Privacy

Sapien is published by Rado Sheytanoff and Chris Michael, who run it together as partners, at 1201 S Ross St #525S, Arlington, VA 22204, USA. They decide together what is done with the personal data the site collects, so in data protection law they are joint controllers. For anything about your data, write to editor@sapienjournal.com.

We keep as little as a journal needs. This page says what that is, why, who else sees it and for how long.

The list

If you join the list or ask for the free piece, we keep your email address and the date you signed up. We use it to send you the free piece and then to tell you when a new issue is out. We do this because you asked us to, and you can stop it any time with the unsubscribe link in every email or by writing to us. When you unsubscribe we stop writing to you. Your address stays on the list marked as unsubscribed, so we do not write to you by mistake later. If you want it deleted altogether, ask.

The email with the free piece carries a link that signs you in to read it. That link works for seven days.

Your account

You have an account once you sign in or buy something. It holds your email address, your name if you gave one when you paid, the date the account was made, and what you have bought from us: your subscription as Polar reports it (the plan, whether it is active, when it renews or ends), the PDFs and printed copies you have bought, and when you bought them. We never see or store your card details.

We use this to let you in, to show you what you have paid for and to send you the emails that go with it: sign-in codes, receipts for your PDF or printed copy, delivery news, notices about your subscription and its renewal, and notice of any change to the price or to these terms. These are needed to run the service you signed up for, so they are sent whether or not you are on the list.

When you subscribe or buy the PDF, we keep a record of what you agreed to at checkout and when, because the law asks us to be able to show it. We keep that record for three years, or for one year after your subscription ends if that is later.

Signing in

When you ask for a sign-in code we store your email address, your IP address, the time and a scrambled copy of the code. The code works for 15 minutes and for five tries. We keep the IP address to stop anyone flooding inboxes or guessing codes, which is in our legitimate interest and yours. These records are deleted a few days after the code expires.

When you sign in, the session lasts 60 days or until you sign out.

A printed copy

When you order a printed copy, you pay Fourthwall, and Fourthwall sends us the order: your name, email address, delivery address, phone number if you gave one, what you bought and what you paid, and the name you asked us to type into each copy. We use it to give each copy its number and its name, to have it printed and posted, and to answer questions about it. We need it to do what you ordered.

We pass the name, delivery address, phone number and email address to Lulu, who prints and posts the copy, and Lulu passes what the carrier needs to the carrier. If you did not give a phone number, the carrier gets ours instead.

We keep the name on the parcel, the delivery address, the phone number, the tracking number and the names typed into the copies for 90 days after the copy is posted, in case it goes missing, and then delete them. If an order is refunded, they go 90 days after the refund. If a copy can’t be printed, we keep them until we have put it right with you, by printing it or refunding it. We keep the rest of the order (the issue, the copy numbers, the country, the date and the price) while you have an account, because it is the record of your copy and it gives you the PDF.

Fourthwall sends us a copy of every shop order, including orders for the goods only. We keep that message until the order has been dealt with and then for 30 days, or, if we can’t process it, for 90 days after our last try while we sort it out by hand, and do nothing else with it.

Visits to the site

We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics: which pages were viewed, roughly where from, the referring site and the kind of device and browser. It uses no cookies, stores nothing on your device and does not build a profile of you from your IP address or browser. We only see totals. We do this in our legitimate interest in knowing whether anyone reads what we publish.

Netlify, which hosts the site, also keeps short-lived technical logs of requests, including IP addresses, to run the site and keep it secure.

Emails you send us

If you write to us, we keep your message and our reply for as long as we need to deal with it, and then for up to two years in case it comes up again. We do this in our legitimate interest in answering you properly.

Cookies

The site sets only the cookies it needs to work, and none of them track you or are used for advertising. That is why there is no cookie banner.

sapien_session keeps you signed in. It is set when you sign in and lasts 60 days or until you sign out. sapien_checkout is set when you go to pay for a subscription or a PDF, so that only your browser is signed in when you come back, and it is gone within three hours. sapien_bag holds the id of your shopping bag and sapien_bag_n the number of things in it, so the header can show it. Both last 30 days. sapien-reader-theme and sapien-reader-size remember the reading color and text size, and are set only if you change them. They last a year.

The checkout pages of Polar and Fourthwall belong to them and set their own cookies, under their own policies.

Who else handles your data

These companies work for us and only on our instructions. Netlify hosts the site. Cloudflare runs our domain and counts visits. Neon runs the database. Resend sends our emails and holds the list. ImprovMX forwards mail sent to our address to our inbox. Lulu prints and posts the printed copies.

These companies are the sellers and keep their own records under their own privacy policies. Polar sells the subscription and the PDF. Fourthwall sells the printed copy and the goods, and passes your order to the partners who make and post the goods. Whatever you give them at checkout, such as your card and billing address, goes to them and not to us.

We do not sell your data or share it with anyone else, unless the law makes us.

Data outside Europe

Most of these companies are in the United States, and our database is held there. When your data goes outside the European Economic Area, it goes under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the company has joined it, or under the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. Your delivery details go to Lulu in the United States because that is needed to print and post the copy you ordered. You can ask us which safeguard applies to which company.

How long we keep it

Your address on the list is kept until you ask us to delete it, even after you unsubscribe, and your account and what you bought last as long as the account. The record of what you agreed to at checkout is kept three years, sign-in records a few days, Fourthwall’s order messages 30 days after they are dealt with (90 after the last try if we couldn’t process one), the names, addresses and phone numbers on printed copies 90 days after posting, and emails to us up to two years. If you ask us to close your account, we delete it within 30 days, except what the law makes us keep. Polar and Fourthwall keep their own payment records for as long as tax law requires.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of the data we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it, stop using it or send it to you or to someone else in a common format. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it any time. Where we rely on our legitimate interest, you can object. Write to editor@sapienjournal.com and we will answer within a month.

If you are not happy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Data Protection Commission in Ireland (dataprotection.ie) or to the data protection authority where you live. We would like the chance to put it right first.

Wherever you live, the same rights apply to you here.

Children

Sapien is not meant for children. You need to be 18 to subscribe or buy, and we do not knowingly keep data about anyone under 16.

Do Not Track

We do not follow you across other sites, so the site works the same whether or not your browser sends a Do Not Track signal.

Changes

If we change this page in a way that matters, we will say so on the site and email account holders before it takes effect.