Privacy Policy
How we handle your data
We collect only the account, device-profile, preference, purchase-status, saved-reference, service-activity, and limited product-analytics metadata needed to operate and improve Signal/noise. We do not sell it, share it with advertisers, or use it to train AI models. Publisher credentials, publisher cookies, and authenticated article bodies stay off Signal/noise servers and analytics.
Effective July 15, 2026 · Last updated July 15, 2026
1. Who we are
Signal/noise (“we,” “us,” “our”) operates s2n.news, the related email digest, and the Signal/noise iOS app. We are a news intelligence platform that organizes reporting and analyzes how media sources cover the same stories.
For questions about this policy or your data, contact us at [email protected].
2. What we collect and why
We follow the principle of data minimization: we collect only what is necessary to operate the Service, and nothing more.
2.1 Information you provide directly
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Account creation, digest delivery, account communications | Contractual necessity; consent for marketing |
| Password (hashed) | Account authentication — stored only as a cryptographic hash, never in plain text | Contractual necessity |
| TOTP secret (encrypted) | Two-factor authentication, if you enable it | Consent |
| Topic preferences | Personalizing your story feed and digest content | Contractual necessity |
| Locality, source, publisher, subscription-claim, voice, and alert choices | Building and operating your personalized Yours feed | Contractual necessity |
| Custom source names or public URLs | Resolving a source you explicitly ask us to follow | Contractual necessity |
| Prediction votes | Computing your Forecaster Score and community statistics | Contractual necessity |
| Bookmarks and reading interactions | Saving stories, computing blindspot reports, personalizing recommendations | Contractual necessity |
| Reality Check submissions | Processing your fact-check request — claim text is sent to our AI provider without your identity attached | Contractual necessity |
| Referral activity | Crediting referrals to the referring user’s account | Legitimate interest |
2.2 Information collected automatically
| Data | Purpose | Retention |
|---|---|---|
| Session cookie (sn-session) | Keeping you logged in — contains only a session identifier, no tracking or advertising data | Duration of session |
| Email delivery metadata | Delivery confirmations, bounce detection, open tracking for deliverability monitoring via our email provider (Resend) | 90 days |
| Server access logs | Security monitoring and debugging — includes IP addresses, request timestamps, and user agents | 30 days, then automatically rotated and deleted |
| Pseudonymous device profile and installation ID | Resuming onboarding, enforcing membership, syncing preferences, and securing device-scoped requests | Until profile deletion or reset |
| App version, platform, OS version, and device push token | Compatibility, security, and alerts you enable | Until token replacement, profile deletion, or opt-out |
| App Store product, entitlement status, expiration, renewal state, and pseudonymous RevenueCat app-user ID | Purchasing, restoring, and enforcing membership | For the membership relationship and required transaction records |
| Saved article reference metadata and reading position | Showing your saved shelf and resuming on another device | Until you remove the save or delete the profile |
| Story opens and change acknowledgements | Showing ‘Since you looked’ and avoiding repeated change notices | Until profile deletion |
| Website and iOS product-analytics events | Measuring feature use and reliability. iOS onboarding sends only an allowed event name, booleans, and coarse count/readiness buckets under a pseudonymous profile ID; it excludes raw location, searches, source names, headlines, URLs, article text, and reading content. Website events may include an in-memory session identifier, internal account ID and email after sign-in, public story/feature identifiers, coarse choices and counts, and browser/device metadata | Under our configured PostHog retention or until an applicable deletion request is completed |
2.3 Information we do NOT collect
We do not collect your payment-card or bank details; Apple processes App Store purchases. We do not collect publisher passwords, one-time codes, publisher cookie values, or authenticated premium article bodies on Signal/noise servers. We do not request precise location, contacts, photo library, or biometric templates. We create a pseudonymous installation/profile identifier for service security and continuity, but do not use it for advertising or cross-company tracking.
We do not deploy third-party advertising trackers, retargeting pixels, cross-site tracking scripts, device fingerprinting, or behavioral-advertising technology. We use PostHog for limited first-party product analytics on the Signal/noise website and for a small allowlist of pseudonymous, coarse iOS product events. We disable automatic capture, session recording, geolocation enrichment for these mobile events, and person-profile creation; Signal/noise sends only explicit product events. PostHog is not used inside the authenticated publisher reader and never receives publisher credentials, cookies, premium article bodies, raw iOS searches, raw location, story headlines, or reading content from us.
3. How we use your information
We use your information for the following purposes only:
Service operation. Delivering your daily digest email, generating personalized analyses, displaying your prediction history and scores, computing blindspot reports, and maintaining your account.
Service improvement. Analyzing aggregate and account-linked engagement data (such as overall open rates and feature adoption) to improve content quality and product features. We do not use this data for advertising or build behavioral profiles for sale or cross-company marketing.
Communications. Sending your daily digest, weekly blindspot reports, product updates, and essential account notices (password resets, security alerts, material Terms changes). Every non-essential email includes an unsubscribe mechanism.
Security. Monitoring for unauthorized access, abuse, and fraudulent activity.
We do not use your personal information for any purpose not listed above.
4. AI processing
Signal/noise uses artificial intelligence (currently Anthropic’s Claude) to analyze news coverage, generate framing analyses, produce digest content, and power features including Reality Check, Deep Dive, and micro-predictions.
Your personal data and authenticated publisher content are not sent to AI providers.Our AI pipeline processes publicly available news headlines and article metadata — not your identity, email address, publisher credentials, cookies, or premium article body. Your preferences may influence which public analysis you see, but they are not included in model prompts or used in AI training datasets.
Reality Check.When you submit a claim for fact-checking, the text you provide is sent to our AI provider for analysis. We strip all user-identifying information before sending the request. The claim text itself is processed under Anthropic’s API data usage policy, which does not use API inputs for model training.
5. Data sharing and third parties
We do not sell, rent, lease, or trade your personal information. We do not share your data with third parties for their marketing or advertising purposes.
We use a limited number of third-party services to operate Signal/noise:
| Service | Purpose | Data shared |
|---|---|---|
| Resend | Email delivery | Email address, delivery metadata |
| Anthropic | AI-powered analysis | News headlines and article metadata only — no personal data |
| DigitalOcean | Server hosting | Standard server logs (IP addresses) |
| Apple App Store | In-app purchase, billing, renewal, cancellation, and restore | Purchase and subscription records under Apple’s policies; Signal/noise does not receive payment-card details |
| RevenueCat | Subscription entitlement infrastructure | Pseudonymous app-user ID, product and entitlement status, transaction and expiration dates, app/platform metadata |
| Apple Push Notification service | Delivering alerts you enable | Device push token and notification metadata; no premium article body |
| PostHog | Limited website and pseudonymous iOS product analytics, plus email-funnel measurement | Explicit events and coarse choices/counts. Website events may use an internal account ID and email for identified users; iOS onboarding uses a keyed pseudonym and excludes raw location, searches, source names, headlines, URLs, article text, reading content, publisher credentials, cookies, and premium article bodies |
| ElevenLabs | Podcast audio generation | AI-generated script text only — no personal data |
| Polymarket | Prediction market data | No user data sent — we only read publicly available market data |
| Let’s Encrypt | SSL/TLS certificate | Domain name only |
We require all service providers to process data only for the purposes we specify and in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
Publisher websites are separate services. When you open or sign in to a publisher inside the visible iOS web session, your device connects directly to that publisher and any identity provider it uses. The publisher may receive your IP address, browser/device information, article URL, login information you enter, and cookies under its own privacy policy. Signal/noise does not proxy that login, read your password, or upload the publisher session or authenticated article body to our servers.
We may disclose your information if required by law, subpoena, or court order, or if we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others.
6. Cookies and tracking
The Signal/noise website uses one strictly necessary first-party session cookie:
| Cookie | Name | Purpose | Type | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Session | sn-session | Authentication — keeps you logged in | Strictly necessary (first-party) | Session |
Signal/noise does not use advertising cookies, analytics cookies, or cross-site tracking. Our website analytics configuration keeps its temporary analytics state in memory rather than cookies, local storage, or session storage; it is not designed to recognize an anonymous visitor after the page session ends. If you sign in, explicit events may still be associated with your Signal/noise account ID as described above. Separately, publisher webpages opened in the iOS app may set their own cookies in a persistent on-device WebKit profile so you do not have to sign in every time. Those publisher cookies are controlled by the publisher’s policy, remain on the device, are not sent to Signal/noise servers, and can be cleared with Disconnect; uninstalling the app also removes app-held website data.
7. Data storage and security
Signal/noise server data is stored on secured infrastructure hosted by DigitalOcean in the United States. RevenueCat and Apple process subscription information on their own infrastructure under their policies. Device-local publisher sessions and explicitly saved premium bodies remain in protected iOS app storage.
Security measures include:
- All data in transit encrypted via TLS 1.2+ (HTTPS enforced)
- Passwords hashed using bcrypt before storage
- Database access restricted to the application layer with no public exposure
- SSH access restricted to key-based authentication
- Regular security patches and operating system updates
- Minimal attack surface with no unnecessary services exposed
No method of electronic storage or internet transmission is 100% secure. We implement industry-standard protections appropriate to the sensitivity of the data we hold, but cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected users and applicable regulatory authorities in accordance with applicable law.
8. Data retention
| Data type | Retention period |
|---|---|
| Account data (email, preferences, scores) | Until you delete your account |
| Reading interactions and predictions | Until you delete your account |
| Device-scoped profile, preferences, alert settings, and publisher-connection status | Until you delete the profile or linked account |
| Saved reference metadata and reading position | Until you remove the save or delete the profile |
| APNs device token | Until replacement, alert opt-out, or profile deletion |
| Device-local publisher cookies and explicitly saved premium bodies | Until Disconnect, local-clear/delete action, app deletion, or operating-system removal |
| Purchase and entitlement records | As needed to provide access and meet Apple, RevenueCat, accounting, fraud-prevention, and legal requirements |
| Email delivery logs | 90 days |
| Server access logs | 30 days (auto-rotated) |
| PostHog product-analytics events and identified user properties | Under our configured PostHog retention or until an applicable deletion request is completed; aggregate or deidentified statistics may remain |
| Anonymized aggregate data | Indefinitely (cannot identify individuals) |
When you delete your account, we delete your personal data within 30 days. Some data may persist in encrypted backups for up to 90 days, after which backups are cycled out.
9. Your rights
We provide the following rights to all users regardless of location. These rights meet or exceed the requirements of GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and other applicable privacy frameworks.
Right to access. You can request a copy of all personal data we hold about you.
Right to correction. You can update your email address and preferences through your account settings at any time.
Right to deletion. You can delete a device-scoped profile or linked account through the iOS app, or contact us. The app also clears its local saved premium bodies and publisher sessions within the selected deletion scope. Server-held personal data is deleted within 30 days, subject to required transaction, security, fraud-prevention, and backup retention. Profile deletion does not cancel an Apple subscription.
Right to data portability. You can request an export of your data (account information, prediction history, reading history) in a machine-readable format (JSON).
Right to restrict processing. You can request that we limit how we process your data while we address a concern.
Right to object. You can object to any processing based on legitimate interest. We will honor your objection unless we have compelling grounds to continue processing.
Right to opt out of email. You can disable the daily digest and product updates through your account settings. You will still receive essential account communications (password resets, security alerts, material policy changes).
Right to non-discrimination. We will never provide a lesser service to users who exercise their privacy rights.
For California residents (CCPA/CPRA):We do not sell or share your personal information as defined by the CCPA. We do not use your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. Because we do not sell or share personal information, a “Do Not Sell or Share” opt-out is not applicable, but we will honor any such request as a matter of policy.
For EU/EEA residents (GDPR): Our lawful bases for processing are contractual necessity (operating the Service you signed up for), consent (where explicitly obtained, such as marketing emails), and legitimate interest (security monitoring, service improvement). You have the right to withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing performed prior to withdrawal.
To exercise any of these rights, contact [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days (or within the timeframe required by applicable law). We will not charge a fee for reasonable requests. We may request identity verification before processing your request.
10. International data transfers
Our servers are located in the United States. If you are accessing Signal/noise from outside the United States, your data will be transferred to and processed in the United States. We rely on the following safeguards:
- Data minimization — we collect and transfer only what is necessary
- Encryption in transit and at rest
- Contractual protections with our service providers
- The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, where applicable
11. Children’s privacy
Signal/noise is not directed at children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If we become aware that we have collected data from a child under 16, we will delete it promptly. If you believe we have inadvertently collected data from a minor, contact us at [email protected].
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or for other operational reasons. If we make material changes, we will notify you via email or a prominent notice on the website at least 14 days before the changes take effect. The effective date at the top of this policy indicates when it was most recently revised.
Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of a revised policy constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.
13. Contact and complaints
For questions, data requests, or complaints regarding this Privacy Policy:
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://s2n.news
If you believe your data protection rights have been violated, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.