Your requests

You can ask for a copy of the data we hold about you, or for it to be corrected or deleted, such as a response you wrote or a message you sent. Use the contact page, choose Privacy request and give enough detail for us to find it. We may ask a question to confirm the request is yours.

Changes to this page

If the way we handle data changes, this page changes first, and the date at the top is updated.