Writing Atlas - Privacy Policy

Effective Date: 2023-12-18

Our Approach to Privacy

Writing Atlas aims to build a community dedicated to curating and indexing short stories from around the web. We believe that building this community requires us to use data responsibly and be a good steward of your privacy.

This Privacy Policy outlines how Writing Atlas collects, uses, and shares your personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) through our Services. This Privacy Policy is incorporated by reference into our Terms of Service, and we recommend that you review both carefully. Any terms we use in this Privacy Policy without defining them have the definitions given to them in the Terms of Service.

Please note that we reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. When we do so and unless required by law to provide an alternative notice, we will post an updated version to this page. If you choose to continue to use our Services after such a revision, you consent to the updated Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, you can reach us by sending an email to privacy@writingatlas.com.

Information We Collect

While using our Services, we will collect the following Personal Information:

Account profile information, such as your first and last name, email address, profile picture, and other related content.
Contributions, including any metadata that you submit about stories, and stories themselves.
Communications with us, including any data you provide when contacting us with questions or feedback, or when answering any surveys we may send out.
Usage data, including data automatically gathered as you used our Services on pages viewed, how long you spent on a page, navigation paths, and otherwise.
Device data, including your computer or mobile device operating system, IP address, language settings, and related information.
Sensitive data if you choose to provide it to us. By providing such sensitive information, you consent to our use of it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.
Other data not specifically listed here, which we will use as described in this Privacy Policy and will be disclosed at the time of collection.

Note that we may collect some of this data automatically via tools such as cookies, local storage technologies such as HTML5, and web beacons.

How We Use Your Information

We use Personal Information for the following legitimate business interests:

Our Services. We use Personal Information in order to operate and provide you with our Services.
Communication about our Services. We use your Personal Information to respond to your support requests, send security and administrative messages, and announcements about our Services.
Improving, monitoring, personalizing, and protecting our Services. We use Personal Information to improve and keep our Services safe for our users.
Compliance and legal claims. We use Personal Information as required to comply with legal obligations, and to defend us against legal claims and disputes.

Sharing Your Information

We may disclose Personal Information as described below:

Service providers. We may rely on third-party service providers in furtherance of the purposes described above. In these cases, personal information may be accessed by these third-parties and processed or stored on our behalf.
Business transferees. Personal Information may be transferred to another entity in the event of a bankruptcy, change of control, or shutdown of Writing Atlas. We may also transfer personal information in the course of a sale or merger of the business.
Authorities. If we are legally obliged or otherwise believe it necessary to do so, personal information may be disclosed to regulatory agencies, law enforcement agencies, courts, and other government authorities, including for the compliance and protection purposes described above.

Privacy Rights and Choices

You have a few different options with regards to your Personal Information:

Terminating Your Account: You may request that we delete your account on our Services by contacting us at privacy@writingatlas.com. Please be aware that it may not be possible to completely delete your Content from our records or backups, and that Content may remain viewable on our Services and elsewhere to the extent that it was copied or stored by third-parties.
Personal Information Requests: Depending on your location and the nature of your interactions with our Services, you may be entitled to request that Writing Atlas provide copies of Personal Information, correct it, erase or restrict its processing, or to ask Writing Atlas to transfer some of this information to other organizations. You may also have rights to object to or restrict some processing activities, or to withdraw your consent to processing activities. To make these requests, please contact us at privacy@writingatlas.com. Please be aware that we may ask for specific information about you or your authorized agent to verify your identity. You are entitled to exercise the rights described above free from discrimination.
Do Not Track. Some Internet browsers can be configured to send “Do Not Track” signals to the online services that you visit. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track” or similar signals. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” please visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.

Third-Parties

Please be advised that you may encounter links or content through our Services that are provided by third-parties that Writing Atlas does not own or otherwise control. You acknowledge that any data you provide to these third-parties shall be governed solely by the terms of service, privacy policies, and other terms applicable to those third-parties.

Children

In accordance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), we do not knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from children under 16; if you are a child under 16, please do not attempt to register for our Services or send any personal information about yourself to us.

If we learn we have collected personal information from a child under 16, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 16 may have provided us personal information, please contact us at privacy@writingatlas.com.

Retention

Where required under applicable laws, we retain personal information only for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected and processed, in accordance with our retention policies, and in accordance with applicable laws and regulatory obligations or until you withdraw your consent (where applicable).

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of personal information, the purposes for which we use personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal and regulatory requirements.