What we hold, and what we cannot read.

Jacob Hallmark is the controller of personal data processed through jacobhallmark.com, the Vulpenyx application, the browser Literary Atelier, and the /api/v3 backend (the “Services”). Inquiries: jacob@jacobhallmark.com.

This policy is written for a United States operator serving readers and authors worldwide. Where the GDPR, UK GDPR, or similar law applies to you, additional rights are described below. This document is a privacy notice; it is not legal advice to you.

This policy covers personal data processed when you browse the public site, create or use an account, request access, read granted works, author or encrypt manuscripts, use social or notification features, contact us by email, or install Vulpenyx.

It does not govern third-party sites, application stores, or email providers you use to reach us, except to the extent we receive data from them as processors or in the ordinary course of correspondence.

Depending on how you use the Services, we may process:

• Identity and contact data: name, email address, account identifiers, optional profile handle, biography, and visibility setting;
• Authentication and security data: session tokens (stored as cookies or equivalent), device identifiers, trusted-device records, verification challenge hashes (not plaintext codes), and audit events;
• Entitlement and grant data: product access, roles, permissions, book and chapter grants, access requests, and invitation records;
• Usage and reading metadata: progress positions, bookmarks, reader notes you choose to save, notification preferences, and similar non-body metadata;
• Social data you choose to create: friend requests, blocks, direct messages, room posts, and reports;
• Technical data: IP address, user agent, approximate region derived from hosting logs, crash or delivery diagnostics, and push-device addressing (for example an APNs token);
• Correspondence: the content of emails you send to us;
• Payment data: we do not currently collect card numbers on the Services. If a storefront charges you, that storefront is the merchant of record.

Chapter bodies and certain authoring payloads are stored as encrypted envelopes. The Operator designs the chapter pipeline so that ciphertext is not rendered as a substitute for plaintext, and so that server roles do not retain your user content key in recoverable plaintext.

Accordingly, we treat encrypted manuscript bodies as content we host on your behalf, not as material we read for editorial, advertising, or model-training purposes. We may process associated metadata (titles, identifiers, hashes, version pointers, grant lists, and similar) as needed to operate save, publish, grant, and export flows.

Reader notes, bookmarks, progress, profile text, direct messages, and room posts may be stored in a form readable by the service in order to sync across your devices. Do not place secrets or unpublished chapter bodies in those fields if you require the same encryption guarantees as chapter envelopes.

We use personal data to:

• Provide, maintain, and secure the Services, including authentication, device trust, grants, and the chapter pipeline;
• Communicate with you about access, verification, security, and (where you write to us) literary or business correspondence;
• Honor your grants and invitations, and to show you works you are permitted to read;
• Operate optional social, notification, and discussion features you use;
• Diagnose failures, prevent abuse, and keep an audit trail of security-relevant events;
• Comply with law, enforce the Terms, and protect manuscripts, users, and the Operator;
• Improve reliability and accessibility of the Services. We do not sell personal data, and we do not use manuscript plaintext to train third-party foundation models.

If European or similar privacy law applies, we process personal data on one or more of the following bases: performance of a contract (providing the account and features you request); legitimate interests (securing the platform, preventing abuse, answering correspondence, and operating a private literary studio); consent (where we ask for it, including certain device or notification permissions); and legal obligation.

You may withdraw consent where processing is consent-based, without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing. We may still process data where another basis applies, for example to complete a security investigation or retain records we are required to keep.

We share personal data only as follows:

• Processors who host, authenticate, store, deliver email, or send push notifications on our instructions (including our cloud host, database and auth provider, and transactional email provider);
• Other users, solely as implied by a feature you use—for example a grantor seeing that you requested access, a friend seeing your handle, or a room seeing a post you published;
• Professional advisers and service providers under confidentiality obligations;
• Authorities, or a successor operator, where required by law, to protect rights and safety, or in connection with a reorganization in which manuscript-protection obligations continue;
• Application stores and operating-system vendors, to the extent they process install, receipt, or push addressing independently of us.

The Services are operated from the United States. If you access them from another country, your data will be processed in the United States and in the regions used by our processors. Where required, we rely on appropriate transfer mechanisms provided by those processors (such as standard contractual clauses) together with the technical measures described in the Security statement.

We retain account, grant, audit, and encrypted content records for as long as your account remains active and as reasonably necessary thereafter for security, dispute resolution, backup rotation, and legal compliance. Staging and homelab data may be deleted on a shorter cycle.

Encrypted envelopes, version history, and audit logs may outlive a single device. If you request deletion, we will delete or irreversibly de-identify personal data we control, except where we must retain a record (for example a grant revocation or a security audit event) or where residual backups expire on their ordinary schedule.

We implement administrative, technical, and organizational measures appropriate to a literary platform that stores unpublished writing, including transport encryption, envelope encryption for chapter bodies, role-based access, and audit logging. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. See the Security statement for a fuller description and for inherent limits of key custody.

Subject to applicable law, you may request access to, correction of, deletion of, or a portable copy of personal data we hold about you; object to or request restriction of certain processing; and withdraw consent. You may also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority if one has jurisdiction over your situation.

To exercise a request, email jacob@jacobhallmark.com from the address associated with your account and describe the request. We may need to verify your identity before acting. We will not fulfill a request in a way that would reveal another person’s manuscript, grants, or ciphertext, or that would require us to decrypt content we cannot decrypt.

Residents of certain U.S. states may have additional rights to know, delete, or correct personal data and to opt out of “sale” or “sharing” for cross-context advertising. We do not sell personal data and do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

The Services are not directed to children under sixteen (16), or under thirteen (13) where that is the applicable U.S. threshold. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Authenticated sessions use cookies or equivalent storage required to keep you signed in and to enforce access rules. We do not use advertising pixels or cross-site trackers on the public site. If we later add optional analytics, we will update this policy and, where required, request consent.

You may refuse non-essential cookies in your browser. Disabling essential session cookies will prevent sign-in and other authenticated features from working.

We may update this policy by posting a revised version on this page and changing the effective date. Material changes may also be sent to the email address on your account. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acknowledgment of the updated policy.

Privacy requests and questions: jacob@jacobhallmark.com. Please do not send unpublished manuscript plaintext to that address unless we have expressly asked you to do so for a support matter that cannot be handled inside the encrypted pipeline.