Privacy Policy

Writers Grove (“we,” “our,” “us”) is committed to protecting your privacy and being transparent about how we collect, use, and share your information.

0. Our Legal Position

Writers Grove is a U.S.-based company located in Michigan. Our servers are located in Ohio.
We do not market to, advertise to, or actively solicit customers in the UK, EU, or Canada. We do not recognize those jurisdictions as having authority over us.

That said, we recognize frameworks such as GDPR (EU/UK), UK Data Protection Act, Canada’s PIPEDA, and California’s CCPA as best practices for protecting consumers. While we are under no legal obligation to follow those frameworks, we voluntarily align our practices with their principles where reasonable, in the interest of transparency and user trust.

By using Writers Grove, you acknowledge that the company is based in the United States, governed by U.S. law (specifically the laws of Michigan), and that any legal disputes must be resolved under U.S. jurisdiction.

1. Information We Collect

• Account Information: Email address, display name.
• Sign-in Information: Information used to sign in to your account, such as the passkeys you register and, if you sign in with Google, the id Google gives your Google account and its email address.
• Backup Connection: If you connect Google Drive on the Writing tab of Settings, the key Google gives us for your Drive, which can see only the files we put there, and the address of that Google account.
• Payment Information: Processed by Stripe or PayPal. We do not store credit card numbers.
• Content: Stories, comments, and metadata you publish.
• Analytics: Minimal internal tracking (page views, favorites, reads). Google Ads are used for free-tier pages.
• Device/Technical Data: IP address, browser type, security logs.

2. How We Use Information

• To operate and provide the platform.
• To process payments and referrals.
• To display ads (Google Ads for free-tier pages).
• To prevent fraud and ensure compliance.
• To comply with legal obligations (including DMCA takedown requests and law enforcement).

3. Sharing of Information

• Service Providers: Stripe, PayPal, AWS, Google Ads, Google (sign-in with Google and, when you switch it on, backups to your Google Drive), and Wiktionary and Wikipedia, run by the Wikimedia Foundation: when you are signed in and select a word in a chapter, your browser asks Wiktionary for its definition and Wikipedia for its summary, so Wikimedia sees the word and your network address. Do not show definitions under Definitions on the Reading tab of Settings turns that off.
• Legal Authorities: When required by U.S. law, valid DMCA requests, or law enforcement.

  Law enforcement may contact us at support@writersgrove.net.

• Author Analytics and Ads: Premium authors may run their own analytics (Google Analytics 4 or GoatCounter) and their own Google AdSense ads on their author pages. Data collected there, including any cookies those services set, is governed by those providers’ policies.

We do not sell your personal data.

4. User Rights

• Access/Export: Download your works and data at any time.
• Correction: Update inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Deletion: Delete your account and works (permanently after 30 days; backup copies expire within a further 30 days).
• Opt-Out of Ads: Paid users see no platform ads. Free users can adjust preferences via Google Ad settings.
• CCPA/Similar: While not obligated, we honor requests to access, delete, or opt-out where reasonable.

5. Data Retention

• Accounts/Content: Kept until deletion.
• Deleted Data: Purged permanently after 30 days. Copies in our database backups expire within a further 30 days.
• Backups: Database backups are kept for 30 days and are used only to recover the service.
• Backups to Your Own Storage: If you connect Google Drive, the key to it is kept until you disconnect or your account is permanently deleted. The files sent to your Drive are yours and stay there; we never read them back.
• Account Archive: One archive per account, kept until you request a new one or your account is permanently deleted.
• Logs/Analytics: Retained up to 12 months.

6. Cookies & Tracking

• Essential Cookies: For login and security.
• Analytics Cookies: For internal metrics.
• Advertising Cookies: Used by Google Ads on free-tier pages.

7. Children’s Privacy

Writers Grove is not for users under 13. Accounts found to be underage will be deleted.

8. International Transfers

Your data is processed in the United States.

9. Author Subdomains

A premium author may publish at their own subdomain (your-username.writersgrove.net). The information on an author subdomain is controlled by the author, not by Writers Grove: the stories, the profile, the links, and any analytics or ads the author has added. We do not review, endorse, or control that information. Any data collected by an author’s analytics or ads is governed by that provider’s policy, as described in section 3.

10. Contact Information

Phone: +1 (888) 836-5902
Email: privacy@writersgrove.net (privacy/data requests)
Email: support@writersgrove.net (general support, law enforcement contact)