Privacy in the house

Missives from the Mansion

If you request letters, we store your email address, chosen interests, subscription status, and the dates and version of your confirmation. We use Resend to send your confirmation and future letters about those interests, including related releases and optional keepsakes. You are added to the active list only after confirming through your email link. Buying a keepsake does not subscribe you.

Confirmation links expire after 48 hours. Your private preferences link lets you change interests or unsubscribe. Unsubscribing stops Missives; it does not remove purchased keepsakes or necessary purchase-delivery emails. We retain an unsubscribed record to honor that choice. You can also contact the house to ask about or remove your information.

Short-lived counters derived from your email address and connection information help limit repeated requests. These counters do not store a readable IP address. Expired counters and requests, and unconfirmed signups older than 30 days, are removed as new signup requests are processed. We do not add email-open or click tracking to confirmation messages.

A regular letter arrives every other Sunday evening, with an occasional extra when something deserves its own note. Each letter will include a preferences and unsubscribe link. Resend’s privacy policy describes its handling of email delivery data.

Sound and reading preferences

The house remembers sound settings, reading text size, night reading, and your place in a book using your browser’s local storage. These preferences stay in that browser and are not sent to us by the site. You can change the settings in the house or reader, or remove them by clearing this site’s browser data.

Private keepsake delivery

Our purchase-delivery service uses the checkout email address, payment references, payment status, and delivery records to confirm a purchase, provide private reading and downloads, and send replacement access links. We do not receive or store your full card details. Stripe and Link handle payment information under their own privacy notices.

Private access links and reading sessions expire after 30 days. Opening a valid link creates a necessary, secure browser cookie so you can read and download your purchase. You can close this access from the keepsake page, or clear this site’s browser data. A new private link can be requested without creating an account or purchasing again.

When you request another link, we use the email address you enter to look for a purchase. The form gives the same response whether or not a purchase exists. Short-lived, protected counters help limit repeated requests. We use Resend to send transactional book-delivery emails; these are separate from payment receipts and are not marketing subscriptions.

Purchase and delivery records are kept to support continuing book access and resolve payment or delivery questions. For access or deletion requests, write to the house. Some records may need to be retained to administer a purchase or meet applicable obligations; we will explain what can be removed.

Provider information: Stripe Privacy Policy, Link Privacy Policy, and Resend Privacy Policy.

Visiting and watching

The website and its recordings are served through OpenAI’s Sites hosting infrastructure. Hosting and delivery providers may process technical information such as your IP address, browser details, and requests to load pages or media to operate and protect the service.

We have not added advertising trackers. We count daily totals for Missives invitations clicked, signup page visits, confirmation emails accepted by our email provider, and first confirmed subscriptions. These totals use broad entry-point labels such as “letter” or “office”; they contain no names, email addresses, IP addresses, full page URLs, or individual visitor identifiers. They are activity counts, not a count of unique people. Our testing can be marked separately with a simple on/off setting saved in the testing browser. No analytics cookie is used. The OpenAI Privacy Policy describes OpenAI’s handling of information.

When you write to us

If you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to include in your message. We use that information to respond to your inquiry and follow up on the matter you raised. Our support inbox is provided through Microsoft Outlook; its provider processes email under the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

Please send only the information needed for your inquiry. To ask about a message you have sent, including a request to delete it, contact storiesthroughthestatic@outlook.com.

Sources and outside links

Our reading resources link to other websites. If you follow those links, the destination’s own privacy practices apply.

As the house grows

We will update this notice when we add services that change how information is handled. Questions about this notice can be sent to storiesthroughthestatic@outlook.com.