Privacy Policy

Breaking The Lines Ltd ("BTL", "we", "us") is the data controller responsible for your personal data. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share, and protect your information when you use the Breaking The Lines platform (the "Platform").

We are committed to protecting your privacy and complying with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

For data protection enquiries, contact us at hello@breakingthelines.com.

Account information. When you register, we collect your name, email address, username, and optional profile details (bio, avatar, social links).

Content. Articles, videos, podcasts, thoughts, and other content you create or publish on the Platform.

Usage and engagement data. We collect information about how you interact with the Platform, including pages visited, content read, search queries, reading progress, content completion rates, bookmarks, follows, thoughts, listening and viewing activity, and feature usage. This data helps us improve the service, personalise your experience, surface relevant content, and provide creators with aggregated (non-individually-identifiable) audience insights.

Device and technical data. Browser type, operating system, IP address, device identifiers, and referral URLs collected automatically through server logs and cookies.

Payment information. If you subscribe to a paid plan or monetise content, payment details are collected and processed by Stripe. We do not store your full card number or banking details on our servers.

Anonymous usage data. If you visit the Platform without an account, we assign an anonymous identifier (via a first-party cookie) to meter content access. This identifier contains no personal information and is used solely to count reads. See our Cookie Policy for details.

Communications. Messages you send to us via the contact form, email, or in-app support.

We use your personal data to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Platform
• Create and manage your account
• Process subscriptions, payments, and creator payouts
• Personalise your experience, including content recommendations and search results
• Send transactional notifications (account changes, subscription updates, content alerts)
• Respond to your enquiries and provide support
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security threats
• Comply with legal obligations
• Provide creators with aggregated, anonymous audience insights, including content performance, topic engagement, and audience composition. No individually identifiable reader data is ever shared with creators
• Power platform discovery features including trending content, personalised recommendations, creator discovery, and search relevance

Under the UK GDPR, we process your data based on:

• Contract performance: Processing necessary to provide the Platform services you signed up for (account management, content delivery, subscriptions).
• Legitimate interests: Improving and securing the Platform, personalising content, preventing fraud. We balance these interests against your rights and freedoms.
• Consent: For optional processing such as marketing communications. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation: Where we are required to process data to comply with applicable laws.

We use trusted third-party services to operate the Platform. These processors act on our instructions and are contractually bound to protect your data:

• Stripe: Payment processing and creator payouts
• Cloudflare: Content delivery, DDoS protection, and Turnstile bot detection
• Amazon Web Services: Cloud infrastructure and data storage

We do not sell your personal data to third parties. We do not share your data with advertisers.

We may share your information in the following circumstances:

• Public content: Content you publish is publicly visible. Your username, display name, avatar, and bio are part of your public profile.
• Creator analytics: If you subscribe to a creator, they may see aggregated audience data. They will not see your individual reading history.
• Legal requirements: We may disclose data if required by law, court order, or to protect the rights and safety of BTL, our users, or the public.
• Business transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, user data may be transferred as part of that transaction.

We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide our services. Specifically:

• Account data: retained until you delete your account
• Published content: retained until you remove it or close your account
• Usage analytics: aggregated and anonymised after 24 months
• Payment records: retained for 7 years as required by financial regulations
• Server logs: retained for up to 90 days for security and debugging purposes

When you delete your account, we will delete or anonymise your personal data within 30 days, except where retention is required by law.

Under the UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access your personal data and obtain a copy
• Rectification: correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Erasure: request deletion of your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Portability: receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Restrict processing in certain circumstances
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests
• Withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent

To exercise any of these rights, email us at hello@breakingthelines.com. We will respond within 30 days. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

Your data may be processed in countries outside the UK, including the United States (for infrastructure services such as AWS and Cloudflare). Where data is transferred outside the UK, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, including Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the ICO, or reliance on the recipient's adequacy decision.

The Platform is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will promptly delete it.

We use cookies and similar technologies to operate and improve the Platform. For detailed information about the cookies we use and how to manage them, see our Cookie Policy.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated via email or in-app notice at least 30 days before taking effect. The "Last updated" date at the top indicates when this policy was last revised.

For any privacy-related questions or to exercise your data rights, contact us at:

hello@breakingthelines.com

Breaking The Lines Ltd
Data Protection Officer
England & Wales