Privacy Policy

Privacy at ReadFern

This policy covers your use of ReadFern. Your reading account, saved books and purchases belong to this site; an account on another reading site does not grant access to this account.

Send privacy requests concerning this site to [email protected]. Include enough information to identify your account; do not send your payment-card details.

What we collect

We create a random device identifier the first time you open the site and store it in your browser. It is how we recognise your account across visits. We do not ask for your name or phone number.

You may optionally add an email address so you can recover your account after clearing your browser or switching devices. If you do, we store that address and the date you verified it. When you subscribe through PayPal, PayPal also shares the email address of your PayPal account with us; we store it with that subscription to send billing notices and, where advertising measurement is permitted, to match your purchase as described below.

We store what you read (which chapter you reached in each book), the books you save to your library, your daily check-in record, your coin balance and the history of coin changes, which chapters you have unlocked, your display name, and your subscription and order records.

When advertising measurement is permitted, we share page views, book views, checkout activity and confirmed purchases with Meta. This may include advertising click identifiers, the Meta _fbp and _fbc cookies, content and event identifiers, purchase value and currency, a hashed identifier scoped to your account on this site and, where available, a normalized and hashed email address: for purchases, the one PayPal shared when you subscribed or, if there is none, the one you verified with us; for other events, only the one you verified with us. Active checkout events may include the IP address and browser information captured for that checkout; automatic renewal events do not include that network context. Hashing supports matching and does not make these identifiers anonymous. We do not send raw email addresses, phone numbers, payment-card details, search terms or the text you read through this integration.

Our servers keep standard technical logs, which include IP address and browser type, for security and troubleshooting.

What we do not collect

We do not collect or store full card numbers or card security codes. Payment information is entered on PayPal or Stripe, according to the method offered at checkout. We retain customer, subscription and transaction references, amounts, currencies, payment status, and refund or dispute records so we can provide access and manage billing. If you verified an email address with us, we may provide it to the selected payment processor for billing.

We do not collect your contacts, precise GPS location, photos or files.

How we use it

To let you keep reading where you left off, to work out which chapters you are entitled to read, and to process subscriptions and coin purchases.

We use the Meta Pixel in your browser and the Meta Conversions API on our servers to measure advertising and improve ad delivery. The two channels share stable event identifiers to avoid counting the same checkout or payment twice. A membership activation or free trial without a confirmed positive payment is not reported as a purchase.

We check your saved privacy choice and the Global Privacy Control browser signal before loading the Pixel or collecting Meta advertising cookies. Where our trusted location check identifies the United States, measurement may be enabled unless you opt out. In other locations, or when location cannot be established, it stays off unless you choose Allow measurement. Global Privacy Control and an explicit opt-out take priority. Use Privacy choices in the footer to change your choice; opting out does not affect reading or payments.

When you opt out, we stop new measurement, cancel unsent events and remove Meta advertising cookies from this browser. Data already sent to Meta is subject to Meta’s privacy and retention policies. Your saved privacy decision remains separate from optional advertising identifiers.

Regardless of your choice, we keep the advertising source that brought you to the site (the campaign source, medium, campaign and ad names from the landing link, never click identifiers or the full URL) linked to your reading account for our own campaign reporting, for as long as the account exists. Opting out removes any click identifiers from that record.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics through Stape to understand page and book views, search activity, checkout activity and confirmed purchases. Events include page paths, campaign codes from permitted UTM fields, content and transaction identifiers, purchase amounts, currency, browser information and site-specific analytics cookies. We do not send your name, email address, account identifier, free-form search text, payment-card details or other URL query parameters through this integration. We do not enable Google signals or advertising personalization.

Analytics follows the same saved privacy choice and location rules described above: outside the United States, or when location is unknown, it starts only after you allow measurement. Global Privacy Control and opting out keep analytics off.

Google and Stape process received data under their own privacy and retention policies. Deleting your reading account does not automatically delete data already processed by those providers.

Deleting your data

You can request account deletion from Profile → Settings after any subscription has ended and cancellation is confirmed. Deletion removes your email addresses, including the one PayPal shared when you subscribed, and your reading preferences, and replaces your device identifier with an internal anonymous identifier. Payment, refund, entitlement, coin and unlock records remain linked to that anonymous identifier for accounting and dispute handling. You lose access to the deleted account, including its remaining coins and membership time.

Technical logs are kept separately for security and are not deleted by this action; they age out on their own schedule.

Meta keeps received data under its own retention and deletion policies. Deleting your ReadFern account does not automatically delete data already processed by Meta.

If you have an active subscription you must cancel it before deleting, so that you are not charged again after your data is gone.

Clearing your browser storage without deleting your account will make you lose access to that account, because the device identifier is what identifies you.

Contact

Questions about your data can be sent to [email protected].