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Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 7, 2025

Welcome to thing-e. We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy notice, or our practices with regards to your personal information, please contact us at [Your Contact Email Address].

1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

As a user of thing-e applications (such as hack-e, read-e, pod-e) and our website, we may collect the following types of information:

Information You Provide to Us:

  • Account Information: If you create an account, we may collect your username, email address, and password.
  • User Content: For applications that allow content creation or saving (e.g., saved articles in read-e, notes), we store this data on your behalf.
  • Communication: If you contact us directly, we may receive additional information about you.

Information We Collect Automatically:

  • Usage Data: We may collect information about how you use our applications and website, such as features accessed and time spent. This is primarily for improving our services and is often anonymized or aggregated.
  • Device Information: We may collect information about the device you use to access our services, such as IP address, operating system, browser type, and device identifiers, primarily for diagnostics and security. Our e-ink optimized apps are designed to be minimal and will only collect what is necessary for their function.

We explicitly DO NOT track your browsing activity across other sites or apps. Our goal is to provide focused, distraction-free experiences.

2. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We use the information we collect for various purposes, including to:

  • Provide, operate, and maintain our services;
  • Improve, personalize, and expand our services;
  • Understand and analyze how you use our services;
  • Develop new products, services, features, and functionality;
  • Communicate with you, either directly or through one of our partners, including for customer service, to provide you with updates and other information relating to the service, and for marketing and promotional purposes (if you opt-in);
  • Process your transactions (if applicable);
  • Find and prevent fraud.

3. SHARING YOUR INFORMATION

We do not sell your personal information. We may share information in the following situations:

  • With Service Providers: We may share your information with third-party vendors and service providers that perform services for us or on our behalf, such as cloud storage, analytics, or customer support. These providers will only have access to the information necessary to perform these tasks.
  • For Legal Reasons: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities.
  • To Protect Our Rights: We may disclose information where we believe it necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potential violations of our policies, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person and illegal activities, or as evidence in litigation.

Our applications, especially hack-e, interact with third-party services (e.g., the Hackernews API). Your interaction with these services is governed by their respective privacy policies.

4. DATA RETENTION AND SECURITY

We will retain your personal information only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy. We take reasonable measures to help protect your personal information from loss, theft, misuse, and unauthorized access.

For e-ink devices where data might be stored locally, you are responsible for the security of your device.

5. YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

  • The right to access – You have the right to request copies of your personal data.
  • The right to rectification – You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate.
  • The right to erasure – You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to data portability – You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

To exercise these rights, please contact us at [Your Contact Email Address].

6. CHILDREN'S PRIVACY

Our services are not intended for use by children under the age of 13 (or a higher age threshold where applicable). We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under this age. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us.

7. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new privacy policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. You are advised to review this privacy policy periodically for any changes.

8. CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, You can contact us:

  • By email: [Your Contact Email Address]
  • By visiting this page on our website: [Link to your contact page, if any]