Privacy policy

Last updated October 28, 2026

Byline is a reading library you use through AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude. It is operated by Nia Johnson. This policy explains what Byline stores, why, and the choices you have. Questions: nia@howtofindaparty.xyz.

What Byline stores

• Your account: an identifier from sign-in and the email address you sign in with (held by our authentication provider, Supabase). After you sign in, a secure cookie on Byline's own site remembers your browser for 90 days so reconnecting is one tap; choose “Use a different email” on the sign-in page to forget it.
• Your reading library: the publications you follow, stories you save or mark read, your interests, content preferences, edition name, and reading schedule.
• Your interests: the subjects you confirm (and how evenly editions should cover them), plus the interests Byline last suggested from what you follow, kept so Byline can tell how good its suggestions are.
• Your reactions: likes, dislikes, and “more/less like this” feedback on stories and on the music, videos, podcasts, and links in your editions (plus the ones you save), including when your assistant notices a clear reaction in conversation, with a short reason if you gave one.
• Activity: events such as editions requested, stories opened through Byline's links, and sign-in steps, used to improve your editions and the service.
• Publication content: public metadata about articles (title, author, date, link, image link, and a short opening excerpt). This catalog is shared across readers and is not personal data.

What Byline does not store

• Your chat conversations or your assistant's memories.
• Your email messages or mail credentials. When you ask your assistant to scan your inbox, the assistant reads your mail with its own connection and sends Byline only newsletter names, sender addresses, and web links, or, for newsletters followed by email, each issue's title, link, date, and a short excerpt. Personal tracking codes are removed from those links. Byline never asks your assistant to search your mail on its own: it happens only when you ask or say yes.
• Passwords. Readers sign in with emailed one-time codes. (The only exception is a single test account that app-directory reviewers use, whose password is held by our authentication provider, not by Byline.)

Links and clicks

Article links in editions open through Byline, which records that you opened the story and forwards you straight to the publisher. Publishers see Byline as the source of the visit (through a standard utm_source=byline tag) and the site you came from, but not your identity or your conversation.

Turning click tracking off: ask your assistant to “turn off click tracking” (it's shown in “show my Byline settings”). Edition links then go straight to the publisher, tagged only with utm_source=byline, and Byline records no clicks, including on links from earlier editions. Say “turn click tracking back on” to undo it.

How Byline uses your information

• To build your editions and rank stories for you.
• To keep your library in sync across assistants.
• To understand which features work and to keep the service secure (for example, rate limits and error records).

Byline does not sell your personal information, and it does not show you ads or sponsored content.

Helping publishers (optional)

If you say yes, Byline may share anonymous, combined insights with the publications you read so they can understand their audiences and make better work for you. For example: “readers of this newsletter also follow urbanism and music,” or how many readers opened a story through Byline. This is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off any time by asking your assistant or in your settings.

• Insights are only shared for groups of at least 50 readers who have opted in, so they cannot be traced to you.
• They are built from interests you confirmed, the publications you follow, and the stories you open through Byline. They never include your name, email address, individual reading history, chat conversations, or anything from your email.
• Politics, policy, health, and other sensitive subjects are never included in insights or used to target anything.

Publishers who send readers to your edition through Byline's links already see Byline as the source of a visit; that does not depend on this setting and never identifies you.

Sharing

Byline shares personal data only with the services that run it: Supabase (database and sign-in), Render (hosting), and Brevo, which delivers the sign-in codes Byline emails you and so receives your email address. Byline's web pages load the Inter typeface from Google Fonts, so Google receives your browser's IP address when you open them. If you opt in to helping publishers, they receive only the anonymous, combined insights described above. Your assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, or another) receives the results of the Byline tools it calls, under that assistant's own privacy terms.

If you share an edition, Byline publishes a page of that edition's stories (headlines, publications, images, and the short descriptions your assistant wrote) that anyone with the link can read. It doesn't show your name, email, or who shared it, though an edition name you chose appears as its title. Say "Stop sharing my edition" to take it down; deleting your account removes it.

Retention

• Library, preferences, and reactions: kept while your account exists.
• Activity events: deleted after 13 months.
• Records of stories shown in editions: deleted after 90 days.
• Editions you haven't shared: deleted after 60 days. Shared editions stay until you stop sharing them or delete your account.
• Error records: deleted after 90 days.
• Sign-in records: expired requests after a day; expired or revoked tokens after 30 days.

Your choices

• Click tracking: ask your assistant to “turn off click tracking” or “turn it back on”.
• Publisher insights: ask your assistant to “turn publisher insights on” or “off”.
• See your settings: ask your assistant to “show my Byline settings”.
• Export your data: ask your assistant to “export my Byline data”.
• Delete your account: ask your assistant to “delete my Byline account”. This removes your library, reactions, preferences, activity, and sign-in tokens. To also remove your sign-in record (your email address) from our authentication provider, email us.
• Disconnect: remove Byline from your assistant's apps or connectors at any time.

You can also email nia@howtofindaparty.xyz for any of these.

Security

Connections are encrypted, sign-in tokens are stored only as hashes, and access to each reader's data is scoped to their account. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting you, we will tell you.

Children

Byline is not intended for anyone under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes in a meaningful way, the date above will change and, for significant changes, Byline will let you know in an edition.