Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

Information you provide directly:

• Email address (required to create an Account)
• Payment information (processed by Stripe; we never store raw card numbers)
• E-reader device addresses or identifiers you register for delivery
• Article URLs or publication feeds you submit for delivery
• Mailing address, if you subscribe to the Print + E-Ink tier
• Information you submit through our support, DMCA, or publisher contact forms (name, email, and the details of your request)

Information collected automatically:

• Log data: IP address, browser type, pages visited, timestamps
• Device information: operating system, device identifiers
• Usage data: articles queued, delivery history, features used
• Cookies and similar tracking technologies (see Section 6)

2. How We Use Your Information

We use information we collect to:

• Provide and operate the Services, including article retrieval and device delivery
• Process payments and manage your subscription
• Prepare for and, once physical fulfillment launches, fulfill print magazine orders and communicate shipping status (see Section 3 regarding the current status of print fulfillment)
• Send transactional emails (delivery confirmations, account notices)
• Respond to your support requests
• Detect and prevent fraud or abuse
• Improve and develop the Services through aggregate, anonymized analysis
• Comply with legal obligations

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We do not use your reading history or article content for advertising targeting.

3. How We Share Your Information

We share information only in limited circumstances:

• Service providers: We share information with vendors who help us operate the Services — including payment processors (Stripe), email delivery providers, and e-reader delivery services (Amazon Kindle, Kobo, and similar). These parties are contractually bound to use your information only to provide their services to us.
• Print fulfillment (beta): Physical print fulfillment for the Print + E-Ink tier has not yet launched — see Section 7 of our Terms of Service for details. No print-on-demand or mailing vendor currently receives your mailing address. Once physical fulfillment begins, we will share your mailing address with a print fulfillment partner solely to ship your magazine, and will update this policy to name that partner before doing so.
• Legal compliance: We may disclose information if required by law, court order, or governmental authority, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of Acta, our users, or the public.
• Business transfers: If Acta is acquired or merges with another entity, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

4. Data Retention

We retain account information for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period thereafter to comply with legal obligations or resolve disputes.

Article content retrieved for delivery is not retained after the delivery is complete. Delivery logs (which articles were sent, when, to which device) are retained for a limited period to support troubleshooting and are then deleted.

5. Your Rights and Choices

You have the following rights with respect to your personal information:

• Access: You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction: You may update your account information at any time through your account settings.
• Deletion: You may delete your account through your account settings. Upon deletion, we will remove your personal information from our active systems within 30 days, subject to legal retention requirements.
• Portability: You may request an export of your account data in a machine-readable format.
• Opt-out of marketing: You may unsubscribe from non-transactional emails at any time via the unsubscribe link in any such email. You cannot opt out of transactional emails (e.g., delivery confirmations) while your account is active.

If you are located in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or California, you may have additional rights under GDPR or CCPA. Use our Contact page to exercise any of these rights.

6. Cookies

We use cookies and similar technologies to operate the Services, maintain your login session, and understand aggregate usage patterns. We do not use third-party advertising cookies. You can control cookie settings through your browser, though disabling cookies may impair certain features of the Services.

7. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your personal information, including encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest. However, no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach that affects your personal information, we will notify you as required by applicable law.

8. Children's Privacy

The Services are not directed to children under 16 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, please contact us via our Contact page and we will delete it promptly.

9. Third-Party Links and Services

The Services allow you to direct Acta to retrieve content from third-party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those websites. This Privacy Policy applies only to information collected by Acta through the Services.

10. Browser Extension

The Acta browser extension is designed to act only where you've told it to. By default it does nothing on any site — it gains the ability to read a page's content only in two situations, both of which require your explicit action:

• Automatic monitoring: only on sites/publications you've explicitly subscribed to via the extension or your Acta account (any RSS/Atom-enabled site, not just Substack). The extension checks whether a new post on a subscribed site is available and, if so, sends that post's content and URL to Acta's servers for delivery to your device.
• One-off actions: when you click "Save this page" or "Follow this blog" in the extension popup, it reads the page you are currently viewing (using your browser's temporary, click-triggered "active tab" permission) and sends that page's content or feed information to Acta's servers. It does not act on any other tab or page unless you click one of these buttons.

• The extension does not run in the background on sites you have not subscribed to, and one-off actions only ever touch the single tab you are actively viewing when you click.
• It does not collect your general browsing history.
• Your extension token (a personal access credential, not your account password) is stored locally in your browser's synced settings storage and sent with each request to authenticate you.
• Article and feed content sent by the extension is handled the same way as content you submit manually — see Section 4 for retention.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the new policy on this page and, where appropriate, by email. Your continued use of the Services after any such change constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact

For privacy questions or requests, use our Contact page.