Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Kyle Sands ("we", "us", "our") collects, uses, and protects your information when you use kylesands.com and the community forum.

Information we collect

• Account details — your username, email address, password (stored only as a secure hash), and security settings such as two-factor authentication or passkeys.
• Email address — when you join the newsletter or create an account.
• Subscription & payment data — handled by our payment provider, Paddle, which acts as our Merchant of Record. Paddle collects and processes your payment details; we never see or store your card information.
• Forum activity — the posts you make and the profile information you provide in the community forum (powered by phpBB).
• Limited technical data — like most websites, our servers and security providers automatically record basic technical information in standard logs (such as your IP address and browser type) to keep the site running securely and to prevent abuse. These logs are not used for analytics.

Analytics & cookies

We use our own first-party, privacy-friendly analytics. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies, and we do not store your IP address for analytics — visits are counted using a rotating, non-identifying value that cannot be tied back to you. Because of this, no cookie-consent banner is required.

The only cookies we set are essential ones needed to run the site: to keep you signed in, to share your sign-in between the website and the forum, and to protect forms and logins from abuse (including Cloudflare Turnstile).

For our serial fiction, we also record anonymous, aggregate reading statistics — which chapters are opened and finished, grouped by subscription tier — using the same rotating, non-identifying value. We do not store who read what.

How we use your information

To provide the website and the serial, send the emails you opt into (such as new-chapter and newsletter emails), process and manage subscriptions, run the community forum, keep your account secure, and improve the experience.

Service providers

We use a small number of trusted providers to operate the service. Except for Paddle (below), they process personal data on our behalf and under our instructions — only as needed to provide their service, and not for their own purposes:

• Resend — delivers our emails.
• Cloudflare — content delivery and security / bot protection.
• DreamHost — website hosting.

Paddle is our Merchant of Record — it is the seller of the subscription and independently collects and processes your payment information to complete the sale (billing, fraud prevention, and tax). We never see or store your card details.

We do not sell your personal data or share it with anyone for their own marketing.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR or CCPA), you may have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal data, and to object to or restrict certain processing. You can unsubscribe from optional emails at any time using the link in any email or your account settings. To make a request, contact us at [email protected].

Data retention

We keep your information for as long as your account or subscription is active, and afterwards only as needed for legitimate business or legal reasons.

Children

This site is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.

International users

We operate from the United States, and your information is processed there. By using the site, you understand that your data may be processed in the United States.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time; material changes will be noted here with a new "last updated" date.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Email [email protected].