What we keep, and what we never touch

01The short version

• Your private stories are yours. Nobody else can open them. We don’t read them, train models on them or keep their words in our logs.
• When you ask the AI to write a scene, the recent scenes of that story go to the AI provider to write it. Nothing else does.
• We keep a record of what you do on the site (books opened, likes, time spent reading and playing) to run and improve it. Never the words you write.
• We don’t sell your data, and we don’t use advertising trackers.
• You can delete your account, and everything private in it, at any time from Settings.

02What we keep

• Your account: your username, first and last name, email address and a scrambled (hashed) copy of your password, or your Google account’s id if you sign in with Google.
• Your stories: the stories, scenes and choices you save, and your settings (reading level, pictures on or off, an access code if you entered one).
• What you publish: a published book’s scenes up to the point you chose, its title, hook and synopsis, and your username as its author are public. So are comments you post, with your username.
• Likes: which scenes and books you liked. Others see how many likes something has, never who gave them.
• Your plan and payments: whether you have Plus and until when, and each payment’s amount, date, status, billing country and a receipt link. Card details never reach us (see “Payments”).
• Messages to support: what you write to us and our replies.

03Your activity on the site

To understand which books people enjoy, what confuses them and what is worth building next, we record what happens on the site:

• pages and books you open, how far you read, and the time you spend reading or playing (counted only while the page is open and you are using it);
• likes, saves, comments, choices you make in a story (whether you picked a suggestion or wrote your own move, and how long it was, never what it said), pictures you asked for, stories you started, published or deleted;
• sign-ins, changes to your account, and your plan and payments.

With each record we keep the time, the kind of device (phone, tablet or computer) and your country as our network provider reports it. We don’t keep your IP address or browser details in these records. Titles of published books may appear in them; the words of your private stories never do.

Before you sign in, the site uses a random id kept in your browser so we can tell visits apart. When you sign in on that browser, what you did before joins your account. These records are kept for about 13 months and then deleted, and all of yours are deleted with your account.

04What we never collect

• The text of your stories in any log, analytics record or usage record. AI usage records hold the model, token counts, cost and timing only.
• Your card number or bank details.
• Your contacts, precise location or advertising identifiers.

05Who receives your story text

When you ask the AI to write a scene, the recent scenes of that story, its setup and your choice are sent to an AI provider to write the next one: DeepSeek first, with Cloudflare Workers AI and Google Gemini as fallbacks when it is busy. Pictures are drawn by Cloudflare Workers AI from a short description of the scene.

Hand-written stories you play and books you only read are not sent anywhere. Don’t put personal secrets in a story you ask the AI to continue.

When you publish a book, we check its text for content our Terms don’t allow, which may use the same AI provider.

06Services we use

• Servers we rent host the site, the database and your stories.
• Cloudflare: delivery, protection against attacks, and storage for pictures.
• Resend: our emails (confirming your address, password resets, receipts of changes).
• Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google.
• Dodo Payments: takes payments for Plus and pictures as our merchant of record.
• The AI providers named above, for AI scenes and pictures.

07Payments

Dodo Payments sells Plus and “Illustrate this story” on our behalf (it is the merchant of record): it takes your card on its own page, handles sales tax and VAT, and sends your receipts. It tells us that a payment happened, its amount, status and billing country, and the email it was made with. It never sends us your card details. Dodo’s own privacy policy covers what it keeps.

08Your browser’s storage

We keep your sign-in, your settings (theme, text size, where you stopped reading), stories not yet saved and the random visit id in your browser’s local storage. There are no advertising cookies and no third-party trackers. Clearing your browser’s data signs you out and resets these.

09Deleting your data

Settings → Delete account erases your account, private stories, settings, likes and activity records. If you still pay for Plus, cancel it first so you aren’t charged again.

Books you published stay readable without your name, because other readers’ stories may continue from them: unpublish them first if you want them gone. Payment records are kept as tax law requires, without your account.

10Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or object to how we use it. Write to [email protected] and we’ll answer within 30 days. If you’re in the EU or UK you can also complain to your data protection authority.

11Children

Parallel Pens isn’t for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their data. If you think a child has an account, tell us and we’ll delete it.

12Changes

When this policy changes, we update the date at the top; for a change that matters, we tell you by email or on the site first.