What we store, and what we don't

This is a site used by children. That single fact decided every choice below, and we would rather write them in plain words than in the usual paragraph of legal fog.

The short version. You can read every story without an account, and signed out we store nothing about you on our servers at all. There is no advertising anywhere on this site, and nothing here profiles a child.

Reading signed out

No account, no wall in front of the first story. Which stories you have read, your child's first name if you typed one, their age band and the difficult-stories setting are kept in your own browser, and never sent to us. Clearing your browser data erases them.

If you choose to sign in

Signing in is optional and does exactly three things: it survives a cleared cache, it reaches a second device, and later it will carry a subscription.

An account holds one thing: a first name you typed, an age, which stories were read and on which night, and the difficult-stories setting.
There are no passwords. Sign-in is through Google, or through a recovery code if you would rather we never learn who you are.
Google is an identity provider, not an embedded one. The exchange happens on our server, so no Google sign-in script ever loads in the page and Google never sees a visitor who does not sign in. Only an email address and an account identifier are requested.

Measurement, and its limits

We use Google Analytics to count how the site is used, and we have switched off the parts of it that exist to serve advertising. Advertising storage, advertising user data and ad personalisation are all denied by default; Google Signals and ad-personalisation signals are off; IP addresses are anonymised.

Three events are recorded and nothing else: a story was opened, a story was finished, sign-in was started. No child's name, no age, no free text, and nothing that follows anyone across other websites. India's DPDP Act prohibits behavioural advertising to children; the analytics defaults are not on a child's side, so we override them explicitly rather than trusting them.

Telling us a story is wrong

Anyone can report an error from a story page. It takes no account and asks for no name. We keep the story, the version it was reported against, what you wrote, and a two-letter country code — enough to notice a flood of reports, useless for identifying anybody. The form asks you not to include personal details; if you do anyway, that text is deleted once the report has been acted on.

What is never done here

No advertising, no ad network, no sponsored content.
No selling or sharing of anyone's data with anybody.
No profile of a child, and nothing inferred about one.
No social media embeds, and no scripts or fonts from anywhere our content security policy does not name.
No tracking of a child across other sites, because nothing here can.

For schools and libraries

The site is free, needs no account or licence, and can be used by a whole class without anyone signing in — in which case nothing reaches our servers. There is no student roster, no classroom code, and no per-pupil record to administer or delete. If your district needs something in writing beyond this page, write to us and we will answer properly.

Asking us anything, or asking us to delete

Write to sandhyakathas@gmail.com. If you have an account and want it gone, say so and it is deleted along with everything in it — there is no retention period and nothing is kept back.