Privacy policy
Last updated: 2026-05-16
Summary
Read Stacks is operated by Paulo de Vries (sole proprietor, Netherlands). We collect minimum data needed to provide the service, never sell personal data, and comply with GDPR (EU/UK) and CCPA (California).
What we collect
- Email (if subscribed): for the weekly stack newsletter + account login. You can unsubscribe with the link in every email.
- Reading history (Pro tier): chapters you've viewed, stored to enable progress tracking + bookmarks. Not associated with profiling.
- Usage analytics: via Plausible (privacy-first, cookieless, aggregated). See Plausible's data policy.
- Payment data (Pro/Founder/Deluxe): processed by Stripe; we never see your card number. See Stripe's privacy policy.
What we do NOT collect
- Browsing data outside readstacks.com
- Social-media profile data (TikTok engagement is anonymous to us)
- IP addresses beyond temporary security/rate-limit logs (purged after 7 days)
Affiliate & advertising
Read Stacks links to books via Amazon Associates. We earn a small commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
Read Stacks uses Google AdSense to serve ads on free-tier chapter pages. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to our users based on their visit to our site and/or other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. Detailed information on Google's use of data when you use partner sites is available at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
Cookies
Read Stacks uses:
- Essential cookies: session, auth, CSRF — required for the site to function. Cannot be disabled.
- Advertising cookies (Google AdSense): set by Google to serve relevant ads. EU/UK/CA visitors are shown a consent banner on first visit and may reject personalized advertising; the banner choice is stored in your browser and can be changed any time by clearing site data.
- Analytics (Plausible): cookieless, privacy-first, aggregated only. No personal-identifier cookies are set by Plausible.
Your rights (GDPR + CCPA)
- Right to access your data (email [email protected])
- Right to deletion (we'll remove all account data within 30 days)
- Right to portability (we export your reading history as JSON on request)
- Right to object to processing
- Right to withdraw consent (cookie banner allows reversal anytime)
Data retention
- Newsletter email: kept until you unsubscribe
- Pro account: kept while subscription active + 90 days post-cancellation
- Reading history: kept for active subscription + 90 days post-cancellation
- Billing records: 7 years per Dutch tax law
Third parties
- Cloudflare: DNS, CDN, registrar
- Plausible: privacy-first analytics
- Stripe: payments (Pro+ tiers)
- Buttondown: email delivery (newsletter signups via /api/subscribe Pages Function)
- Amazon Associates: affiliate links on chapter pages (no data sharing — affiliate ID only)
- Google AdSense (Mediapartners-Google + AdsBot-Google): ads served on free chapter pages, ad-network cookies governed by Google's Advertising policies + the partner-sites link above. Personalization can be disabled via cookie banner or via Google Ads Settings.
Children
Read Stacks is not intended for users under 13 (COPPA) or under 16 in the EU (GDPR child data).
Contact
Privacy questions: [email protected]