Privacy Policy

This policy applies to everyone who interacts with The Arkive of Noah, whether you are simply browsing the public catalog, a registered viewer who buys and reads books, an editor or admin who moderates content, or an author who sells digital books through our marketplace. It covers the public discovery surface, the account system, the book store and in-app PDF reader, the blog, comments, likes, author follows, user-submitted catalog entries, and our transactional and newsletter email.

Much of the platform is freely available without an account. You only need to provide personal information when you register, make a purchase, become an author, submit content for review, comment, or subscribe to our newsletter. Where this policy refers to 'personal information' or 'personal data,' we mean information that identifies you or can reasonably be linked to you, such as your name, email address, or account activity.

We are the controller of the personal information described here. We rely on a small set of trusted service providers — described in Section 6 — to operate the platform; we do not run our own payment processing, email delivery, or large-scale file storage. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use third-party advertising networks or third-party product-analytics trackers.

When you create an account, we collect your first and last name, your email address and password (your password is handled by our authentication provider and is stored only in hashed form — we never see it in plain text), and an optional username. Your role on the platform — viewer, editor, or admin — is also recorded and is the default 'viewer' unless we grant you elevated access.

If you become an author in our book marketplace, we additionally collect the contents of your author profile, which may include an avatar image, a biographical description, and contact details. To pay you, we also collect the payout information you provide. In our default 'manual' payout mode this means the off-platform settlement details you give us (for example bank account or Telebirr information) so we can transfer your earnings; in the optional Stripe Connect mode, payout and identity details are collected and held by Stripe rather than by us.

When you take part in the community, we collect the content you create: comments you post, likes you give, authors you follow, and any catalog entries you submit for editorial review. We also collect your email address if you subscribe to our Sunday newsletter, 'The Dispatch.' When you contact us by email, we keep your message and the details you choose to share so we can respond.

Please remember that comments, author profiles, submitted catalog entries, and similar content may be visible to other users or to the public. Do not include sensitive personal details in content you intend to publish.

To keep you signed in, our platform sets a session cookie when you log in. This cookie is essential to the login functionality and authenticates your requests as you move around the site; without it we cannot maintain a secure session. We describe cookies in more detail in Section 7.

Like virtually all web services, our servers automatically generate basic technical logs as part of operating and securing the platform. These logs can include information such as IP addresses, browser and device type, the pages or resources requested, and timestamps. We use this information to deliver content, diagnose errors, prevent abuse and fraud, and protect the security and integrity of the service.

We want to be explicit about what we do NOT do: The Arkive of Noah does not run third-party advertising, does not embed advertising trackers, and does not use any third-party product-analytics tracker to profile your behavior across the web. We do not build advertising profiles about you and we do not track you across other websites.

We use your information to provide and operate the platform: to create and authenticate your account, maintain your roles and permissions, display your profile and community activity, and let you browse and search the catalog. For authors, we use your profile and content to power your public author page and the books you list for sale.

We use order and account information to process purchases and deliver what you have bought — recording your digital download entitlements, granting you access to the books you own, and streaming those books to you in the in-app PDF reader. For authors, we use sales and payout data to calculate balances and settle your earnings, and to display each payout in your Studio dashboard.

We use your email address to send transactional messages that are part of the service — such as account and welcome emails and order confirmations — and, if you have subscribed, to send our weekly newsletter, 'The Dispatch.' You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time; transactional messages tied to your account and purchases are not promotional and may still be sent while your account is active.

We also use information to moderate user-submitted content and comments, enforce our terms, detect and prevent fraud and abuse, secure the service, comply with our legal obligations, and respond to your support requests.

Purchases on The Arkive of Noah are processed by our payment providers, Stripe and Chapa (the Ethiopian gateway, which supports Telebirr, CBE Birr, and cards), and may be charged in U.S. dollars (USD) or Ethiopian birr (ETB). When you check out, the payment provider collects and processes the information needed to charge you, including your card or mobile-money details, directly through their own systems.

We do not receive or store your full card numbers or comparable sensitive payment credentials. What we keep is order metadata — such as the items purchased, the amounts, the currency, the status of the order, and a payment reference that links the order to the transaction at the provider. We use this to fulfill your purchase, grant your downloads, support refunds, and keep accurate financial records.

Stripe and Chapa are independent controllers of the payment data they collect and handle it under their own privacy policies and security standards. We encourage you to review their policies to understand how they process payment information.

We share personal information only with a small set of trusted providers, strictly as needed to operate the platform, and under agreements that require them to protect your data. Supabase provides our database and authentication, storing your account, profile, order, entitlement, and community data. Cloudflare R2 provides object storage and delivery for our catalog images and the book PDFs sold and read on the platform.

Stripe and Chapa process payments and receive the information necessary to charge you, as described in Section 5. Resend is our email provider and delivers our transactional emails and the 'The Dispatch' newsletter on our behalf; to do so it processes the recipient email address and message contents.

We may also disclose information when required by law, to respond to lawful requests from public authorities, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, safety, and property of The Arkive of Noah, our users, or others. If we are ever involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction, and we will notify affected users.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own advertising or marketing purposes.

The Arkive of Noah uses cookies sparingly and primarily for one purpose: keeping you securely signed in. When you log in, an authentication session cookie is set so that the server can recognize your requests and maintain your session. This cookie is strictly necessary for the login and account features to function.

We may also use a small amount of local browser storage for non-tracking preferences — for example, remembering your light or dark theme choice — so the interface loads the way you left it. These are functional, not advertising, technologies.

Because we do not run third-party advertising or third-party analytics, we do not set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. If you block the essential session cookie, you will not be able to remain logged in or use account-gated features such as your library, purchases, or author studio.

We keep your personal information for as long as your account is active and as long as we need it to provide the platform to you. Your profile, community activity, and download entitlements remain while your account exists so that you can continue to access the books you own and the content you have created.

We retain order and financial records — including order metadata, payment references, and author payout history — for longer than the life of your account where we are required to do so for tax, accounting, audit, fraud-prevention, and other legal obligations. Some content you have published, such as comments or accepted catalog submissions, may persist after account closure where it has become part of the public record, though we will disassociate it from your identity where reasonable and requested.

When information is no longer needed for these purposes, we delete it or anonymize it. If you ask us to delete your account, we will honor that request subject to the legal-retention exceptions described above.

We take the security of your information seriously, particularly because money flows through the platform. Access to data is transmitted over encrypted connections, account passwords are stored in hashed form by our authentication provider, and we never receive your full card details. Sensitive credentials and administrative keys are kept on the server side and are never exposed to the browser.

Access to user data within the platform is restricted by role-based permissions and by database-level access controls that deny access by default, so that, for example, one user cannot read another user's orders or downloads. Privileged actions are re-checked on the server, and book files are streamed to entitled readers rather than exposed as public links. We rely on reputable providers — Supabase, Cloudflare, Stripe, Chapa, and Resend — that maintain their own security programs.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for notifying us promptly if you believe your account has been compromised.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your personal information, including the right to access the data we hold about you, to correct inaccurate information, to request deletion of your data, and to obtain a copy of certain data in a portable form. You can update much of your account and author-profile information directly within the platform at any time.

You can unsubscribe from our newsletter, 'The Dispatch,' at any time using the unsubscribe link in any newsletter email or by contacting us. Note that we may still send you essential transactional messages related to your account and purchases while your account remains active.

To exercise any of these rights, or if you would like your account and associated personal data deleted, contact us at thedove@thearkiveofnoah.com. We will respond within a reasonable timeframe and may need to verify your identity before acting. Some data may be retained where we have a legal obligation to keep it, as described in Section 8.

The Arkive of Noah is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13, or under 16 where a higher minimum age applies in your jurisdiction.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at thedove@thearkiveofnoah.com. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child without the required consent, we will delete that information promptly.

The Arkive of Noah serves a global audience with a particular focus on Ethiopia, and our providers — Supabase, Cloudflare, Stripe, Chapa, and Resend — may process and store data in various countries. As a result, your personal information may be transferred to, stored in, or processed in countries other than the one in which you live, and those countries may have data-protection laws that differ from your own.

By using the platform, you understand that your information may be transferred internationally as described in this policy. Where required by law, we take steps to ensure that such transfers are subject to appropriate safeguards so that your information continues to be protected.

Our Chapa payment option in particular is provided to support buyers and authors in Ethiopia, including Telebirr and CBE Birr, and payments made through it are processed under Chapa's own terms and privacy practices.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, our providers, or applicable law. When we make material changes, we will update the policy and revise its effective date, and where appropriate we may notify you by email or through a notice on the platform.

Your continued use of The Arkive of Noah after an updated policy takes effect means you accept the revised terms. We encourage you to review this page periodically so you stay informed about how we protect your information.

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information, please contact us by email at thedove@thearkiveofnoah.com.

You can also reach us through our website at thearkiveofnoah.com. We will do our best to respond to your inquiry and to resolve any concerns promptly.