Privacy policy

Effective October 19, 2026

What myWritersCircle does

You pick a platform and enter your handle. For Substack, myWritersCircle looks up the publications you recommend, the publications you publicly subscribe to, and who liked, commented on and restacked your recent public posts and notes. It arranges the writers among them in circles. When you click a writer, it shows what they publicly subscribe to (reading), their latest posts (writing) and the publications their publication recommends (recommends).

Information we handle

• The handle you enter. It's sent to our server so we can build your circle. Your browser also remembers the last handle you used, the weights you set and the tab you last opened (in local storage on your device), so you don't have to set them again. You can clear them by clearing this site's data in your browser.
• Public platform data. For Substack this includes names, profile photos, bios, handles, publication names, public posts, public subscriptions, publication recommendations, and public likes, comments and restacks, as published on Substack. We don't access anything private, paywalled or behind a login. People who hide their subscriptions on Substack don't have a reading list here.
• Circles and lookups. A built circle is kept in our server's memory for up to 12 hours so a repeat request is instant and doesn't hit Substack again. A writer's reading, writing and recommendations, and other public lookups, are kept for up to 24 hours. Nothing is written to a database; it all disappears when that time passes or the server restarts.
• Fair-use limits. To keep the service fair when it's busy, our server remembers your IP address and when you built a circle or opened a writer for up to one hour, in memory only, so it can limit how much one person runs.
• Technical logs. Like most websites, our hosting provider may keep standard server logs (such as IP address, time and the page requested) for security and reliability. We don't use them to profile anyone.

Anonymous usage counts

We use GoatCounter, a privacy-friendly analytics service, to count how many people visit and use myWritersCircle. It doesn't use cookies and doesn't follow you to other sites.

• Visits: the page viewed, the site you came from (for example Substack), your browser and screen size, and your approximate country.
• Actions: whether a circle was started, built (in full or in part), cancelled or failed, whether another writer's circle was explored or the trail used to step back, whether a deeper scan was run, whether a writer (or your own center) was opened, which of the reading, writing and recommends tabs was chosen, whether the weights were changed or reset, whether a reading, writing or recommendation link was followed, and whether the Substack link in the footer was clicked.
• Never sent: the handle you enter, anyone's name, which writers you clicked, your circle, or the weights you chose.

GoatCounter doesn't store your IP address. It uses it only briefly to work out your country and to avoid counting the same visit twice in a day. See GoatCounter's privacy notes for details.

What we don't do

• We don't use cookies, advertising, tracking pixels or cross-site tracking.
• We don't sell, rent or share data for marketing.
• We don't post, like, comment, follow, subscribe, message or change anything on any platform.

Third parties your browser talks to

• Substack. Our server requests public data from Substack. Profile photos, logos and cover images load directly from Substack's image servers, so Substack may see your IP address when they load.
• Google Fonts. Fonts load from Google, which may see your IP address. See Google's privacy policy for details.
• GoatCounter. Its counting script loads from GoatCounter's servers, which see your IP address briefly, as described above.

Writers who appear in circles

Writers appear because of public ties on Substack: someone recommends or publicly subscribes to their publication, or they publicly liked, commented on or restacked someone's work. myWritersCircle only displays what Substack already shows publicly. If you appear in someone's circle and would like us to exclude your profile, email us and we'll add you to an exclusion list.

Children

myWritersCircle is not directed at children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country) and does not knowingly process their information.

Your choices and rights

Because we don't keep accounts or long-term records, there's usually nothing stored about you to access or delete. Depending on where you live, you may still have rights to ask what we hold, request deletion or object to processing. To make a request, contact us using the address below.

Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the effective date above.

Contact

Questions or requests: mywriterscircle@gmail.com