Privacy Policy

Last updated September 3, 2026

The short version: Poetic has no account and no login. What you save, write, and read lives in your own private iCloud, where we cannot see it. We collect no advertising identifiers, never ask for your location, and never sell your data to anyone, ever.

What follows is the full, formal version. It uses the careful language these documents have to use, so a few sentences may sound broader than what we actually do. Wherever that happens, we have written the plain truth underneath in italics.

This Privacy Policy for Poetic Studios LLC (“we,” “us,” or “our”) describes how and why we might access, collect, store, use, and/or share (“process”) your personal information when you use our services (“Services”), including when you:

• Download and use our mobile application (Poetic), or any other application of ours that links to this Privacy Policy
• Use Poetic. Poetic is an iOS app that puts the greatest words ever written back into everyday life. It surfaces real passages from public-domain literature, poetry, and philosophy through home and lock screen widgets, an in-app reading feed, a library of full-length classic books, and optional notifications on a schedule the reader chooses. Every line is a genuine passage from a real work, chosen by hand, never invented or machine-made. There is no account, no login, and no infinite scroll. The entire collection lives on the device, so it never loads and never interrupts, and what a reader saves and selects is stored in their own private iCloud, which Poetic Studios LLC cannot access. Poetic uses no advertising identifiers, never requests device location, and discards IP addresses at collection.
• Engage with us in other related ways, including any marketing or events

Questions or concerns? Reading this Privacy Policy will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. We are responsible for making decisions about how your personal information is processed. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services. If you still have any questions or concerns, please contact us at [email protected].

Summary of key points

This summary provides key points from our Privacy Policy, but you can find out more details about any of these topics by using our table of contents below to find the section you are looking for.

What personal information do we process? When you use our Services, we may process personal information depending on how you interact with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. Learn more about personal information you disclose to us.

Do we process any sensitive personal information? Some of the information may be considered “special” or “sensitive” in certain jurisdictions, for example your racial or ethnic origins, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs. We do not process sensitive personal information.

Do we collect any information from third parties? We do not collect any information from third parties.

How do we process your information? We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We process your information only when we have a valid legal reason to do so. Learn more about how we process your information.

In what situations and with which parties do we share personal information? We may share information in specific situations and with specific third parties. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Learn more about when and with whom we share your personal information.

How do we keep your information safe? We have organisational and technical processes and procedures in place to protect your personal information. However, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorised third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Learn more about how we keep your information safe.

What are your rights? Depending on where you are located geographically, the applicable privacy law may mean you have certain rights regarding your personal information. Learn more about your privacy rights.

How do you exercise your rights? The easiest way to exercise your rights is by emailing us at [email protected], or by visiting our support page. We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

Want to learn more about what we do with any information we collect? Review the Privacy Policy in full below.

Table of contents

• 1. What information do we collect?
• 2. How do we process your information?
• 3. What legal bases do we rely on to process your information?
• 4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?
• 5. Is your information transferred internationally?
• 6. How long do we keep your information?
• 7. How do we keep your information safe?
• 8. Do we collect information from minors?
• 9. What are your privacy rights?
• 10. Controls for do-not-track features
• 11. Do United States residents have specific privacy rights?
• 12. Do other regions have specific privacy rights?
• 13. What stays on your device and in your private iCloud
• 14. Do we make updates to this policy?
• 15. How can you contact us about this policy?
• 16. How can you review, update, or delete the data we collect from you?

1. What information do we collect?

Personal information you disclose to us

In Short: The categories of personal information you provide directly, being your onboarding responses, the device permissions you grant, and the transaction data arising from any purchase. We process no sensitive personal information.

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you participate in activities on the Services, or otherwise when you contact us.

Personal Information Provided by You. The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. During onboarding, Poetic asks a small number of optional questions so it can choose writing that suits you. Every question that asks about you personally offers a “Prefer not to say” option. Choosing it records that you preferred not to say, rather than revealing anything about you. Whichever answers you give, they change nothing about what the app costs or offers. The personal information we collect may include the following:

• contact preferences (the times of day you would like to receive quotes)
• age range
• gender
• relationship status
• the season of life you say you are in
• topics and interests
• reasons for using the app
• referral source (how you heard about us)

When you write to us. If you email us, we receive what you choose to send: your email address, your message, and anything you attach. We keep that correspondence only so long as it takes to resolve what you wrote about, and for a reasonable period afterwards in case you write again about the same thing. It is not added to your analytics profile, not used to build a picture of you, and not used for marketing. It exists so that a person can answer you.

Some requests cannot be answered without one extra detail, because Poetic has no accounts and no login. Nothing identifies you to us by default, which is deliberate, but it means an email on its own often gives us nothing to look up. Where that applies we ask for the minimum that makes the request actionable, and nothing beyond it:

• To delete your data, or to tell you what we hold. Your Poetic User ID. It is the only handle connecting an installation to the records described in this policy, so without it we cannot find them, and with it we do not need your name or anything else. The app shows it under Settings, and the copy button there fills it in for you.
• To fix a problem in the app. Usually the app version, your device model and iOS version, and what you were doing when it went wrong. Those narrow a fault to a build and a screen. The same copy button provides them.
• For a subscription or billing question. Your Poetic User ID, and sometimes the Apple receipt or the purchase date. Apple is the merchant and holds the payment details; we never see your card and never ask for it.

All of it is used to help you and for nothing else. We do not analyse support correspondence, and an identifier you send so that something can be fixed is used for that and then left alone. If your message does not concern your account or your data, you do not need to send any of it, and the template our email links open says so.

Poetic also asks what you would like to be called. That name is never transmitted to us, and we never receive it. See What stays on your device below.

Sensitive Information. We do not process sensitive information.

Payment Data. All payment data is handled and stored by Apple and RevenueCat. You may find their privacy notice link(s) here: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/ and https://www.revenuecat.com/privacy.

All purchases are processed by Apple through the App Store. Apple is the merchant of record. Poetic Studios LLC never receives, sees, or stores card numbers, billing addresses, or any payment credentials. We use RevenueCat to determine whether a subscription is active; RevenueCat receives only the transaction information Apple provides, together with a random identifier for the install. Refunds are handled by Apple under Apple’s policies and cannot be issued by us.

Application Data. If you use our application, we may also collect the following information if you choose to provide us with access or permission:

• Mobile Device Access. We may request access or permission to certain features from your mobile device, specifically your photo library (add-only, so that you can save an image you choose to share) and notifications (alerts, sounds, and badges). We request no other device permissions: no camera, microphone, contacts, calendar, Bluetooth, or location. If you wish to change our access or permissions, you may do so in your device’s settings.
• Mobile Device Data. We automatically collect device information such as your device model, operating system and version, and app version, together with a random, app-generated identifier for your install. We do not collect your location. Poetic never requests location permission, uses no GPS, and derives no location from your IP address, because we do not collect your IP address either. We also do not collect your mobile carrier or phone network information.
• Push Notifications. If you turn on “Windows of Light,” we may send you push notifications regarding certain features of the application(s). If you wish to opt out from receiving these types of communications, you may turn them off in your device’s settings. See Section 4 for what we store in order to deliver them.

This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our application(s), for troubleshooting, and for our internal analytics, meaning our own understanding of how Poetic is used so that we can improve it. It is never sold, and it is never shared with anyone for advertising.

All personal information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information.

Information automatically collected

In Short: The device and usage information collected automatically, comprising a defined set of in-app events and basic device characteristics. No IP address and no location data are collected, and this website collects nothing.

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate the Services. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as device characteristics, operating system, information about how and when you use our Services, and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Services, and for our internal analytics, meaning our own understanding of how Poetic is used so that we can improve it. It is never sold, and it is never shared with anyone for advertising.

The information we collect includes:

• Log and Usage Data. Log and usage data is service-related, diagnostic, usage, and performance information our servers automatically collect when you access or use our Services and which we record in log files. Depending on how you interact with us, this log data may include device information and information about your activity in the Services (such as the date/time stamps associated with your usage and other actions you take, such as which features you use), and device event information (such as system activity, error reports, sometimes called “crash dumps,” and hardware settings). In the app this consists of a small number of deliberate, named events, for example opening, bookmarking or shelving a book, changing your theme or topics, adding or removing a notification window, viewing the subscription screen, and completing or cancelling a purchase. Where an event concerns a book, it includes that book’s title and author. There is no session recording, no screen tracking, no keystroke logging, and no automatic capture of what you tap. We do not record which individual poems or passages you read.
• Device Data. We collect device data such as information about your computer, phone, tablet, or other device you use to access the Services. Depending on the device used, this device data may include information such as device and application identification numbers, hardware model, operating system, and system configuration information. It does not include your IP address or your location.
• Our website. bepoetic.app sets no cookies and runs no analytics. There is no tracking pixel, no advertising tag, and no consent banner, because there is nothing to consent to. Fonts are served from our own domain rather than a third party. Our hosting provider processes standard server logs, including IP addresses, as a technical necessity of delivering the site. The same applies in the app: it fetches its theme catalogue and images from our content delivery network, and that network processes the request, including your IP address, in order to serve the file. In both cases the address is handled by the provider to deliver content; it is not collected by us, and it never reaches our analytics.

2. How do we process your information?

In Short: The eight purposes for which we process personal information, each enumerated below: provision of the Services and your subscription, support and administrative correspondence, feedback, protection of the Services, usage analysis, and campaign attribution. We do not process personal information for advertising.

We process the personal information for the following purposes listed below. We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our Services, including:

• To deliver and facilitate delivery of services to the user. We may process your information to provide you with the requested service.
• To respond to user inquiries/offer support to users. We may process your information to respond to your inquiries and solve any potential issues you might have with the requested service.
• To send administrative information to you. We may process your information to send you details about our products and services, changes to our terms and policies, and other similar information. We do not send marketing or promotional communications.
• To fulfill and manage your orders. We may process your information to fulfill and manage your orders, payments, returns, and exchanges made through the Services.
• To request feedback. We may process your information when necessary to request feedback and to contact you about your use of our Services.
• To protect our Services. We may process your information as part of our efforts to keep our Services safe and secure, including fraud monitoring and prevention.
• To identify usage trends. We may process information about how you use our Services to better understand how they are being used so we can improve them.
• To determine the effectiveness of our marketing and promotional campaigns. Where you tell us how you heard about Poetic, we may process that information to better understand which of our campaigns and channels are effective. We do not use it to target advertising at you.

We do not use your information to advertise to you, and we do not make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

3. What legal bases do we rely on to process your information?

In Short: The four lawful bases on which we rely, and the processing each supports: consent, performance of a contract, legitimate interests, and legal obligations. Separate provisions apply to residents of Canada.

If you are located in the EU or UK, this section applies to you.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on in order to process your personal information. As such, we may rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:

• Consent. We may process your information if you have given us permission (i.e., consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
• Performance of a Contract. We may process your personal information when we believe it is necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations to you, including providing our Services or at your request prior to entering into a contract with you.
• Legitimate Interests. We may process your information when we believe it is reasonably necessary to achieve our legitimate business interests and those interests do not outweigh your interests and fundamental rights and freedoms. For example, we may process your personal information for some of the purposes described in order to:
  • Analyze how our Services are used so we can improve them to engage and retain users
  • Support our marketing activities
  • Diagnose problems and/or prevent fraudulent activities
  • Understand how our users use our products and services so we can improve user experience
• Legal Obligations. We may process your information where we believe it is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations, such as to cooperate with a law enforcement body or regulatory agency, exercise or defend our legal rights, or disclose your information as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.

If you are located in Canada, this section applies to you.

We may process your information if you have given us specific permission (i.e., express consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose, or in situations where your permission can be inferred (i.e., implied consent). You can withdraw your consent at any time.

In some exceptional cases, we may be legally permitted under applicable law to process your information without your consent, including, for example:

• If collection is clearly in the interests of an individual and consent cannot be obtained in a timely way
• For investigations and fraud detection and prevention
• For business transactions provided certain conditions are met
• If it is contained in a witness statement and the collection is necessary to assess, process, or settle an insurance claim
• For identifying injured, ill, or deceased persons and communicating with next of kin
• If we have reasonable grounds to believe an individual has been, is, or may be victim of financial abuse
• If it is reasonable to expect collection and use with consent would compromise the availability or the accuracy of the information and the collection is reasonable for purposes related to investigating a breach of an agreement or a contravention of the laws of Canada or a province
• If disclosure is required to comply with a subpoena, warrant, court order, or rules of the court relating to the production of records
• If it was produced by an individual in the course of their employment, business, or profession and the collection is consistent with the purposes for which the information was produced
• If the collection is solely for journalistic, artistic, or literary purposes
• If the information is publicly available and is specified by the regulations
• We may disclose de-identified information for approved research or statistics projects, subject to ethics oversight and confidentiality commitments

4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?

In Short: The five service providers to whom we disclose personal information, each engaged under a data processing agreement restricting them to our documented instructions, together with our position on a business transfer. We do not sell personal information, nor share it for advertising.

Vendors, Consultants, and Other Third-Party Service Providers. We may share your data with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors, or agents (“third parties”) who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work. We have contracts in place with our third parties, which are designed to help safeguard your personal information. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will also not share your personal information with any organization apart from us. They also commit to protect the data they hold on our behalf and to retain it for the period we instruct.

In plain terms: five companies help us run Poetic, and each is listed by name below. They are tools we pay to do a job, not partners we hand your data to. None of them is allowed to use your information for their own purposes, and none of them is an advertiser. Nothing is sold to anyone.

The third parties we may share personal information with are as follows:

• Cloud Computing Services — Supabase (Supabase Pte. Ltd., Singapore, with servers in the United States). This is our push notification backend. So that notifications keep arriving reliably even when you have not opened the app, we store, against a random identifier for your install: a device token issued by Apple, your time zone (so that a 7am window means 7am where you actually are), a rolling schedule of which pieces are due to be delivered to that install, and delivery records used to retry failures and diagnose problems.
• Invoice and Billing — Apple (App Store In-App Purchase) and RevenueCat
• Mobile Analytics — PostHog (the Poetic app only; not this website)
• Website Hosting — Cloudflare
• Website traffic statistics — Cloudflare
• Content delivery for the app — Cloudflare. The app fetches its theme catalogue and theme images from our content delivery network, so Cloudflare processes those requests, including your device’s IP address, as a technical necessity of serving the files. It is not passed to us and does not reach our analytics.
• Push notification delivery — Apple Push Notification service

We also may need to share your personal information in the following situations:

• Business Transfers. We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.

5. Is your information transferred internationally?

In Short: Our servers are located in the United States and one provider is incorporated in Singapore. Transfers from the EEA, United Kingdom and Switzerland are made under the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum.

Our servers are located in the United States. Regardless of your location, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored by, and processed by us in our facilities and in the facilities of the third parties with whom we may share your personal information (see Section 4 above), including facilities in the United States and Singapore.

In plain terms: our analytics and subscription tools run on servers in the United States, so the small amount of data described above sits there rather than in your country. The contracts below require it to be protected to your country’s standard regardless.

If you are a resident in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom (UK), or Switzerland, then these countries may not necessarily have data protection laws as comprehensive as those in your country. However, we will take all necessary measures to protect your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law.

European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses. We have implemented measures to protect your personal information, including by relying on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, and the UK Addendum to those clauses, for transfers of personal information between us and our third-party providers. Poetic Studios LLC has no subsidiaries or group companies, so no intra-group transfers occur. These clauses require all recipients to protect all personal information that they process originating from the EEA or UK in accordance with European data protection laws and regulations. Our Standard Contractual Clauses can be provided upon request. We have implemented similar appropriate safeguards with our third-party service providers and partners and further details can be provided upon request.

6. How long do we keep your information?

In Short: The retention period applicable to each category of information. Your saved content is retained in your own iCloud and not by us, and you may request the erasure of any information we do hold.

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). In practice:

• Your content and preferences remain in your own iCloud until you delete them, or remove the app and clear its iCloud data. We never hold a copy, so there is nothing for us to retain or delete on our side.
• Product analytics and crash diagnostics are held by our analytics provider, whose current plan retains such data for 12 months. Neither that provider nor Poetic Studios LLC operates an automatic deletion schedule beyond this period, and the profile associated with your install, which holds the onboarding answers described in Section 1, persists until it is deleted. We therefore do not represent that this data is erased on a fixed date. It comprises a limited set of usage records associated with a random install identifier and no directly identifying information. You may request the deletion of all such data at any time, either by selecting Delete all my data in the app’s settings or by contacting us, and we have processes in place to action that request with the provider itself rather than only within our own systems. The profile holding the onboarding answers described in Section 1 is deleted when the request is made; the associated usage records are removed on the provider’s batch schedule.
• Subscription and transaction records are retained for the duration of your subscription, and thereafter for such period as is necessary to honour restores, refunds, and support requests, and to satisfy our tax and accounting obligations. Our subscription provider does not publish a fixed retention period for this data. You may request the deletion of your records at any time, either by selecting Delete all my data in the app’s settings or by contacting us, and we have processes in place to action that request with the provider itself. Deleting these records does not cancel a subscription, which is managed by Apple in your Apple ID settings.
• Push notification data (device token, time zone, and delivery schedule) is kept while notifications are enabled. The schedule rolls forward continuously and older entries are removed as they are delivered.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or de-identify such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

7. How do we keep your information safe?

In Short: The technical and organisational measures we apply, comprising encryption in transit, row-level access controls, and least-privilege credentials, together with the limitation that no system can be guaranteed secure.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Services is at your own risk. You should only access the Services within a secure environment.

In practice those measures include encryption in transit for everything the app sends, row-level access controls so that records are reachable only by the install they belong to, least-privilege credentials for our own services, and a deliberate decision not to store passwords or payment details at all, because we do not collect them. Your own content is protected by Apple’s security infrastructure within your private iCloud.

8. Do we collect information from minors?

In Short: Poetic is intended for persons aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, do not process a minor’s information for advertising, and provide a means for a parent or guardian to request erasure.

Poetic is intended for a general audience aged 13 and over. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Poetic requires no account, username, password, or email address, and it never requests access to a device’s location.

During onboarding, Poetic may ask optional questions to personalise the experience, including an age range for which “Under 18” is one available answer, and for which “Prefer not to say” is always another. Any answer given is associated with a random, app-generated install identifier rather than with a name, email address, or Apple ID. Any name a user chooses to enter is stored only on their own device and in their own private iCloud account, and is never transmitted to us.

We do not use information from any user we know or believe to be a minor for advertising or for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not sell or share the personal information of any user, and we do not sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16 years of age under any circumstances.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at [email protected] and we will delete it promptly. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete that information.

9. What are your privacy rights?

In Short: Your rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, the withdrawal of consent, and the procedure for complaint to the competent supervisory authority.

In some regions (like the EEA, UK, Switzerland, and Canada), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right (i) to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information, (ii) to request rectification or erasure; (iii) to restrict the processing of your personal information; (iv) if applicable, to data portability; and (v) not to be subject to automated decision-making. If a decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects is made solely by automated means, we will inform you, explain the main factors, and offer a simple way to request human review. In certain circumstances, you may also have the right to object to the processing of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section “How can you contact us about this policy?” below.

We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

Because Poetic has no account, much of this can also be exercised directly: delete saved pieces and journal entries in the app, manage iCloud data in iOS Settings, turn notifications off in iOS Settings, and manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple ID settings. To exercise your right of erasure in full, the app’s settings include Delete all my data, described in Section 16.

If you are located in the UK and are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, you can make a complaint directly to us. This is in addition to the rights you have under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

How to contact us:

• Online: https://bepoetic.app/support/
• Email: [email protected]
• Post: see “How can you contact us about this policy?”

What happens after you complain

• We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days of receiving it.
• We will investigate without unjustifiable or excessive delay.
• We will keep you informed of progress and explain the outcome.

If you are not happy with our final response, you can refer your complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK supervisory authority.

• Website: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
• Helpline: 0303 123 1113
• Post: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

If you are located in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your Member State data protection authority or UK data protection authority.

If you are located in Switzerland, you may contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

Withdrawing your consent: If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, which may be express and/or implied consent depending on the applicable law, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section “How can you contact us about this policy?” below.

However, please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal nor, when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

If you have questions or comments about your privacy rights, you may email us at [email protected].

10. Controls for do-not-track features

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track (“DNT”) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage, no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this Privacy Policy.

California law requires us to let you know how we respond to web browser DNT signals. Because there currently is not an industry or legal standard for recognizing or honoring DNT signals, we do not respond to them at this time. In our case this has little practical effect: our website sets no cookies and runs no analytics, and the app performs no cross-site or cross-app tracking of any kind.

11. Do United States residents have specific privacy rights?

In Short: The rights available to residents of the twenty US states listed below, the categories of personal information collected in the preceding twelve months, and the verification and appeal procedures. We have not sold or shared personal information.

If you are a resident of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, or Virginia, you may have the right to request access to and receive details about the personal information we maintain about you and how we have processed it, correct inaccuracies, get a copy of, or delete your personal information. You may also have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal information. These rights may be limited in some circumstances by applicable law. More information is provided below.

Categories of personal information we collect

The table below shows the categories of personal information we have collected in the past twelve (12) months. The table includes illustrative examples of each category and does not reflect the personal information we collect from you. For a comprehensive inventory of all personal information we process, please refer to the section “What information do we collect?”

We may also collect other personal information outside of these categories through instances where you interact with us in person, online, or by phone or mail in the context of:

• Receiving help through our customer support channels;
• Participation in customer surveys or contests; and
• Facilitation in the delivery of our Services and to respond to your inquiries.

We will use and retain the collected personal information as needed to provide the Services, and for the following periods by category. Fuller detail, including the categories we hold that are not listed above, is in Section 6.

Your saved pieces, journal entries, photographs and reading position are not listed above because we never receive them. They remain in your own iCloud for as long as you keep them.

Sources of personal information

Learn more about the sources of personal information we collect in “What information do we collect?” In short, we collect it directly from you, automatically from your use of the app, and from Apple by way of RevenueCat in the case of subscription and transaction status.

How we use and share personal information

Learn more about how we use your personal information in the section “How do we process your information?”

Will your information be shared with anyone else?

We may disclose your personal information with our service providers pursuant to a written contract between us and each service provider. Learn more about how we disclose personal information in the section “When and with whom do we share your personal information?”

We may use your personal information for our own business purposes, such as for undertaking internal research for technological development and demonstration. This is not considered to be “selling” of your personal information.

We have disclosed the following categories of personal information to third parties for a business or commercial purpose in the preceding twelve (12) months:

• Category A. Identifiers
• Category C. Characteristics of protected classifications under state or federal law
• Category D. Commercial information
• Category F. Internet or other electronic network activity information

“Disclosed” here means given to the service providers listed in Section 4 so they can do the job we pay them for. It does not mean sold, and it does not mean handed to advertisers. We have never done either.

The categories of third parties to whom we disclosed personal information for a business or commercial purpose can be found under “When and with whom do we share your personal information?”

We have not sold or shared any personal information in the preceding twelve (12) months, and we do not process personal information for targeted advertising or for profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

Your rights

You have rights under certain US state data protection laws. However, these rights are not absolute, and in certain cases, we may decline your request as permitted by law. These rights include:

• Right to know whether or not we are processing your personal data
• Right to access your personal data
• Right to correct inaccuracies in your personal data
• Right to request the deletion of your personal data
• Right to obtain a copy of the personal data you previously shared with us
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights
• Right to opt out of the processing of your personal data if it is used for targeted advertising (or sharing as defined under California’s privacy law), the sale of personal data, or profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects (“profiling”)

Depending upon the state where you live, you may also have the following rights:

• Right to access the categories of personal data being processed (as permitted by applicable law, including the privacy law in Minnesota)
• Right to obtain a list of the categories of third parties to which we have disclosed personal data (as permitted by applicable law, including the privacy law in California, Delaware, and Maryland)
• Right to obtain a list of specific third parties to which we have disclosed personal data (as permitted by applicable law, including the privacy law in Minnesota and Oregon)
• Right to obtain a list of third parties to which we have sold personal data (as permitted by applicable law, including the privacy law in Connecticut). We have not sold personal data.
• Right to review, understand, question, and depending on where you live, correct how personal data has been profiled (as permitted by applicable law, including the privacy law in Connecticut and Minnesota)
• Right to limit use and disclosure of sensitive personal data (as permitted by applicable law, including the privacy law in California). We do not collect sensitive personal information.
• Right to opt out of the collection of sensitive data and personal data collected through the operation of a voice or facial recognition feature (as permitted by applicable law, including the privacy law in Florida). We operate no such feature.

How to exercise your rights

To exercise these rights, you can contact us by visiting https://bepoetic.app/support/, by emailing us at [email protected], or by referring to the contact details at the bottom of this document.

Under certain US state data protection laws, you can designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. We may deny a request from an authorized agent that does not submit proof that they have been validly authorized to act on your behalf in accordance with applicable laws.

Request verification

Upon receiving your request, we will need to verify your identity to determine you are the same person about whom we have the information in our system. We will only use personal information provided in your request to verify your identity or authority to make the request. However, if we cannot verify your identity from the information already maintained by us, we may request that you provide additional information for the purposes of verifying your identity and for security or fraud-prevention purposes. Because Poetic has no account, we cannot identify you by name; to act on a request concerning data held under your install identifier, we may ask you to provide that identifier from within the app.

If you submit the request through an authorized agent, we may need to collect additional information to verify your identity before processing your request, and the agent will need to provide a written and signed permission from you to submit such request on your behalf.

Appeals

Under certain US state data protection laws, if we decline to take action regarding your request, you may appeal our decision by emailing us at [email protected]. We will inform you in writing of any action taken or not taken in response to the appeal, including a written explanation of the reasons for the decisions. If your appeal is denied, you may submit a complaint to your state attorney general.

California “Shine The Light” law

California Civil Code Section 1798.83, also known as the “Shine The Light” law, permits our users who are California residents to request and obtain from us, once a year and free of charge, information about categories of personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes and the names and addresses of all third parties with which we shared personal information in the immediately preceding calendar year. We do not disclose personal information to any third party for its own direct marketing purposes. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please submit your request in writing to us by using the contact details provided in the section “How can you contact us about this policy?”

12. Do other regions have specific privacy rights?

In Short: The additional rights arising under the laws of Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of South Africa, and the competent regulator in each jurisdiction.

Australia and New Zealand

We collect and process your personal information under the obligations and conditions set by Australia’s Privacy Act 1988 and New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020. This Privacy Policy satisfies the notice requirements defined in both Privacy Acts, in particular: what personal information we collect from you, from which sources, for which purposes, and other recipients of your personal information.

If you do not wish to provide the personal information necessary to fulfill their applicable purpose, it may affect our ability to provide our services, in particular:

• offer you the products or services that you want
• respond to or help with your requests

At any time, you have the right to request access to or correction of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us using the details in Section 16. If you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you have the right to submit a complaint about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or a breach of New Zealand’s Privacy Principles to the Office of the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner.

Republic of South Africa

At any time, you have the right to request access to or correction of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us using the details in Section 16. If you are unsatisfied with the manner in which we address any complaint with regard to our processing of personal information, you can contact the office of the regulator:

The Information Regulator (South Africa)
General enquiries: [email protected]
Complaints: [email protected]

13. What stays on your device and in your private iCloud

In Short: What you save, write, and read is held in your own iCloud account under your Apple ID, using Apple’s CloudKit private database. We never receive a copy of it and are unable to read it.

Certain information collected through the Poetic application is never transmitted to Poetic Studios LLC.

Poetic asks what you would like to be called, and a name must be entered in order to continue. That name is stored only on your device and within your personal iCloud account, and it is never transmitted to us. You may enter whatever you wish. The same applies to the pieces you save, any journal entries you create, any photograph you select as a journal background, and your reading position and progress.

This information synchronises across your own devices by means of Apple’s iCloud service, under your Apple ID, using Apple’s CloudKit private database. Poetic Studios LLC does not receive, store, or have access to this information and is unable to read it. Consequently, we cannot disclose, transfer, or produce this information in response to any request, and it is not available to us for any purpose.

14. Do we make updates to this policy?

In Short: This Privacy Policy is revised as required by changes in law or to the Services. The date at the head of this document records the most recent revision.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated “Last updated” date at the top of this Privacy Policy. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

15. How can you contact us about this policy?

If you have questions or comments about this policy, you may email us at [email protected], or reach us through our support page. A real person will respond.

16. How can you review, update, or delete the data we collect from you?

Based on the applicable laws of your country or state of residence in the US, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, details about how we have processed it, correct inaccuracies, or delete your personal information. You may also have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal information. These rights may be limited in some circumstances by applicable law.

To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, please email [email protected] or visit our support page.

Poetic also provides a means to do this without contacting us. Selecting Delete all my data in the app’s settings erases the information held on your device and in your private iCloud, and instructs each of the providers described in Section 4 to delete the records associated with your installation. Where a provider processes deletions in batches rather than on receipt, its records are removed on that provider’s schedule. If you have already removed the app, or would prefer that we act on your behalf, please contact us at the address above.

If you use Poetic on more than one device, your saved pieces, journal entries and settings are held in your own iCloud, and deleting them removes them from every device signed in to that account. Certain records are held per device, and a device from which you have not deleted may retain its own copy. To ensure the complete deletion of your data, you must make the request on each device on which you use Poetic, or contact us at the address above and we will act on your behalf.

A note on the writing in Poetic

The literary works Poetic surfaces are drawn from the public domain. To the best of our knowledge and diligence, they are in the public domain in the United States, and we take good-faith care to respect the copyright law of each country where Poetic is offered. This concerns intellectual property rather than personal data; for details, and for how to raise any concern about a specific work, please see our Terms & Conditions, which also govern your use of Poetic.