Articlyst

Privacy Policy

Effective 2026-09-23

This document is available in English only.

Articlyst is a read-it-later service: you save a link, we fetch a readable copy of the article behind it, and you read and track it across the web app, the mobile app and the browser extension. This policy explains what that requires us to store about you, why, how long we keep it, and how to get rid of it.

The service is operated by Articlyst (operating entity to be confirmed), [registered address to be confirmed], which is the data controller for the information described here. Questions go to privacy@articlyst.app.

1. What we collect, and why

We collect only what a saved-article library needs to work. There is no advertising network in Articlyst, we do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not build advertising profiles.

1.1 Your account

When you register with an email address we store the address, a bcrypt hash of your password (never the password itself), an optional display name, and the dates the account was created and last changed.

When you sign in with Google instead, Google returns a signed token identifying you. We store your email address, the display name and profile picture URL it contains, and the Google account identifier, so that the next sign-in resolves to the same account. We do not receive your Google password.

We need this to give you an account, to sign you in, and to be able to answer you when you contact support. Without it there is nothing to attach a library to.

1.2 The links you save, and the articles behind them

For every link you save we store the URL, the page title and description, the site domain and its favicon, and an estimate of how long the article takes to read.

We also fetch the page from our servers and store an extracted, text-only copy of the article body. This is what the in-app reader displays, and it is why an article you saved is still readable after the original page has changed or gone offline. The copy is stored against your account and is served only to you.

Alongside each link we store what you do with it: your reading status and progress, the timestamps for when you started and finished, a star rating if you give one, your own notes and tags, the category you filed it under, and whether you have archived it.

Categories are yours to create, and we store the name and colour you chose for each one along with the order you put them in. A link sits in at most one category, and the record notes whether you filed it there yourself. Category names are only ever shown back to you.

1.3 Subscriptions: RSS feeds and newsletter senders

If you subscribe to an RSS or Atom feed we store the feed URL, its title, and a cursor marking the last item we collected, so the next hourly run picks up where it left off rather than re-saving everything.

If you subscribe to a newsletter sender we store the sender addresses you asked us to watch, and a timestamp cursor for the same reason.

1.4 Gmail access

Connecting Gmail is optional, and nothing in Articlyst reads your mail unless you connect it yourself and name at least one sender to watch.

When you connect it, we ask Google for one read-only scope, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly, and we store the resulting refresh token encrypted with AES-256-GCM, plus the Gmail address it belongs to so the app can show you which mailbox is connected.

On each hourly run we ask Gmail only for messages from the senders you named that arrived after our last cursor. For each of those messages we read the From header, the Subject and the HTML body, and we extract the article links out of it. Only those extracted links — the URL, the anchor text, and the message timestamp — are saved to your library. The message body itself is not stored, is not sent anywhere else, and is discarded as soon as the links have been read out of it.

Articlyst’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. We do not use Gmail data for advertising, we do not sell it, we do not allow humans to read it except where you explicitly ask us to for support, and we do not use it to train generalised machine-learning models.

You can disconnect Gmail at any time from Subscriptions in the app, which deletes the stored refresh token. You can also revoke our access directly in your Google account security settings.

1.5 Notifications

If you turn on notifications we store, per device, a push token issued by Apple, Google or your browser, an identifier for the device, its platform, its time zone and its language.

The time zone is what lets a morning digest arrive in your morning rather than ours; the language is what it is written in. We also store your notification preferences and the date each kind of notification was last sent, so the same digest is not delivered twice.

Turning notifications off in the app, or at the operating-system level, stops them. Signing out deletes that device’s token from our side.

1.6 Diagnostics and server logs

Our servers keep short-lived request logs — timestamp, request path, response status, and the IP address the request came from — which we use to keep the service up and to investigate abuse.

When error monitoring is enabled we send crash and error reports to Sentry. These contain the technical details of the failure and can include your account identifier so a report can be matched to a support conversation. They are not used for analytics or profiling.

Articlyst carries no advertising SDK, no tracking pixels, and no third-party analytics code inside the apps themselves. We do measure how the product is used, and because that measurement is reported by our servers rather than by an SDK in the app, it is described separately below.

1.7 How we measure the product

We measure how Articlyst is used so we can tell whether the things it does for you actually work — whether a morning digest gets an article read, whether the reader gets finished, whether an import succeeded. Google Analytics is the tool we use for it.

These events say what you did, not what you read. No event carries a URL, a page title, an article body, a note, a tag, a category name or your email address. What each one carries is the shape of the action: where a saved link came from, where you arrived at the reader from, how far through an article you got and how long you spent, how many days had passed since you saved it, the kind of notification involved, whether you granted or declined a permission prompt, and how many items an import moved.

Each event is sent with your account identifier attached, so the events belonging to one account can be counted as one person rather than as a crowd of strangers. That identifier is the internal one this service already uses for your account; it is not your email address, but it does mean Google Analytics holds a record that can be traced back to you by us.

Where we are running an experiment — two versions of something, to see which serves people better — the version you were assigned is attached to your events as well. Assignment is computed from your account identifier, so it is stable for you and independent between experiments.

The events are reported by our servers, not by the apps. The apps tell our backend what happened and the backend forwards it; there is no Google Analytics SDK, script or pixel in the web app, the mobile apps or the extension, and no advertising identifier is involved. We do not use any of this for advertising, we do not sell it, and it is not combined with data from other services to profile you.

You can object to this measurement. Write to us and we will act on it — see “Your rights” below for how we handle a request and how long we take.

3. How long we keep it

  • Your account, your links, your extracted article copies, your notes, ratings, categories and subscriptions: for as long as your account exists.
  • Delete your account and all of it goes with it, in a single database transaction. Every table that holds your data is keyed to your user record and cascades on delete — links, article copies, categories, subscriptions, connected integrations, device tokens, notification preferences, API tokens and OAuth links. Deletion is immediate and is not reversible.
  • Password reset tokens: stored hashed, valid for 30 minutes, and consumed the first time they are used.
  • Server request logs: retained for a short operational period and then discarded.
  • Error reports in Sentry: retained according to Sentry’s standard retention for our plan.
  • Usage events in Google Analytics: retained for the period configured on the property, and not deleted by deleting your account — the events stay, detached from a library that no longer exists. Ask us and we will have them deleted.
  • Encrypted backups may hold a copy of deleted data for a limited period until they roll off. Nothing is restored from a backup to bring a deleted account back.

4. Who else touches your data

We use a small number of service providers, each processing data only on our instructions and only for the purpose listed.

  • Google — Google Sign-In, and the Gmail API when you connect Gmail.
  • Google Analytics — measurement of how the product is used, as described in 1.7. It receives the usage events and your account identifier, and none of what you saved or read.
  • Resend — delivery of transactional email, currently password reset messages. Resend receives your email address and the contents of that message.
  • Apple Push Notification service, Firebase Cloud Messaging and Expo’s push service — delivery of mobile notifications. They receive the device token and the notification text.
  • Web Push services operated by your browser vendor — delivery of browser-extension notifications, on the same terms.
  • Sentry — error and performance monitoring, when enabled.
  • Our hosting and managed PostgreSQL provider — storage and running of the service itself.

5. When we would disclose data

We disclose personal information outside the providers above only where we are legally required to, where it is necessary to establish or defend legal claims, or where it is needed to protect the rights and safety of users or the public.

If Articlyst is ever acquired or merged, your information may transfer as part of that transaction. We would tell you before it did, and before any new policy applied to it.

6. International transfers

Articlyst is operated from, and its data is stored in, facilities that may be outside your country. Where personal information moves out of the EEA or the UK, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or another lawful transfer mechanism with the provider concerned.

7. Your rights, and how to use them

Depending on where you live you may have the right to access your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how it is used, to receive a portable copy, and not to be subject to automated decision-making. Articlyst does not make automated decisions with legal effect about anyone.

Most of these are available directly in the app rather than by request: your name and profile are editable in account settings, your links can be edited or deleted individually, Gmail can be disconnected from Subscriptions, and your entire account can be deleted from account settings on any platform.

For anything you cannot do yourself, write to us and we will respond within the period the applicable law requires — 30 days under the GDPR. If you think we have handled your data badly, you can also complain to your local supervisory authority.

8. Security

No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If you believe you have found a vulnerability, please report it to us before disclosing it publicly.

  • Passwords are stored only as bcrypt hashes.
  • OAuth refresh tokens for connected integrations are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.
  • Password reset tokens and API tokens are stored only as hashes; the usable value exists once, in the response that issued it.
  • Traffic between the apps and our servers is encrypted in transit.
  • Changing your password ends every session that was open before the change, on every device.

9. Children

Articlyst is not directed at children. Do not create an account if you are under 13, or under the minimum age of digital consent in your country if that is higher. If we learn that we hold data from a child below that age, we will delete the account and its contents.

11. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the effective date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use information we already hold about you, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

12. Contact

Write to privacy@articlyst.app, or to Articlyst (operating entity to be confirmed), [registered address to be confirmed].