This policy explains what PenStranding ("we"), which runs PenStranding, does with your personal data. We are the controller of that data. Questions, or anything you'd like us to do with your data: support@penstranding.com.
What we keep, and why
- Your account: your name, email address and password (only a secure hash of it), and your two-factor secret if you turn it on. We need these to give you an account (the contract between us). If you sign in with Google, Google tells us the name and email address of the Google account you choose and the number it identifies that account by, which we keep to recognise it; we never see its password.
- Your books: your manuscripts, covers, details, translations and everything you make in PenStranding, to provide the service.
- Payments: Paddle, our merchant of record, takes your payment details; we never see your card number. Paddle tells us what you bought, the amounts, the sales tax and your country, which we keep for our accounts and because tax law requires it. It also tells us the card's brand, last four digits and expiry date, or the PayPal address: from these we keep only a code that can't be turned back into them, to recognise one person paying for two accounts that refer each other. We don't keep the name on the card.
- Referrals: if you join through a friend's link, we keep whose link it was, so that you both get your credit. Your friend sees how many people joined through their link, never who.
- Security and records: a log of sign-ins and of changes in your account, with their times, to keep accounts safe and to find and fix problems (our legitimate interest). The servers' own logs also note each request's network address; they're kept only until they roll over.
- The beta waitlist: if you ask to join it, your email address, any note you leave and the book plan you save with it, only to invite you and to set up that book when you join.
We use cookies only for signing in, keeping accounts safe and keeping referral credit fair: one keeps you signed in, one remembers a browser you signed in with, so that wrong passwords typed elsewhere can't lock you out, one notes which accounts have signed in with a browser, so that nobody earns referral credit by making another account in their own browser, and one lasts the few minutes a sign-in with Google takes. Paddle's checkout sets its own when you pay. A book plan you save before you have an account stays in your browser until you make the book from it; if you save it with a place on the waitlist, we keep it too, as above. A friend's referral link you open stays in your browser for up to 30 days, until you make an account. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don't sell your data.
Who else handles it
We use these providers to run PenStranding, each under a contract that lets them use your data only to do this work:
- Hetzner Online (Germany): the servers and the backups, in data centres in the EU.
- Paddle.com (UK): payments, invoices and sales tax, as our merchant of record.
- Anthropic (United States): the AI that does the AI jobs you ask for (translations, proofreading, descriptions). It receives the text of the job, not your account details, and may not train its models on it.
- Our email provider, to send you password and invitation emails.
- Our error-reporting service, which receives technical details of errors, never your books or passwords.
If you use your own AI key, the provider you chose receives the text of those jobs under its own terms. If you sign in with Google, Google knows you signed in to PenStranding, under Google's own privacy policy.
Where data goes outside the EU and the UK, it goes under the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or another safeguard the law accepts.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and books until you delete them or your account. When you delete your account, everything in it goes at once, and its backups cycle out within 12 months. Payment records stay as long as tax law requires, and security logs for up to a year, with what they said about you removed when you delete your account.
Your rights
You can see, correct and download your data (Settings → Your data → Export everything), delete it (Settings → Delete my account), and object to or ask us to limit how we use it. Write to support@penstranding.com for anything else. You can also complain to your data protection authority.
PenStranding isn't for children under 16.
We'll tell you by email before any change to this policy that affects you.