Privacy Policy
Finish The Poem
Last updated: 30 September 2026
Public beta. Finish The Poem is live and open. Accounts, poems and
echoes are stored on our servers and shared between visitors. Some parts of
the site are still being built and some of it will change. Where something
is not yet in place, this policy says so plainly rather than describing an
intention as a fact.
The short version
We collect as little as we can get away with. We don't sell anything to anyone. There is no advertising on this site and no third-party tracking. Your poems are public because that's the point; almost nothing else is.
1. Who we are
Tatewick Enterprises LLC is the data controller for information collected through Finish The Poem.
Contact: finishthepoem@tatewickenterprises.com
2. What we collect
When you create an account with email
- Email address
- Password — stored only as a salted bcrypt hash by our authentication provider. We never see it in readable form, and neither does anyone who gains access to our database.
- Your chosen handle
When you sign in with X or Google
- Your name, email address, and profile picture as supplied by that provider
- We never receive your password for those services
What you choose to add
- Display name, bio, profile photo
- A tip or support link, if you add one
- Your anthology preference
What you create
- Your verses, and when you posted them
- Which verses you have echoed
- Opening lines you set, if you are a curator
Technical information
- Our hosting and database providers record standard web server logs — including IP address, browser type, and pages requested — for security and troubleshooting. These are generated and retained by those providers under their own policies, typically for around 30 days. We do not use them to build a profile of you, and we do not keep server logs of our own.
We do not collect location data beyond what an IP address implies, we do not use advertising trackers, and we do not build profiles of you for marketing.
3. What's public
Public to anyone, signed in or not:
- Your handle, display name, bio, and profile photo
- Every verse you post
- Your verse and echo counts
- Your tip link, if you added one
Private — enforced by the database itself, not just by the website:
- Your email address
- Your password
- Which specific verses you have echoed (only totals are shown, and no one else can read the individual records)
- Reports you file about other people's work
- Your anthology preference (visible only to you and to the curators who compile the anthology)
- Any notice we send you about moderation of your work
When anyone shares a link to one of your verses, the preview image shown on X and other sites is generated from the poem's public text and your handle — nothing that isn't already public. If a verse is removed or deleted, its preview stops being generated within an hour; copies other sites have already stored are outside our control.
Poems are permanent in the ways public things are permanent. Once published, a verse may be read, quoted, screenshotted, shared to social media by us under the Contributor Licence, or archived by third parties beyond our control. Deleting removes it from our site; it cannot unpublish what others already have.
4. Why we process it
| What | Why | Basis |
| Email, password | To create and secure your account | Contract |
| Anti-automation challenge | To stop bulk account creation | Legitimate interests |
| Handle, profile | To attribute your work publicly | Contract |
| Verses, echoes | To operate the Site | Contract |
| Anthology setting | To honour your choice | Contract / consent |
| Server logs | Security, abuse prevention, debugging | Legitimate interests |
| Moderation records | To enforce the Guidelines | Legitimate interests |
| Contact about the anthology | To tell you if your work is selected | Legitimate interests |
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell your data. We do not share it for advertising.
We share only with service providers who help us run the Site, bound to process data only on our instructions:
- Supabase — database, authentication, and password storage
- Netlify — website hosting and delivery
- Resend — sending account emails (confirmation, password reset)
- X and Google — only if you choose to sign in with one of them
- Cloudflare — the challenge shown on the sign-up form, to keep automated accounts out
None of these are permitted to use your data for their own purposes.
We may disclose information where legally required, or where necessary to protect someone's safety. Content involving the sexual exploitation of children is reported to the relevant authorities, as required by law.
6. Where your data is held
Data may be processed outside your country. We are based in the United States and your data is processed there. If you are in the UK or EEA, we rely on the transfer safeguards required by law, including standard contractual clauses.
7. How long we keep it
- Account data — while your account is open
- Verses — until you delete them or your account
- Server logs — retained by our hosting and database providers under their policies, typically around 30 days
- Moderation records — up to 2 years after action, so decisions can be reviewed. If a curator removes one of your verses, you are told the reason the next time you visit, and told again if it is restored.
- Anthology records — where your work has been printed, we retain the attribution record indefinitely, because the printed book exists
When you delete your account, your profile, your verses, your echoes, and any reports you filed are deleted from the live database in a single operation, immediately. Encrypted database backups may still contain the data for up to 7 days before being overwritten; we do not restore backups to recover deleted accounts. We keep nothing else except where the law requires it.
8. Your rights
You can ask us to:
- See what we hold about you
- Correct anything wrong — most of it you can edit yourself
- Delete your account and data
- Export a copy of your data — there is a Download my data button on your profile that produces a JSON file of your account, poems, and echoes immediately, no request needed
- Object to or restrict certain processing
- Withdraw consent where processing relies on it
Write to finishthepoem@tatewickenterprises.com. We respond within 30 days, free of charge.
If you are unhappy with our response you may complain to your data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
9. Security
Passwords are stored only as salted bcrypt hashes and are never readable by us. All traffic between your browser and our servers is encrypted in transit. Data is encrypted at rest by our database provider.
Access to the database is governed by row-level security, which is enforced by the database itself rather than by the website. In practice that means the site cannot hand out your email address, your anthology setting, or the list of which poems you echoed even if the code asked it to.
Access to production data is limited to the people who need it. We are a very small operation, and that number is currently one.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach occurs that puts you at risk, we will tell you and the relevant authority within the time the law requires.
10. Children
The Site is not for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
11. Cookies
We use only what the Site needs to work.
We keep you signed in using a token held in your browser's local storage rather than a cookie. If you dismiss the beta banner, we remember that in the same place. Neither is sent anywhere or used to track you.
Cloudflare sets a cookie as part of the challenge on the sign-up form, to tell a person from a script. It does not follow you around the web.
No advertising cookies. No third-party analytics. Our hosting provider may set cookies necessary for delivering the site securely.
12. Changes
We will post any update here and change the date at the top. Material changes will be notified on the Site before they take effect.
Contact: finishthepoem@tatewickenterprises.com