Data & Privacy

What stays on our servers

• Your account ID, alias, last focus and a BCrypt password hash. Your password is not stored as plain text.
• Latest visit: we keep one timestamp for your most recent signed-in page visit, updated at most once every five minutes, to understand whether readers return. Only administrators can see it. It replaces the previous value; no visited page, article, IP address or visit history is stored with it. It is deleted with your account.
• Feedback: bug reports and suggestions are linked to your account and visible only to you and administrators. We store their text, submission time and status until your account is deleted.
• The IDs of the feeds you subscribe to, linked to your account. We do not keep read/unread status, favorites, article clicks or reading timestamps.
• Personal categories: the names you create and which of your subscriptions belong to each category. These are private to your account and are deleted with it.
• Collection suggestions: the change type, source URL, explanation, collection, submission time and review decision are stored with your account. We also keep your latest submission time per collection to enforce the seven-day limit. Only you and administrators can see your suggestions. This data is deleted with your account; shared sources remain in the catalog.
• Feed URLs, titles, articles, source and article counts, and refresh timestamps, status and HTTP cache metadata are shared across readers. These describe feeds, not your reading activity.
• Your current daily article recommendations are stored to keep the selection stable during the day. They record suggestions, not what you read.
• JSESSIONID, lectura_login: A login cookie keeps you signed in across visits and server restarts. The server stores only a hash of its random token. Sign out or clear your browser cookies to end access on this device. The saved login expires 400 days after sign-in. Visits do not extend this deadline; your browser may remove the cookie sooner.
• Ban records include blocked feed addresses, banned aliases, reasons and dates. Attempts to add blocked feeds and historical reports are retained as administrative records. Historical reports are removed when the associated account is deleted.

No email address is requested, stored or used. Your account needs only an alias and a password.

Choose an alias or nickname just for Lectura. Do not use your email address, real name, or a username you use elsewhere. A separate alias makes it harder to connect your subscriptions to your identity.

What your browser remembers

First-time guests start with Curated Blogs. Signing in restores your account’s last focus choice, including in another browser. Guest browsing does not change it. Saved language, layout and appearance preferences remain signed-in only.

• lectura_language, lectura_view, lectura_mode, lectura_page_size: These cookies remember language, layout and article-count preferences for up to 365 days. Your signed-in focus choice is also saved in your account. Guest choices stay in the page address; the Reading home page defaults to Curated Blogs.
• lectura.theme: Your appearance preference stays in local storage until you change it or clear browser data. It is not sent to our server.
• lectura.reading: Reading appearance and link-opening choices stay in local storage until you change them or clear browser data. Summary visibility is also stored in a cookie so the server can omit hidden summaries.
• lectura.focus-return: To return keyboard focus after a setting reloads the page, session storage briefly remembers only the control ID, destination path and time. The entry is removed on the next page load and ignored after 30 seconds. No field values are stored or sent to the server.
• lectura.installTipDismissedAt: Local storage remembers when you dismissed the installation tip and hides it for 30 days. This value is not sent to our server.
• Visited-link styling uses your browser’s own history through CSS. Lectura does not read, upload or store that history.

Random keeps its shuffle parameters in the page URL, so Back, bookmarks and pagination can reuse the order. It does not store which articles you open.

Shared information and external links

We do not sell your data or share it with advertising or analytics services. Your alias and subscriptions are visible on your profile to everyone, including visitors without an account.

Your alias and subscriptions are visible to everyone, including visitors without an account. Recommendations use these subscriptions.

Opening an article takes you to the original publisher, which has its own data processing practices.

Retention and deletion

Account data remains until account deletion. Signing out revokes this browser’s saved login; changing your password revokes all saved logins.

Deletion removes your account and subscriptions from the active database. Shared feeds and articles remain in the directory. This cannot be undone and does not remove external copies.

Source and username blacklists remain after removal so the same addresses and aliases cannot be added again. Moderation records contain only the identifiers, reasons and dates needed for review; they do not record your article reading history.