Your reading, your choices.

Reading without an account

You may read the public Library without creating an account. Anonymous reading progress, saved works, and bookmarks can be stored in your browser on that device. Highlights and private notes require a verified reader account.

For first-party readership analytics, a Reader browser is assigned a random identifier stored by Voices of the Fathers in that browser. The site may record when that browser opens a Reader section, completes a section, or completes a whole work. This browser identifier is pseudonymous: it is not a name or email address, and Voices of the Fathers does not create a device fingerprint for this purpose. Clearing the site's browser storage may cause a new browser identifier to be created.

When you create or use an account

We store the information needed to provide your account and Personal Library: your email address, securely hashed password, email-verification and sign-in metadata, reading position and section-completion state, saved works, passage bookmarks, highlights, and private notes.

If the same browser is used while you are signed in, readership analytics events may also contain your reader-account ID and the site records that the browser has been used with that account. This allows us to understand reading before and after account creation and reading across devices. A browser may be associated with more than one account, and an anonymous event from a shared browser is not treated as proof that a particular account holder performed that event.

How readership analytics are used

Pseudonymous readership events are used to understand which works and sections are being read, where readers stop or complete works, which works are often read together, and how reading patterns change over time. These events are retained as a long-term analytical history rather than only as short-lived visit counters. Individual reading history is not published or used to serve advertising.

Raw IP addresses are not stored in the first-party readership event tables and are not used as reader identity. Like most websites, separate server and security logs may contain limited technical information needed for security, reliability, abuse prevention, and troubleshooting.

Essential cookies and email delivery

Signing in uses an essential session cookie so the site can keep you authenticated and protect account actions. Verification and password-reset messages are sent through the site's configured transactional email provider, which necessarily processes the destination email address for delivery. These functions are not used for advertising.

How personal reading data is used

Personal reading data supports features such as Continue Reading, saved works, bookmarks, highlights, private notes, and cross-device synchronization. We do not sell this information or use private reading activity for advertising. Your individual reading history is not made public. To help the editorial team discover quotations that readers find meaningful, administrators may review the text of highlighted public quotations in an anonymous curation screen. That screen does not show the reader's identity or email address, private notes, or reading history. A quotation may then be selected as an editorially featured quotation on the site.

Sharing and aggregate features

Bookmarks, private notes, and individual reading histories are not exposed through public social features. Highlighted quotation text may be reviewed by administrators only through the anonymous editorial process described above. Quote-card images are generated in your browser and are not uploaded to Voices of the Fathers. When you complete an explicit sharing or quote-card export action, the site may increment a daily aggregate counter associated with the public work, passage, edition, action type, and—when applicable—the selected public quotation.

Legacy daily completion aggregates remain for historical continuity. Those legacy aggregates do not store a reader account ID, email address, private note, IP address, or individual reading history and continue to support editorial analytics without publishing an individual reader's activity.

Device-to-account import

If a browser already contains anonymous Personal Library data when you sign in, the site may offer to add that guest progress, saved works, and bookmarks to your account. The Personal Library import requires your choice. This is separate from the browser/account association used for readership analytics. Reader data previously associated with another signed-in account is kept in a separate browser-storage namespace and is never offered as guest Personal Library data.

Data access and deletion

Verified reader accounts support a machine-readable export of the Personal Library and underlying account-owned reading records, as well as account deletion. At present, those export and deletion controls are not shown on the routine Account page. Account deletion removes synchronized personal data from the active service and removes the account association from retained readership analytics; pseudonymous browser events may remain without the deleted account ID. Browser-local copies on other devices may remain until those browsers are cleared. Private operational backups may retain a copy until they expire under the site's normal backup-retention cycle.

Site analytics

Voices of the Fathers also uses Google Analytics to understand general site usage, such as which public pages are visited and how readers move through the site. Google Analytics may use cookies or similar browser technologies and receives technical information associated with a visit. This is separate from the first-party readership event system described above. Analytics data is used to understand and improve the site, not to serve advertising through Voices of the Fathers. Private notes and the contents of your Personal Library are not intentionally sent to Google Analytics as analytics event content.

Questions

This privacy explanation is intended to be plain language and will be updated if the account system or analytics behavior materially changes.