Privacy notice

When you share a story we keep your name (shown as the byline), your email (never published; used only to contact you about your story), your city if you give it, and the story itself. We keep a one-way hash of your connection's IP address to prevent spam; we do not store the address itself.

Submitted stories are screened by an AI service (Anthropic) before a human editor reviews them. Stories that are not published are kept only as long as needed to review them.

If you choose “Use my location”, your browser asks your permission first. We round it to about 1 km, use it only to look up your weather, alerts and local news from official sources (National Weather Service, FEMA, USGS), and do not store it. Your choice is remembered only in your own browser so the page opens to your area next time.

If you sign up as a student journalist or correspondent, we keep the details on the sign-up form. Your full name and email are seen only by the editor; your profile shows your published name (which can be a pen name), your country, your school if you are a student, your bio and your published articles.

To count readers for contributor awards, each article view is recorded as a one-way hash of the day, your connection's IP address and your browser type. The hash changes every day, so it cannot be used to follow you from one day to the next, and we never store the IP address itself. Automated traffic is not counted.

This site sets one strictly necessary cookie to protect forms from misuse. There are no advertising or tracking cookies.

To see or delete what we hold about you, contact the editor through Share a story.