We are not collecting anything from you

What this site does today

SmittenSpines is currently a set of articles and static pages. It does not set cookies, does not run analytics, does not embed third-party scripts, fonts, trackers or share buttons, and has no accounts. The typefaces are served from this domain, so loading a page here doesn't tell anyone else that you did.

One thing is not zero. Our hosting provider records standard server logs whenever a page is served: an IP address, a timestamp, the page requested and a browser string. That happens at the infrastructure layer and is used for delivering the site and dealing with abuse. We don't build anything on top of it, we don't analyse it, we don't join it to anything, and we don't keep our own copy.

The sign-up box

The email box on the front page is a placeholder and isn't connected to anything yet, so pressing it stores nothing and sends nothing. When it does start working, it will collect an email address and nothing else, use it only to tell you the search is open, and unsubscribe in one click. We will update this page on the day that changes, with the date on it.

When search opens

The real privacy question for a book finder is what happens to the words you type, because those words can be extraordinarily personal. What you search for in a romance catalogue can give away your sexuality, your relationships, your religion or your health. So we have written this policy on the assumption that the whole search stream deserves the strictest treatment European law provides, rather than arguing about whether it qualifies.

The commitments we are building to, stated now so they can be held against us:

• Your search text is not saved. The words are used to find books and then let go. They do not go into analytics, server logs, error reports or backups.
• Words persist only if you hand them over on purpose. If we ever ask to keep a search to improve results, it will be a button you press after the fact, showing you exactly what would be included, with a deletion code that needs no account.
• Counts, not sentences. What we keep by default are numbers (how often a page was shown, which link was clicked, how long a response took), and rare combinations get suppressed so that a count can never describe one person's search.
• No profiles, no ad tech, no cross-site tracking. No search history is attached to a person, and searches are not linked to each other.
• We don't sell searches. Not to retailers, not to publishers, not to advertisers or data brokers, and not individually or in bulk. If we ever publish aggregate trend reporting, we will explain the aggregation method before we start rather than afterwards.
• Third parties get named. When search runs, some processing will happen at a service provider. We will name it here, say where it processes, and state its retention, instead of referring vaguely to partners.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, object to processing, and complain to a supervisory authority. Today the honest answer to the first question is “nothing”, and we would rather say that plainly than pad out this page. Write to privacy@smittenspines.com.

For the German supervisory authority relevant to us, see the Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Affiliate links

There are none on the site right now. When there are, they will never carry your search text, your preferences, or a persistent identifier. Once you're on a retailer's site their privacy practices apply rather than ours. See the affiliate disclosure.