Privacy Policy

Last updated: 1 September 2026

Working draft. This is published so a policy is in place from day one; a final version reviewed by counsel will replace it. The substance below reflects how Newsmonger actually behaves today.

Newsmonger (“we”, “us”) is a topic-based news tracker. You tell it the subjects you care about; on a schedule it asks an AI, with live web search, whether anything is genuinely new, and shows you summaries with links. This policy explains what data that involves, where it goes, and the choices you have.

What we collect

• Account details — the email address you sign in with (through your identity provider, e.g. Google) and your display name.
• The topics you follow and how you have steered them (the focus angles you pick), plus your settings such as your location hint and appearance.
• The stories found for your topics, your bookmarks, and any stories you flag as off-topic.
• Cached article images and site icons used to render your feed.

We do not ask for a password (sign-in is handled by your identity provider), and we do not collect payment card details ourselves.

What a check sends, and to whom

When a topic is checked, the topic’s name and the focus angles you chose are sent to the configured AI provider to run the check, and to the web-search service as the query that finds the articles. The titles of stories already reported for that topic are sent too — that is how repeats are avoided — along with the titles of any you flagged off-topic, so the check learns what you meant. To write the summaries, our server then fetches those article pages, their images and site icons. Nothing else is sent — not your feed, not your other topics, not anything you bookmarked.

What is stored, and where

Your account, your topics, the stories found, your bookmarks and cached images are stored on Newsmonger’s server, kept separate for each account. Newsmonger runs as a hosted service, not on your own device, so this is where your data lives. Provider API keys and other secrets are read from the server’s environment and are never stored with your data.

No tracking, no telemetry

We run no analytics and no third-party trackers, and the app phones nothing home. We do not sell or rent your data, and we do not share it except as needed to provide the service (below) or where the law requires it. Our only outbound traffic is the check work described above, the links you choose to click, and — when email is configured — occasional account notices (a welcome, or word that your account changed).

Cookies & local storage

We use only strictly-necessary cookies — the kind that make signing in work — and some functional storage in your browser. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, so there is nothing to “accept” or “reject”; a one-time notice simply lets you know they are in use.

• Session cookie (newsmonger_session) — set after you sign in, so each request knows it is you. It lasts up to a week and is cleared when you sign out.
• Sign-in state cookies (newsmonger_oauth, newsmonger_apple_oauth) — short-lived, set only during the sign-in round-trip to your identity provider to protect it (CSRF), and cleared as soon as it completes.
• Local storage — small functional values kept in your browser, not sent to us as cookies: whether you have seen the setup guide, your place in a discovery run, and your dismissal of this notice.

All of these are essential or functional; none is used to profile you or follow you across sites.

Service providers

To operate, we rely on a small number of providers acting on our behalf: an AI provider and a web-search service (for checks), the publishers of the article pages we fetch to summarise, our cloud hosting and database provider, your identity provider (for sign-in), and — if configured — an email delivery provider. Each receives only what it needs for its part of the service.

How long we keep it

Stories age out of your feed on a retention window and are removed after it. Your account and topics are kept while your account is active. When you delete your account, the data it owns — topics, stories, bookmarks and cached images — is purged.

Your choices and rights

• Access & export — you can export your topics and stories from the app at any time.
• Deletion — you can delete your account and the data it owns.
• Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights (to access, correct, or object to processing). Contact us to exercise them.

Security

Data is held on a hosted database, access is limited to what the service needs, and sign-in is delegated to your identity provider. No system is perfectly secure, but we aim to keep the surface small — the “no tracking, secrets-in-environment, per-account isolation” design above is part of that.

Children

Newsmonger is not directed to children under 13 (or the equivalent age in your country), and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

We may update this policy as the product changes; the “last updated” date above will move, and material changes will be made visible in the app or by email where appropriate.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Email privacy@newsmonger.app.