Privacy

What we keep when you sign up

• Your email address.
• Your language: English, Spanish or both.
• Your towns and the topics you pick.
• Your first name, if you choose to give it. We use it only to say good morning in your own copy, and we delete it when you unsubscribe or your address stops receiving our mail.
• Anything else you choose in your preferences, such as school districts or a military connection.
• A record that you asked for it: when you signed up and when you confirmed, the page you signed up on, and a keyed hash of the IP address you signed up from.

Your IP address

We keep only a keyed hash of the IP address you signed up from, never the address itself, as proof of consent. We delete it when you unsubscribe.

How we use it

Only to run Coastlight:

• to send you the editions you asked for, in your language;
• to choose and order the stories for your towns and interests;
• to keep the list healthy, for example by no longer writing to addresses that bounce.

To put your stories in order, our software looks at your towns and interests. The subscriber list and personalization never send your email address to an AI model.

Messages you send to our addresses, such as privacy@, corrections@ or tips@, are read and sorted with AI help, and a person makes every decision that speaks for Coastlight.

Streets and topics you watch

• What we keep: the street you pick, with an optional block or cross street, or the phrase you type. Never a house number.
• Our software matches it against public meeting agendas. An AI model does not read or match your list.
• No person sees what you watch. The editor sees only totals, such as how many streets and topics are watched.
• How long: until you remove it or unsubscribe. The record of which alerts we sent you is kept 120 days, and the personalized copy of each email 30 days.
• To delete it: press Remove next to a street or topic on the watches page, which your preferences page links to, or unsubscribe, which removes everything you watch at once.

Share links

• A share link is off until you turn it on. It holds a random code, never your email address or any id of yours.
• We keep which new readers joined through it, so we can count them.
• You see one number, updated each Monday, never who joined. No one else sees it: the editor sees only totals.
• The new reader is told on the confirm page, and can choose not to be counted.
• Turning the link off deletes the code and its count.
• When either of you unsubscribes or is removed for a bounce or a complaint, the record of that signup is deleted. When that happens to you, your code goes too.
• The codes on our printed flyers name a region, not a person, and we count sign-ups per region.

Widgets and share cards

• Widgets and share pages show only what is already public, set no cookies and carry no tracking.
• Share links never carry your email, an id or a code of yours. A widget’s signup link says which kind of page sent a reader, never who.
• Images that other apps saved stay in those apps after we take a page down. We can’t reach them there.

What we never do

• We never sell, rent or trade your data.
• We don’t use tracking pixels, and we don’t know when you open our email.
• No ad networks, analytics trackers or third-party cookies, on this site or in our email.
• If we ever carry ads, they are chosen only by what you told us: your towns, interests and language. Never by watching what you do elsewhere.
• We don’t follow you around the web, and we never sell or share your data, so we treat every reader as if Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control were on.

Links in our email

Links in Coastlight go through our website first. We record which links you click in our email, tied to your subscription, to choose what goes in your edition and to count which stories readers find useful. We keep these records for 13 months, and we see nothing of what you do after you leave our site.

Items you follow

If you press “Follow” on a meeting in an email, we keep which meetings you follow and which decisions we sent you about them. Software matches that list to the records we publish and puts the result in your morning email. No person reads the list. We keep it for 120 days, or until we have sent you what was decided, and when you unsubscribe we delete it.

Who helps us run it

A few companies handle data for us, only to provide their service:

• Amazon Web Services sends the email.
• Supabase stores the subscriber list.
• Vercel runs this website.
• Anthropic’s Claude helps write the editions from public sources and helps sort the messages you send us. To put your stories in order it sees your towns and interests, never your email address.

Your data is stored in the United States.

How long we keep it

• Your subscription and preferences: while you are subscribed.
• A sign-up you never confirm: we delete it about 14 days after sign-up (up to 21 if a link was resent).
• When you unsubscribe, we delete your preferences, your personalization data and the hash of your signup IP address.
• When you unsubscribe, we keep your email address, the date, your status and the language you were getting on a do-not-email list, so we don’t send you the newsletter again. If someone signs your address up again, we send one email asking to confirm, and nothing more until it is confirmed.
• Records of the emails we sent you: 13 months.
• Delivery reports (delivered, bounced or marked as spam): 13 months.
• Records of which links you clicked: 13 months.
• The personalized copy of each email, and its record: 30 days.
• The streets and topics you watch for alerts: until you remove them or unsubscribe.
• Your share code and its count: until you turn it off or unsubscribe.
• The record that a reader joined through a share link: until either of you unsubscribes or is removed for a bounce or complaint. If the new reader never confirms, it goes with that unconfirmed signup, about 14 days after it.
• The record of which alerts we sent you: 120 days, or until you remove that watch or unsubscribe.
• A street or topic nobody watches any more, with the places it was found in agendas: 30 days after the last reader stops watching it. These records name no reader.
• The counter that limits how many watches you can try in an hour (a reader number, a start time and a count): it goes when you unsubscribe.
• If you ask us to delete your data, we do it within 30 days, including the delivery reports that show your address. We keep your do-not-email entry unless you ask us to forget you entirely; then we remove it too, and we may email you again if you sign up again.

Unsubscribing

Most email apps show an Unsubscribe button next to our name: one click and you are off the list. Every email also has an Unsubscribe link at the bottom, which opens a page with a single button. Either way it takes effect right away, with nothing to log in to. If you get both editions, unsubscribing stops both.

See, change or delete your data

To change your towns, topics or language, use the preferences link in any email.

To get a copy of your data or have it deleted, email Email address coming soon from the address you subscribed with. We do it within 30 days and tell you when it is done.

Children

Coastlight is meant for adults. We don’t knowingly sign up anyone under 13. If you think a child has signed up, tell us and we will delete the address.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will say so in the email before the change takes effect. The date at the top shows the current version.

Contact

Coastlight Labs, Coastlight Labs (test address, not for publication), Monterey, CA 93940. Email: Email address coming soon.