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Privacy Policy

Effective Date: September 29, 2026

Psymposia, Inc (“Psymposia,” “we,” “our” or “us”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization and we are committed to protecting the privacy of our audience to the best of our abilities. The objective of this Privacy Policy is to be fully transparent with our audience and to explain how we collect, use, and share information about you through your use of https://www.psymposia.com, our email newsletters, and member accounts (the “Services”). Our store at https://shop.psymposia.com is covered in section 7.

This Privacy Policy does not govern our use of any information you provide to us when you call us, write to us, or communicate with us in any way other than through the Services.

By using the Services, you explicitly consent to such use of your information and agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you disagree, please discontinue use of our websites and services. If you have questions about this Privacy Policy contact us here.

In short

  • We don’t sell your data or share it with advertisers or data brokers.
  • Our website analytics use no cookies and don’t store your IP address.
  • Apart from two fraud-prevention cookies from our payment processor, Stripe, we only set cookies on your device if you sign in to a member account, to keep you signed in.
  • Some third parties we rely on (payments, video and podcast players, embedded posts) can collect data when their content loads. They’re listed below, with links to their policies.

1. Data Collection

We collect the information you choose to give us, such as your email address when you sign up for our newsletter or become a member. The different types of information, and what we do with them, are described in this Privacy Policy.

We also collect some information automatically when you use the Services, as described in sections 6 (Analytics) and 8 (Hosting and Content Delivery). This may include:

  • The pages you visit, the website that referred you, and campaign tags in the link you followed (such as utm_source).
  • Your browser, operating system, device type (mobile, computer, tablet), and language setting.
  • Your country, worked out from your IP address. Our analytics do not store the IP address itself.
  • Your IP address, the time of your request, and the page requested, in our web server’s logs, which are deleted after 30 days.

Our websites may include external content, or include links to third parties. Psymposia is not responsible for the privacy policies of these third parties. This Privacy Policy does not relate to these third parties’ websites, and you should read their privacy policies and terms of use to learn more about how your information is used. You can find a list of our Service Providers and their Privacy Policies here.

Below you will find the instances where we will collect, use, and share your data from the use of our Services.

Except as otherwise described in our Privacy Policy, we will never share your Usage Data, Personal Information, Non-Personal Information, or Shared Information with any third party without your permission.

2. Newsletters and Member Accounts

Our website runs on Ghost, open-source publishing software that we host ourselves. When you sign up for our newsletter or create a member account, we store your email address, your name if you give it, your newsletter choices, and the date you signed up. To help us understand what brings people to Psymposia, we also record where your signup came from: the website that referred you and the pages you read just before signing up. Your browser keeps that short list of recent pages in its session storage (at most 15 pages, forgotten after 24 hours or when you close the tab) and only sends it to us if you sign up.

You sign in with a one-time link we email you; there are no passwords. Our emails, including newsletters, are sent through Mailgun. Our newsletters record whether they were opened (using a small invisible image) and which links were clicked (links pass through our website before taking you to their destination). We use this data to:

  • Send email communications to the email address you provided;
  • Understand which stories our readers value and improve our Services;
  • Prevent violations of policies and identify instances of fraud;
  • Use for any additional reason that was disclosed when you signed up.

You can change your newsletter settings or unsubscribe at any time from the link at the bottom of every email, or from your account page on our website.

3. Paid Memberships and Donations

Paid memberships are processed by Stripe. When you become a paying member, Stripe collects your payment details and billing information. We never receive your full card number; Stripe shares limited details with us, such as your name, email address, the type of card, and its last four digits, so we can manage your membership. To make payments secure and prevent fraud, Stripe’s script loads on the pages of our website and sets two fraud-prevention cookies on our website’s domain (__stripe_mid and __stripe_sid) for every visitor.

You can also support us on Patreon. When you become a patron, Patreon collects your information under its own policies and shares your name, email address, and membership level with us.

We use information about members, patrons, and donors in the following manner:

  • Processing transactions and managing your membership;
  • Sending any notices, alerts, updates, or policy changes to the email address on file;
  • Sending emailers;
  • Improving and maintaining our Services;
  • Providing information to our team in order to send you a thank you reply;
  • Preventing violations of policies and identifying instances of fraud;
  • Use for any additional reason that was disclosed when you signed up.

4. Comments

Paying members can comment on our articles. Your comments are public and appear with the name you give on your member account. You can edit or delete your own comments, and we may moderate or remove comments under our Terms of Use.

5. Podcasts, Video Players, and Embedded Content

Many of our pages embed content from other services, including YouTube videos, podcast players from Libsyn, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and occasionally posts from X (Twitter), Vimeo videos, and Google Docs or Scribd documents. This content loads directly from those services, so they can collect data about your visit (including your IP address and device information) and set their own cookies, even before you press play. We use these players for:

  • Managing content on our sites;
  • Improving and maintaining our Services;
  • Identifying and improving user engagement with the content;
  • Use for any additional reason that was disclosed when you signed up.

These third party services collect and use that data under their own policies, and we don’t receive it. Links to our social media profiles in our website header and footer are plain links; we don’t load social media tracking widgets or “like” buttons on our pages.

6. Analytics

We use Ghost’s built-in web analytics to understand which stories people read and how they find us. When you view a page, our own server receives the page address, the referring website, any campaign tags in the link, your browser, operating system, device type, language, and country. The country is worked out from your IP address on our server; your IP address is not stored in our analytics. Our server also creates a visit identifier from technical details of your request, so we can count visits without cookies or anything stored on your device. If you are signed in to a member account, the page view is linked to your member account and whether you are a free or paid member. Traffic from automated browsers is not counted.

These records are stored and processed for us by Tinybird, a data analytics service, on servers in the United States (Amazon Web Services, us-east-1). Our team only looks at the resulting reports, such as how many people read a story and which sites sent them. We keep these analytics records until we delete them. They are not used for advertising, not combined with data from other websites, and not sold.

When you follow a link in our articles or newsletters to another website, we may add a “ref” tag naming our website to the link, so that site knows the visit came from us. No information about you is included.

7. Store

Our store at shop.psymposia.com runs on Shopify, and some orders are produced and shipped by print-on-demand partners such as Printful. When you make a purchase, Shopify and these partners collect your full name, your physical address, your postal code, your email address, the amount of your purchase, your billing information, and your payment information, under their own policies and the privacy policy shown in the store. This information will be used in the following manner:

  • Processing and shipping your order;
  • Sending any notices, alerts, updates, or policy changes to the email address on file;
  • Improving and maintaining our Services;
  • Preventing violations of policies and identifying instances of fraud;
  • Use for any additional reason that was disclosed when you made your purchase.

8. Hosting and Content Delivery

Our website runs on our own servers, rented from DigitalOcean in New York, United States. Like any web server, ours keeps logs of requests, including your IP address, the time, the page requested, and your browser. We use these logs only for security and fixing problems, and we delete them after 30 days.

Some parts of our website load from other services: the scripts for member signup, sign-in, site search, and comments are delivered by jsDelivr, a content delivery network, and some of our fonts are delivered by Bunny Fonts (the rest are served from our own server). As with any web request, these services receive your IP address and basic browser information when those files load. This information is used for:

  • Improving Services speed and functionality;
  • Improving and maintaining our Services;
  • Preventing violations of policies and identifying instances of fraud.

9. The Fediverse

We publish our articles to the fediverse (Mastodon and other social networks that use the ActivityPub standard) through Ghost’s ActivityPub service, which is run by the Ghost Foundation. If you follow, like, reply to, or share our posts from a fediverse account, that activity and your public profile are processed by Ghost’s service and by the servers involved, under their own policies. These interactions are public.

10. Emailing Us

Psymposia and our Service Providers will collect any data that may be associated with your email address. This includes both the content of your email and may include any data from your device, including through Tracking Technologies.

Please, do not share sensitive or confidential information from unencrypted email services – like Gmail. To submit sensitive or confidential information by email please read our Tips and Whistleblower Leaks procedure document found here. This information is used for:

  • Our team replying to your email;
  • Improving and maintaining our Services;
  • Preventing violations of policies and identifying instances of fraud;
  • Use for any additional reason that was disclosed when you signed up.

11. Data Disclosure

Notwithstanding anything in this Privacy Policy to the contrary, we reserve the right, and you hereby expressly authorize us, to share any User Information: (1) in response to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish, protect, or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potentially illegal activities, fraud, or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person or property; (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding significant abuse of the Services’ infrastructure or the Internet in general (such as voluminous spamming, denial-of-service attacks, or attempts to compromise the security of information); (4) in connection with, or during negotiations of, any proposed or actual merger, purchase, sale or any other type of acquisition or business combination of all or any portion of our assets, or transfer of all or a portion of our business to another business.

You will be notified, as permitted by law, and we will cooperate with you in an effort to produce any potential lawful objections to any such disclosures. We will seek out any appropriate protective orders limiting such disclosures of your information. Lawful disclosures will be limited to those strictly required by law.

Data involving our members, patrons, and donors is also shared with the Service Providers described above (such as Stripe, Patreon, and Mailgun) so they can provide their services. We are not responsible for the policies, practices, or security of our third party donor partners.

By using third party podcast or video services in connection with our site, you understand that the data that third party podcast and video services collect comes from you, and not us or our Service Providers, and that the third party podcast or video services may disclose the data it collects to additional third parties. We are not responsible for such third party collection, use, and sharing.

12. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We keep cookies and similar technologies to a minimum:

  • Member sign-in cookies. If you sign in to a member account, our website sets cookies that keep you signed in. They are removed when you sign out. Apart from Stripe’s fraud-prevention cookies (below), we set no cookies for readers who aren’t signed in.
  • No analytics or advertising cookies. Our analytics (section 6) use no cookies and store nothing on your device.
  • Session storage for signups. As described in section 2, your browser keeps a short list of the pages you read, for at most 24 hours, which is only sent to us if you sign up.
  • Email tracking. Our newsletters use a small invisible image to record opens, and send link clicks through our website to record them (section 2).

Third parties may set their own cookies or use similar technologies when their content loads. Stripe sets two fraud-prevention cookies, __stripe_mid and __stripe_sid, on our website’s domain for every visitor (section 3), and embedded players and posts such as YouTube videos set cookies on their own domains (section 5). We are not responsible for and make no representations regarding their collection practices. You can generally block or remove cookies with the settings in your browser; if you block all cookies, you won’t be able to stay signed in to a member account.

13. Your Rights

Accessing and Changing Your Information

You can update your name, email address, and newsletter settings, and manage a paid membership, from your account page on our website. You may also update or remove any data you have voluntarily shared with us by emailing us, including asking us to delete your member account. If your information has been collected by third parties through your use of the Services, you must contact those third parties with your request for data removal. In order to verify your identity, we may require additional information from you.

We will not remove donor names that we publish anywhere on our site. We also may deny removing your name or other information that we published if that information was made publicly available on social media or on external publications.

Opting-Out

You may choose to opt-out of certain data collection, use, and sharing, as described below.

If you would like to opt-out of receiving our emailers, click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email, or change your settings on your account page.

Opting-out of the use of Tracking Technologies on our site from third party Service Providers may be very difficult. We are not responsible for any third party opt-outs.

For any additional requests, questions, or concerns, email us.

14. Children’s Privacy

We are committed to protecting the privacy needs of children, and we encourage parents and guardians to take an active role in their children’s online activities and interests. The Services are not intended for and may not be used by children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 13, and we do not market the Services to children under the age of 13.

15. International Users

This Privacy Policy is intended for and directed to users within the United States. If you are using our Services from outside of the United States, please be aware that by using our Services, which are governed by U.S. law, you are transferring your personal data to the United States and you are consenting to that transfer.

16. Privacy Policy Changes

This Privacy Policy may change from time to time. The revised Privacy Policy will be posted and the “Effective Date,” will reflect the date the changes were made. The updated Privacy Policy will be effective immediately. Your continued use of the Services after any updates shall indicate that you are in agreement with the terms of the revised Privacy Policy.

17. Contacting Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, or our compliance with applicable law, please contact us by email.