Privacy policy

1. Readers without an account

If you read the site signed out, no reading profile is kept about you. The server keeps ordinary request logs (address, page requested, time, browser type) for security and capacity work, and those logs are retained for a bounded period and then discarded. Opening Alpha as a guest sets a signed session cookie so the desk can count the small number of questions guest access allows; it holds no personal details.

2. Account holders

When you create an account, ARCANE stores:

• your email address and a one-way hash of your password;
• the interests you choose during onboarding (who you are, which beats and regions the desk should watch for you) and any mandate you later describe, so the front page and Alpha can be ordered around what you actually cover;
• reading events on published investigations: which cards were shown to you, which you opened, how long you stayed, whether you finished, saved or dismissed a piece. These are used to tune what the desk shows you and to judge which headlines earn their place. They are not used for anything else;
• the questions you put to Alpha and the answers it gave, kept so a standing question can be revisited as the record changes;
• which theses you have chosen to follow.

A signed, HTTP-only session cookie keeps you signed in. ARCANE sets no third-party tracking cookies.

3. Billing

Paid subscriptions are handled by Stripe, which acts as its own data controller for payment details. ARCANE stores your Stripe customer identifier, your plan and its status, and never your card number. Stripe’s privacy notice governs what Stripe holds.

4. Services that see your requests

• Microsoft Azure hosts the site and its database in the United States.
• Stripe processes payments and hosts the checkout and billing portal pages.
• Google Fonts serves the typefaces, so your browser requests them from Google.
• Most editorial images are fetched by ARCANE’s own server and served from arcaneintel.net. A small number of images load directly from the publisher that owns them, and that publisher sees an ordinary image request from your browser.

No analytics, advertising or social-media script runs on the site. ARCANE does not sell personal data and does not share it with anyone for marketing.

5. What it is used for

Personal data is used to run your account, to bill you if you subscribe, to order the desk’s output around your interests, to keep the site secure, and to measure whether the writing earns its readers’ attention. It is not used to profile you for advertising, and it is not combined with data bought from anyone else.

6. Retention, access and deletion

Account data is kept while the account exists. You can see your identity and plan on the settings page and change your interests from onboarding at any time. To receive a copy of the data held about you, or to have your account and its reading history deleted, write to the contact address below from the email on your account; deletion is completed within 30 days, after which only records we must keep for tax or fraud purposes remain, and only for as long as the law requires.

7. Children

The site is for professional and adult readers. ARCANE does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18; if you believe it has, write to us and the account will be removed.

8. Changes

When this policy changes, the effective date above changes with it. A change that expands what is collected or how it is used is announced to account holders before it takes effect.

9. Contact

A monitored contact mailbox for privacy requests has not yet been published on this page. It will appear here as soon as one is in service.