Privacy

Pied Piper keeps as little about you as it can to run the site. There are no ads, no analytics and no tracking cookies.

Last updated 26 October 2026.

What we store

• From your Google account: only its account ID and your email address, so we can recognise you when you sign in. We never store or show your Google name or photo, and your email address is never shown to anyone.
• What you choose to share: your display name, username, bio, profile links and picture, and everything you post: stories, chapters, covers, ratings, reviews, comments and private messages.
• Your activity on the site: the chapters you’ve opened and how far you got, your library (follows, favorites, read later), the authors you follow, the people you’ve blocked, your reading settings and your notifications. This powers your library, “continue reading” and the rankings.
• If you read without signing in: which chapters you’ve read, counted once each after a chapter has been open for ten seconds, against a random ID kept in your session. They only ever appear as totals: a story’s reader count and its author’s statistics.
• How you found us: if you sign up after following a member’s invite link or opening their story, we note which member brought you. This is what the Featured list counts.

What others can see

Your display name, username, profile, stories, reviews, comments and favorites are public, and authors can see who rated their stories. Your private messages are seen only by you and the person you’re talking to, unless one of you reports a message: moderators then see the reported message. Moderators also see anything else that is reported to them.

Cookies and logs

We set one cookie, pp_session, which keeps you signed in, protects forms from forgery and, if you aren’t signed in, links you to the random ID your chapter reads are counted against. It expires 30 days after your last visit. Our web server logs requests (IP address, browser and page) for about two weeks, to keep the site secure and working.

Other services

• Google Sign-In: the sign-in page loads Google’s sign-in button, and signing in is handled by Google under Google’s privacy policy.
• Google Fonts: our fonts are loaded from Google’s servers, so Google sees your IP address when a page loads.

We don’t sell or share your data with anyone else.

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your account and what you post until you delete it or ask us to. You can delete your stories, chapters, reviews, comments and ratings yourself at any time. To delete your whole account, contact us and we’ll remove it along with the personal data tied to it. Nightly backups are kept for seven days, so deleted data is gone from them within a week.

Questions

To ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or anything else about your privacy, contact us.